Maintaining a positive image is crucial for an organization, otherwise their potential revenue could be affected. A person has a right when that person is entitled to act in a certain way or is entitled to have others act in a certain way toward him or her ( ).
All employees of the U.S. Postal Service are expected to follow a certain code of ethics, and at the same time the industry is governed by laws under Postal Reform. Social pressure has a major influence on the Postal Service considering the fact that they provide a service to every residence and business within the United States and provide to the means to mail something to any place in the world. Having that large of a customer base, to maintain a positive image to the public the personal decisions of employees should follow the organization’s code of ethics.
The United States Postal Service (USPS), with well over 600,000 employees delivers over 158 billion pieces of mail to over 152 million addresses six days a week in every state, city, and town in the United States and it’s territories. Generating more than 67 billion dollars in revenue in 2013, USPS is the foundation of the more than $1 trillion mailing industry which is responsible for over 8 million jobs worldwide. According to the United States Postal Service (2014), “the Postal Service demands an unwavering commitment to strong ethical values and principled decision making from all of its employees. All postal employees are required to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain. To ensure that every citizen can have complete confidence in the integrity of the federal government, each federal employee, including each postal employee, must respect and adhere to the principles of ethical conduct set forth in the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch” (Commitment to Ethics).
The Essay on Ethical dilemmas and behavior simulations help employees to make more ethical decisions
Ethical dilemmas and behavior simulations help employees to make more ethical decisions. The first step in achieving this goal is to set up a code of ethics for your organization and give each employee a copy. The code of ethics should review what is expected of each employee and provide examples and what to do in each situation. “A formal code of ethics can help you and your employees make ...
The security and safety of the mail can be an ethical issue for the organization, the number of times each piece of mail changes hands definitely provides plenty of potential opportunities for theft or damage to occur. Confidential documents and other items containing personal information could lead to identity theft if they were allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Considering the volume of mail USPS deals with mistakes will happen, it is up to the employees to correct the mistake as soon it is discovered, for example mail sent to the wrong place should be rerouted to the correct place as soon as possible for expedited service. It would be unethical to ignore the obvious mistake by letting the mail continue on the wrong path for someone else to deal with. This delays the mail from getting to the appropriate destination which can damage the customer’s faith in the quality of service provided by the Postal Service and the customer could choose to do business with a competitor of USPS for their shipping needs in the future.
Doing what is right may not necessarily be the easiest course of action, but ensuring customers are satisfied is crucial to retaining revenue. There has been a number of delivery employees that have been discovered throwing mail in the garbage instead of delivering it like they are paid to do, this is highly unethical and extremely ignorant for anyone guilty of such practices. People tend to notice when they do not receive mail, especially mail they are expecting, some opinions would consider this stealing even though the guilty party did not keep the mail for themselves. Throwing the mail away can be thought of as stealing because it robs the customer of the service USPS provides, and because the employee is collecting a paycheck for a job that was not performed.
The Essay on Comparison Between E Mail And Postal Service
New technologies are allowing us to do things faster, easier, and more efficiently than ever before. Almost every new innovation in technology improves the speed and productivity of any task at hand. Electronic mail (E-mail) is possibly one of the greatest things to happen to the world. Despite this, there are people who find to many mistakes in using either E-mail or conventional mail. To help ...
Theft is not only unethical but is illegal as well, unfortunately discovering or preventing every incident is impossible. If an employee has knowledge of a coworker stealing they have to make an ethical decision to either expose their coworker to the proper authorities pertaining to this situation, ignoring what they witnessed hoping someone else will catch them, or possibly approaching the employee in effort to convince them to return what was stolen to avoid the implications that come from such an act of unethical and illegal behavior.
The personal decisions of an employee greatly affect the ethical reputation of the organization where they work, once an organization gains a reputation for being unethical, the organization will consequently suffer a loss of business from it’s consumers. Loss of business will result in a drop of production needs, which will ultimately lead to less employees needed and the loss of jobs available. The vitality of the nation’s economy is dependent on organizations thriving and producing jobs for the growing population, none of which is possible without understanding the importance of the ethical decisions of each individual and the impact it has on an organization.
References
The United States Postal Service. (2014).
Retrieved from http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/legal/welcome.htm Velasquez, M. G. ().
Business ethics: Concepts and cases, (14th ed.).
Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.
