Sample MBA402 Governance Ethics and Sustainability Report

MBA402 Governance, Ethics and Sustainability Report Sample

Your Task

You are required to research recent news articles and other information about Flight Centre

Your task is to draft a Code of Ethics for Flight Centre. The word limit is 2000 words.

Assessment Instructions

Your Code of Ethics must specifically address the following areas:

A. Discrimination
B. Exploitation
C. Corruption
D. Dishonest and Fraudulent Behavior
E. Whistleblower Protection
F. Enforcement

You will be required to include a minimum of 8 references in your Code of Ethics, 4 of which must come from academic journals or textbooks.
For further guidance here are the links to three example company codes of ethics:

Solution

Code of conduct

A code of conduct can be defined as the set of rules, regulations and policies that an individual should abide by while doing their respective roles. In a workplace context, it can refer to certain principles, standards, moral and ethical expectations, which are levied by the organisation, and the employees and third parties need to follow them while they interact with the organisation. It proposes the values and ethical principles that clarify the vision of any businessSchroeder et al. (2019, p.122). For Assignment Help Code of conduct is a significant measure, to value the employees and create and proper standards for the employees to do their respective jobs. It adds up to the sanity in an organisation and moulds the internal structure of an organization. This set of rules and policies helps the organisation to value integrity and impartiality while governing the operations of the business. It creates a safe passage for the employees, to honour themselves as well as their colleagues, and secures them from being prejudiced and unbiased. A code of conduct in an organisation portrays the mission, vision, values and principles, and links it to the professional standards of business. A code of conduct is quite significant at a workplace, as it establishes an inclusive culture within the organisation, and provides a comprehensive framework to mitigate the conflicts and issues which rises due to certain ethical reasonsCesaroni et al. (2020, p. C1-C1). An ethical culture needs to be maintained within a Flight centre, and the leaders need to manifest the ethics in the attitudes and behaviour of the employees. Consistent enforcement, proper training and explanation of ethical practices are important to enlighten the employees with the code of conduct prevailing in the organisationVitolla et al.(2021, p.100823).

Discrimination

It can be defined as the mistreatment of an individual based on the grounds of race, age and sex. It means when a person is subjected to prejudicial treatment, due to their background. The main problems concerning discrimination in the Flight centre include harassment by managers, co-workers due to race, colour, religion and sexDhanani et al.(2018, p. 147-179). Any unlawful behaviour concerning an adverse action taken on an individual due to their ethnicity is considered workplace discrimination. The four types of discrimination that are common in workplaces are direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation. For example, when an employee is side-lined unnecessarily due to their disabilities can be considered as breakage of workplace conduct. There are some laws that secure the workers from any discriminatory activities. The Civil Rights Act 1964 prohibit employment discrimination concerning race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. The Equal Pay Cut of 1963 protects the issues of women getting paid equally like men, based on the substantial work. The Age Discrimination Act of 1967 prohibits any age-based discrimination and protects the working of people who are more than 40. These laws provide a framework, which limits the prevalence of any discriminatory activity within an organizationKim et al. (2020, p. 415).

Discrimination: Code of Ethics

There are certain policies that need to be maintained by the Flight Centre. They include –

• Every employee should be provided with equal opportunity and provided scope for growth.

• Every employee should treat their colleagues equally, and should not discriminate against any worker based on their belonging or background.

• The employees need to adhere to the safety and health guidelines so that they are not prone to any accidental risks

• Every employee should be paid equally, and any unnecessary demands would not be entertained by the organisation.

• Everyone should be aware of the protected characteristics, and any kind of unfavourable behaviour will not be entertained.

• During the recruitment process, the company needs to hire employees based on their talents rather than providing favourable conditions to a certain group of students.

Exploitation

It can be defined as the act of treating an individual unfairly, to get benefitted from their work. Exploitation in workplaces refers to a specific situation when an employee is forced to work in certain sub-par conditions, or they are not provided with wages for a prolonged period. It is completely illegal when an employer denies the protections that he promised to their employeesBone(2020, p.1-16). The various types prevalent in the Flight Centre include sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, domestic servitude, and child labour. The employees tend to maximise their profits, by giving fewer payments to the employees, and exercise dictatorial behaviour against them. The employees are made to do more work, than actual standards which are completely illegal and do not abide by the governmental regulations concerning standards of working. The Employment Act 1996 promises the safety and health standards of the employees. A regulation is common in the US, which states that no employee can work more than 48 hours a week. These are also known as work time regulationsKaufman et al. (2021, p. 65-92).

Exploitation: Code of conduct

There are certain policies which need to follow in the flight centre to avoid exploitation. They include –

- The employees should not be forced to do overtime if they are paid the same.
- For every overtime, the employees should be provided with extra pay.
- There should be an increase in pay scale after a specific period.
- No worker should be forced to work against their will.
- There should be fixed working hours.
- The workers should not work more than 40 hours in 168 hours.
- The workers should be provided with more transportation in case of any delayed or night shifts.
- The pay scale should abide by the labour laws.
- The women involved in the work should be paid equally concerning their equal labour.
- The company should abide by overtime labour laws.

