Responsible and Ethical Business Practices of Microsoft
Critically consider the position of your organisation/Industry in relation to sustainable and responsible business practice, in order to do this you will need to (1) critically evaluate and justify the need for responsible business; (2) explain the logic and underpinning theory associated with ethical decision making (normative, behavioural and management ethics), including the organisations approach to ethics and sustainability; and (3) explain how the various stakeholders are engaged with and impacted by this position. You should use real-world examples of current practice (including scandals or examples of innovative practice) to illustrate the position of your organisation. You may find it useful to compare and contrast the position of your organisation to others who operate in a similar field. Your task is to illustrate your understanding and appreciation of the ethical theory and how this is applied in practice to further the agenda of responsible and sustainable business behaviour and to consider recommendations to develop good practice within your selected organisation. Your recommendations should be in some depth rather than surface level solutions such as increased recycling or donating more money to charity etc.
Example Structure and Word Count
Context and Scenario (Guidance: 700 words)
Provide an overview of your chosen organisation and their approach to responsible business. Critically reflect responsible and ethical business approaches in line with relevant theory.
Ethical Underpinning (Guidance 700 words)
Critically evaluate the ethical, social, and environmental impacts of your organisation and consider how the organisation might become more ethical and sustainable. How might the organisation decide what kind of role it should take in contributing to the wider / macro environment? This should be underpinned with ethical theory and reasoning.
The Role of Stakeholders and Proposed Solution(s) (Guidance: 700 words)
Identify and evaluate the role of stakeholders in your strategy. What does the organisation expect from its stakeholders in its new responsible and ethical approach? To what extent is the organisation innovative relative to sustainability within its organisational context? You might include examples of past attempts by other organisations to become more ethical and sustainable . What steps might your organisation take in relation to various stakeholders to become a more sustainable and responsible business.
The Resolution (Guidance: 400 words)
Describe the issues linked to the situation you have identified. Reflect on this outcome and consider how your organisation might respond to these challenges in the future.
Please ensure you research these 6 theories, write down their meaning and answer the questions asked, in preparation for the Seminar discussions this week.
Thank you.
The theories covered in the pre-reading are:
¨Ethical Egoism
¨Utilitarianism (two extracts)
¨Kantian Ethics
¨Rights Theories
¨Theories of Social Justice
¨Virtues Ethics
As you read each of these extracts consider:
¨how would this method of decision making work in my organisation?
¨How would this method help us work out what is right?
¨What problems might there be in applying this method?
¨Which stakeholders might object to using this theory to guide our decision-making?
RESPONSIBLE AND ETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICE
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Course and Section
Professor’s Name
March 11, 2023
Responsible and Ethical Business Practices of Microsoft
1.
A company that keeps its promises and offers a fair and just service will succeed because it will win the clients' trust who utilize its services or purchase its goods. This will gradually lead to the brand name having integrity and a good reputation, increasing profits for those who choose to use their service or purchase their supplied goods and services. The author will utilize Microsoft, a well-known technical organization, to highlight topics in business relating to the ethics and attitudes around managing a business. Although the company's mission and goals state that sustainability is a top priority, this fact must be more widely understood.
William Gates and Paul Allen established the multinational technology corporation Microsoft in 1975. In addition to operating in various industries, such as software development, hardware manufacturing, and cloud computing, the corporation has its corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Windows, the company's flagship product, is on over 1 billion devices globally. Additionally, the business creates and sells various software products, such as the Edge web browser, Teams, and the Office productivity suite. Microsoft has made significant investments in renewable energy with the aim of completely running its data centers on renewable energy by 2025. Also, the corporation has invested in new initiatives like constructing offshore wind farms and secured long-term power purchase agreements for renewable energy (Hall & Zachary, 2023).
Microsoft has made a tremendous effort to advance ethical and sustainable corporate practices, particularly regarding energy efficiency and renewable sources. The company's strategy has drawn criticism, particularly for the breadth and ambition of its environmental goals and its involvement in contentious fields like facial recognition technology. In the future, Microsoft might think about methods to respond to these critiques and advance ethical business practices, like raising the bar on its goals for reducing emissions and establishing stricter moral guidelines for its interactions with authorities and other organizations(Legal Compliance and Ethics | Microsoft Legal, no date).
