11.07.2019 in Exploratory

Social and Ethical Responsibilities

Social responsibility is a term that refers to the idea that corporations and companies should contribute resource or wealth merely dedicated to improve the society as a whole. The corporations and companies should positively contribute at least some amount of resource or wealth to the general welfare of humanity. Those actions involved in benefiting the society are not profit generating in any way (Mallin, 2010).  Ethical responsibility can be understood through concepts of ethics. Ethics is a study that is concerned with good conduct of a person as well as good living. Through ethics, the difference between right and wrong can be depicted. Ethics encourages the construct of good life that is absolutely satisfying and according to moral behavior. Therefore ethical responsibility is defined as that responsibility undertaken by an organization to enhance good living standard for the organization itself as well as the whole society. Ethical responsibility is a special kind of responsibility since is not imposed by law but by the social and moral values of an organization (Larson, 2009).

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The BP oil well situation is a good example in which the theory of social and ethical responsibilities is exercised. BP is a company that imports oil, refine it, and sell the end products to customers at the pump. In the course of carrying out the business, PB interacts with a broad range of organizations and individuals, and these interactions bring about ethical obligations. The primary ethical obligations include dealing with suppliers in an honest manner, offering customers with the product that they are expecting, ensuring considerable levels of workplace safety and health, abiding by the environmental laws as well as the industry’s best practices, and making an honest attempt to make a long-term share value. The prevention of BP oil spill comprise of social responsibility as the risks due to oil spill affect the whole society. BP obtains its oil by deep-water drilling operations and the eventual negative effects of theses operations are borne by the whole society. The spill has brought about enormous negative effects on individuals not involved economically with the company and who are non-consenting third parties concerning bearing the risks. Therefore the company is responsible to do away with this social problem of oil spill (Scholastic, 2010).                  

Planning

Planning is the primary management function that involves formulation of detailed plans to accomplish most favorable balance of demands or needs with the available resources. It is true that the planning process identifies the objectives and goals to be accomplished, formulates strategies to accomplish them, creates or arranges the means involved, and implements, organizes, and monitors each and every step in their appropriate sequence. These are the elements of planning and they are significant with the organizational success within the near future Planning is perceived to be the key function of management since it starts a pattern that can then be followed by other activities. Planning is always beneficial to the organization provided it is effective, simple, realistic, and can be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure viability overtime (Campbell& Fainstein, 2003).

In an organization, effective planning is very important in a number of ways:  it helps an organization to identify a path for accomplishing the set goals; it helps in the identification of barriers or obstacles so that they are overcome and this way the organizational goals will be achieved; planning helps in minimizing wastage of resources and therefore enhances optimum possible exploitation of available resources; planning can as well enhance innovative and creative ideas in that some equipment can be improvised in case they are not affordable as can be seen in a plan; through planning all activities in an organization take place flawlessly since managers attain a sense of direction for the success of an organization. Effective planning should be flexible to allow for updating and changing; should be real so that the goals can be arrived at; and should be sustainable such that adequate time period is covered for performance gaps to be closed (Campbell& Fainstein, 2003).  

Planning has got its own limitations though they can not outweigh the advantages. The limitations of planning include incurring lots of expenses since it involves collection, analysis and evaluation of various information; false sense of security since managers may assume that as long as everything is done according to plan, it is satisfactory; in case of a change in the anticipated situations, the plans may be rendered ineffective; and it is time consuming since it involves collection, analysis and evaluation of various information (Archibugi, 2007).          

Organizing

Czarniawska (2008) defines organizing as a managerial function that is used to ensure availability of resources to accomplish a plan. Organizing takes three steps including task assignment, tasks grouped into departments, and departmental allocation of resources. So that organizing can be effective manager must bring together tasks and individuals. The fundamental elements of organizing include developing the organizational structure, acquiring and offering training to human resources, and setting up communication networks and patterns .

For an organization to be effective there must be an organizational structure. An organizational structure is a form of structure that determines the reporting structure and hierarchy in the organization. The organizational structures evolve with time. It is true that organizational structures in any given organization are often the cumulative result of very many changes over a period of many years just from the time a particular organization was established. The executives of an organization are always very active in trying to bring about a more lively organization. A more agile organization is attained if the executives consider the organizational structures into detail so ensure they are developed over time. Many changes need to be done to the organizational structure due to dynamic changes in the global environment for example increase in the number of clients, hence high demand for many products (Czarniawska, 2008).  

Providing training to organization’s human resources is a very important component of organizing process. Human resource training encompasses offering training to the existing employees to ensure that they are informed about the new business processes which come about in a short time interval. There is a possibility to shuffle employees between departments and therefore arises a need to train them. For efficiency in any given organization there must be reliable and constant communication in between different departments. Because of this communication networks and patterns should be set up and this is a very important element of organizing process. The databases of the whole organization in various departments should be interconnected for easy reference in any given situation (Czarniawska, 2008).   

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