Corruption

It can be defined as are dishonest or fraudulent conduct committed by the individuals who are in power and mainly involves bribery. In many workplaces, it has been seen that employers demand a certain amount of money for promotion related activities and often force the employees to bribe them for gaining successAla'aZuhair Mansour and Popoola(2020, p.405). The employer's in-flight centres have been accused of bribery promising the employees certain benefits concerning their job role. These instances prove that corruption in workplaces has an impact would be organisation and brutally find out affects the mindset of the employees. The main tax of corruption in workplaces includes bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage influence peddling, graft and embezzlement. In the US, The Foreign Corrupt Practise Act was passed, which criminalised any sort of corrupt interaction with employers. This law has been able to prosecute the domestic and foreign companies who bribed officials to earn certain projectsArbatskaya and Mialon (2020, p. 126).

Corruption: Code of conduct

There are certain policies that need to be followed by the flight centre to avoid any corruption-related activity in the workplace. They include

- The behaviour of each employee should be ethical and they should not get indulged in any corruption-related activity.

- A proper corruption cell should be found in any organisation which will register any corruption cases if reported.

- The employee should not provide any monetary transactions which are not a part of the company operations.

- The accountants should keep proper cheques only monetary transactions and should not oversee disruptions in the calculations.

Dishonest and fraudulent behaviour

When we talk about fraud and dishonesty at the workplace we refer to the events where there has been the conduct of dishonest activity that has the potential to cause genuine loss and damage to any individual or an entity. Dishonest and fraudulent activity may refer to many issues such as identity, money, false documentation, property, unethical usage of information and many more. As per the ABC investigations, many staffs have reported various misconducts, dishonest, and fraudulent behaviour by Flight CentreBaten(2020, p. 1-13). The employees have accused Flight Centre of ripping off its customers and underpaying its employees. They have also reported that the company has been encouraging its travel consultants to gouge its customers by adding, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars at the time of booking to bring extra revenue to the travel agents as well as to the company. In addition to that, the company has also been accused of creating an alcohol-fuelled culture to make their employees work for unpaid overtime hours and with miserable pays by its employees. The employees have said that in the case of marking up flights, the company increases the amount of the tickets as much as they could get out of their customers. it is seen that the current base salary of travel consultants in Flight Centre is $33,500 which is about $4000 lower than the minimum wage of AustraliaNakitende et al.(2021, p.21-38). In this case, the rest salary of the travel consultants is compensated by the commissions they get through flight mark-ups.

Dishonest and fraudulent behaviour: Code of Conduct

There are certain policies which need to be followed by Flight Centre to avoid dishonest and fraudulent behaviour:

The company can undertake risk assessment which would enable them to identify various opportunities for theft, fraud, and dishonesty and put control over those areas to dissuade this.

- Lines of authority and responsibility needs to be established by the company.

- Positive workplace culture should be developed to encourage the employees to work effectively.

- The company needs to consider the salary of the employee and negotiate with them to offer them their desired salary.

- The company should train the employees to be aware of fraud and dishonest activities and give them the privilege to report about the fraud activities as soon as they identify one.

Whistleblower protection

The act of protecting the information of any organisation is known as whistleblower protection. This is an act that is proposed to combat corruption and various other illegal activities. The whistleblower protection act encourages and facilitates the disclosure of misconduct in both the private and public sectorsDeMott (2021, p.98). Considering various misdeeds, dishonest, and fraudulent activities within the company, the Flight Centre Travel Group has committed to establishing a culture where all of its employees are covered by this policy enabling them to be more conscious about the suspected and actual misconducts. The purpose behind the implication of this act into the organisational policy is to promote responsible disclosure of the wrongdoings that takes place within the organisation. However, potential wrongdoings do not necessarily mean to include personal work-related grievances. Personal work-related grievances should be raised via team leaders or HR who allows resolving these issues most effectivelyShostko(2020, p. 245). The issues which can be considered to take into account under the act of whistleblower protection are- dishonesty, fraud, workplace harassment, theft, bullying at the workplace, discrimination, bribery, corruption, manipulation, falsification, illegal activities, modern slavery, the unsafe practice of work, victimization, breach of code of conduct and other policies and many more.

Whistleblower protection: Code of Conduct

- In order to encourage the act of whistleblower protections, the Flight Centre should consider certain things. Such as

- The Board shall not encourage anyone to discourage from speaking up in the policy of whistleblower protection.

- The board will not tolerate anyone for being subject to any form of harm if they want to speak out.

- The Board is obligated to take disciplinary actions, or even terminate if anyone is proved to cause harm to anyone for speaking up.

- Everyone who is covered by this policy should be encouraged for reporting under this policy and should adhere to the standards of ethical behaviour.

Enforcement

The code of conduct has been established to protect the employees from experiencing wrongdoings and various policies have been designed that would satisfy the needs of the employees. The company is obligated to train and educate the employees before joining the company and all the policies, rules and regulations are to be explained to them to avoid confusion and provide them with a positive workplace environment and ensure them that they are safe in this company. The employees are needed to be made aware of the policies to avoid exploitation, corruption, dishonest and fraudulent behaviour and whistleblower protection. In addition, to make the employees of the various policies, they should also be aware of the consequences in case they are proved to break any rules and regulations of the company which is against the law. The code of conduct of exploitation, corruption, dishonest and fraudulent behaviour, and whistleblower protection have been discussed in this research paper which is to be adopted by the Flight Centre to create a better workplace environment and motivate the employees to work effectively.

References