The focus of normative ethics is finding and defending ethical standards and principles that should govern action. In order to ensure that AI is created and utilized in secure, dependable, and trustworthy ways, Microsoft has developed a set of ethical standards for the technology. The goal of making AI language as human as feasible is crucial as we advance into the modern day. Respect for human rights, fairness, transparency, and accountability are the foundation of these values. Microsoft is proving its commitment to ensuring that its technology is produced and utilized responsibly and ethically by establishing these standards.
Understanding why people act unethically and what may be done to stop it are two main goals of behavioral ethics. Microsoft has encouraged ethical behavior among its employees, including adopting a code of conduct that describes the company's expectations for ethical behavior and offering training on ethical decision-making. Being a member of the organization is a privilege since they look out for their employees, and their endeavors are admirable compared to other companies. The business has also implemented a "Speak Up" initiative encouraging staff members to voice ethical worries. Microsoft is developing a culture of responsibility and accountability by encouraging ethical behavior among its employees (Wenceslao, 2022).
Regarding management ethics, the organization worries about how leadership can encourage moral behavior. By establishing challenging goals to lower its carbon footprint and increase its spending on renewable energy, Microsoft has shown itself to be a pioneer in the sustainability movement. Although the goal is highly lofty, it inspires optimism that something can be accomplished with a coordinated effort. The business has also created a circular economy plan to cut waste and encourage material reuse. Microsoft is dedicated to ethical business practices that help society and the environment by taking the lead in sustainability(Peker, 2020).
Microsoft's approach to responsible business is generally based on moral standards and emphasizes encouraging ethical and sustainable behavior within and in the larger community. The company's dedication to ethical AI, sustainability, and responsible behavior shows that it understands corporate ethics' importance to long-term success and social welfare. Microsoft may act as a role model for other businesses looking to improve the world through ethical business by continuing to develop and promote these practices.
2.
With a business this size and a history of dominating the technology market, problems are inevitable. Since losing credibility is the main danger associated with these problems, they are far easier to fix when the facts are addressed in an organization with good intentions. The company's confidence will be restored thanks to these facts, which may be used as evidence to defend against any problem. Nevertheless, these problems may be resolved quickly because of Microsoft's management skills.
Microsoft has been under fire for moral transgressions such as monopolistic conduct, antitrust crimes, and patent infringement. The business has additionally been charged with enabling governments to violate human rights and conduct surveillance using its technologies. Nonetheless, Microsoft has started addressing these problems in recent years by establishing ethical standards for AI and encouraging responsible behavior among its staff. Microsoft's AI-powered technology is intended to protect the privacy of its users by seeking their consent before using any personal information.
Microsoft's services and products, utilized by billions of people worldwide, significantly impact society. Focusing in particular on students and recent graduates because they significantly increase the productivity and accessibility of the production of academic sources. The business is dedicated to advancing diversity and inclusion and has created programs to aid the growth and advancement of underrepresented groups in the technology industry. Nevertheless, Microsoft has also come under fire for problems with data security and privacy, such as the gathering and use of private information by its services and products.
Microsoft has received praise for its dedication to sustainability and has established challenging goals to lower its carbon footprint and increase its investment in renewable energy. Due to the industry's present rate of fossil fuel consumption, it is highly debatable if one can create an utterly carbon-free corporation. Sustainability is supposed to be the way of the future because it will benefit everyone on earth, which is true given pollution's effects on the ecosystem already. The business has also created a circular economy plan to cut waste and encourage material reuse. Microsoft, however, has a substantial environmental impact as a technological corporation due to the energy use of its data centers and the generation of electronic trash. The corporation generates less waste than other organizations that make tangible goods. However, their machinery and technologies are driven by electricity, and their electricity sources occasionally generate pollution.
Microsoft may become more ethical and sustainable by continuing to invest in renewable energy and lowering its carbon footprint. After all, what they have started is good. Although they primarily employ digital information, the corporation can also limit the environmental impact of its products and services by creating items with recyclable materials and decreasing energy use. Microsoft can also ensure that its technology is created and used in secure, dependable, and trustworthy ways, such as setting moral AI standards and encouraging ethical conduct among its staff.
Always promoting sustainable movement can aid in achieving their goal because the company is very influential and has several ways to promote its aim online. Collective activities can have a significant impact, such as turning the planet from one that is polluted to one that is sustainable for our future grandchildren and their generation. That allows it to impact the ecosystem on a larger scale. Microsoft can utilize this strategy to prioritize acts that have the biggest sound effects on the environment and society, as suggested by consequentialism, which holds that ethical decisions should be based on the consequences of those decisions.
Ethics theories like consequ...