Business ethics and law Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Business ethics and law - Assignment Example There are many ethical dilemmas that face persons dealing in sales. These dilemmas arise from interaction with individuals and agencies both within and from outside the organization. Sales personnel are prone to facing more ethical conflicts than individuals dealing in other lines of business. These persons are not as closely supervised as other workers and they play a big role in raising income for the organization. This paper seeks to document the pressures that a sales representative working for a company that provides technical support to customers may face. The paper will delve into the dilemma the individual will be facing when the organization does not hit its first and second quarter profits consecutively. The sales representative is paid on commission, and the company has not met its quarterly expectations for the first and second quarters. This translates to a fall in the company’s revenue. As an employee of the company, he or she has the duty to execute his responsi bilities with diligence and resilience as his effort is needed to realize the company’s overall targeted performance (Weiss 213). When the company is not realizing its targets, it impacts on its competitive capacity against its rival companies. Continued failure to realize targets will drive the company to making decisions on adjusting salaries and wages to its personnel or retrenching some. The sales representative is under pressure from his duty to the company to help realize its target. The sales representative has two young children whom he or she supports from the income he or she gets from working for the sales company. The individual is just but one of thousands of people employed by the company and who most probably also survive on the salaries and wages they get from the company. Having not made any sales for a while, the sales representative is probably going without some things that he or she needs because affordability is going down with the lack or reduction of i ncome. The individual and probably the others working for the company have perhaps had to cut on certain expenditures so as to make ends meet with the way things are going in the company. Family needs are a profound source of pressure in the situation facing the sales representative. 500 Company has approached the representative to supply them with 3,000 new computers. The company stands the risk to incur high costs if they do not get the computers. What does this mean for the individual and 500 Company? The individual has the human obligation to see to it that the company does not incur the costs when he or she can help. There are people who work for the company just like he or she and many others work for their company. Incurred costs in 500 Company will perhaps translate to poor stock price and or reduced salaries and wages for its workers further affecting other innocent people who depend on these workers (Weiss 215). It will also mean that 500 Company will do poorly in its perf ormance relative to its competitors. The sales representative will feel obligated to lend a hand to avoid such a scenario from happening. 500 Company needs all the 3,000 computers supplied in two months’ time. The sales representative has 1,000 new computers ready in the warehouse. The deficit of 2,000 new computers will need to be ordered from the manufacturer. Whereas the individual knows that it would take the manufacture two months to get the 2,000 new computers ready for 500 Company, he or she also knows that the manufacturer is struggling with too many orders already. The individual has the option of closing the deal with 500 Company and deliver the 1,000new computers available and order the rest from the manufacturer. How will closing the deal with 500 Company impact on the representative’s company? He or she will enable his or her company to meet its third quarter’s target and improve its stock price. What will it mean for the representative? The represe ntative will earn a good commission from the deal and he, or she

Why might one argue that the use of labour is the main component of a Coursework

Why might one argue that the use of labour is the main component of a firm's profit strategy - Coursework Example Human capital advantage is the ability to get exceptional human talent into the firm. The human advantage is achieved through combination of processes such as innovation, learning and cooperation. It is important to develop employees and teams in order to create a firm that is able to learn within and out of industry cycles. The supporters of Resource based view argue that human labour are resources that offer above normal returns and not assets bought and traded. This is because physical assets are usually purchased and are available in the market, therefore, competing firms having the free discretion to acquire the assets and be at par (Bowman 2003). The resources that offer competitive advantage are the ones that are not easy to duplicate. Human resources have specialized skills or talents that are embedded in the routines of a particular firm. These resources are difficult to duplicate or export from one firm to another. Thus, most firms have used human labour as the strategy for improvement in their profits and competitive advantage. Barney and Porter illustrate how it is hard to duplicate human labour strategy by saying that even if one firm was to steal researchers from one company to theirs, they will not reap the maximum benefits from these scientists because the environment and business strategies differ. Labour as the Main Component of a Firm’s Profit Strategy In business organizations, both the undertakings and behaviours those of value to the firms’ routines, social structure, and cultures of the firm, and directing and using these resources in combination with other inputs, are all the activities done by employees in the firm. This means that firms profits comes from the activities of employees’ labour that transforms other inputs into goods and services. This leads the proponents of resource based view to conclude that resources that produce more profits are human resources than inert or physical resources. RBV also state tha t in order to get maximum output from the human resource, a strategy must be put forward to achieve this. They refer this as the creation of the resource. An example of this is a producer who uses a new invention before it is adopted by other firms, will sell more than his competitors and gets surplus profits. RBV argues that it is the manipulation or use of physical assets by the workers that are a source of profits. The assets as stated earlier, are available and each firm is free to acquire them. However, the main constraint is their price. They are not taken as a resource in resource based view because they are not unique. However, labour that is employed is unique and taken as the most crucial resource. If the prices of these assets necessary for production of commodities were to go down, then individuals or groups would take over scale production without requiring to be employed by the capitalists. An example is that if the prices of car parts were within the reach of the mass es, then capitalists would abandon this industry (Bowman, 2003). The reasoning behind this is that the financial power is what enables capitalists to purchase physical assets and employ talented and skilled workers to produce commodities for them at a profit. The assets are not unique but the unique factor that enables them to get profits is the use of human resource or labour. In addition to labour, RBV also categorises inert inputs such as special equipments as resources. However, these resources are just used in some stage of production and moreover they are also produced by human labour. RBV supporters argue that if the workers are used to create resources for the firm, then the current deployment of the resource is greater than the price originally