VALUE SYSTEMS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: SERVICE ORIENTED COMPANIES

Abstract

Service Oriented Companies are finding a lot these days, as these companies don’t take any risks by investing on a product, they help Product Oriented Companies in providing valuable experienced resources, by the best solutions, recommendations in various streams (technologies/tools/process). These contractors (Employees of Service Oriented Companies) are not employees of vendors/clients (Employees of Product Oriented Companies), but instead assist/help them with the best solutions around technologies/tools/processes as vendors/clients do not have enough resources or need help for a short duration of the project. In this paper I will be explaining on what exactly Service Oriented Companies are, what they do, the parties involved, their rights, their responsibilities, ethical/legal, factual, conceptual issues of the case, social constraints, primary ethical dilemma, possible courses of action, role that information technology plays on special circumstance, strengths, weaknesses, pros and cons of the actions, context and scenario of the case, which course of action I would choose, why did I choose it, provide my own opinions based on ethical philosophy, ethical decision-making framework, demonstrate and explain how the pros of my solution outweigh the cons and will provide supporting resources and so on. Here in this case, we will emphasize more on the ethical issues triggered within the Organization that I have experienced, rather than one particular Organization’s name.

Product Oriented Companies Vs. Service Oriented Companies

Product Oriented Companies are involved in delivering a product to customers. It can be a hardware or software or combination of both. These companies have different people working in different teams for different projects. When the duration of project is short, need someone experienced to assist them in some tool/application/process, they are unfamiliar of, these Product Based Companies work with Service Based Companies to get the required/necessary help. Service Based Companies provide the right resources (who is experienced for the vendor/client requirement) to the Product Based Companies.

Here come the actual problems,

Are these people really talented and experienced?
Do they fulfill Client/Vendor’s requirements?
Do they stay until the requirement is completed or in other words, do they complete the requirement completely?
Are Service Oriented Company’s employees are being paid enough?
Is the process in Service Oriented Companies make their employees happy, by providing the basic perks to their employees? And so on.

These Service Oriented Companies often change their employees from one client to another for higher pays, while replacing the old with someone new, which makes the project deadline to extend, sometimes these replaced ones are not much experienced about the required tools/technologies/process and yet were replaced by providing misinformation to the clients, which is the main Ethical Issue for a Product Oriented Companies. The Service Oriented Companies pay their employees 1x, charge the clients/vendors with 5x to 10x and also these employees have to face many ethical issues like improper deadlines, harassment and so on. Few examples of Service Oriented Companies include Capgemini America, Wipro, Tata Consulting Services, Cognizant Technology Solutions and so on.

Terminologies in IT industry for Employees

As we progress through, defining the case study, we will be discussing more about the Stakeholders / Customers (hereby referred as “Clients”), Middle-Layers / Implementation Partners / Employers (referred as Vendors) and Employees as involved parties. Considering the nature of business, they operate in, it is extremely important for the Clients to communicate their rights in safeguarding and creating a dynamic environment for the Contract based employees. Though we don’t see this as an industry-wide practice in revealing estimated project budget and delivery timelines directly with Contract Employees, this is where Vendors chime in and act as a bridge to create transparent interface and avoid any compliance / regulatory risks with their employees working on Clients Projects. Employees, on the other hand hold the rights to expect respectful and resourceful environment for them to work. In our scenario, we can identify the gaps with the Vendors in placing guardrails to protect the diversified workforce from different workplace ethical issues.

Let’s analyze the responsibilities scoped individually for each entity,

Clients – Provide required information about standards and resources to complete a task and guidelines to Vendors and Contract employees to ensure Ethical Issues are being monitored and addressed appropriately within their scope.

Vendors – Provide a transparent environment and protect employees from work / management related issues and educate them about their rights to report an incident during its early phases.

Employees – Safe work environment and decent wages for the work they do. Be knowledgeful about the practices in identifying and reporting Ethical issues in the work environment.

Issues faced by Service Oriented Employees

Vendors being the middle layer, have to understand the legal complications in case of compromise in ethical standards. In our scenario, we will be discussing more on the moral conduct and practices around ethics that have been compromised, how these issues impact the employee morale and how are we resolving them.

Sometimes the employees are moved to different organizations to get more pay what the existing client is paying to the vendors. This can be because of more demand or less resources availability on that technology. Sometimes the vendors lie to the clients and place the employees at client location.

Employees are pushed to clients by vendors as highly skilled and talented even the least experienced or inexperienced employees. As a result of this, the clients expect a lot from these employees and the upper management of vendors puts some pressure on employees to make them work on a particular task not caring for the learning time. This builds pressure as these employees were not even provide enough time, enough resources to learn and not much facilities to take care of them in terms of work and life.

When fellow employees are inexperienced and as a team the other employees have to train them, employees wouldn’t show much interest as they think that they didn’t sign up for this, but will act as if they are helping to maintain good relationship with higher management.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth”. Employees get requirements from vendors higher management and also from client management. Employees tend to lose the timelines as working on both the tasks and also sometimes gets lost with two different ideas. This all gives a mental pressure to employees.

I was working as an employee for a vendor providing my valuable efforts, time and knowledge to a client. I was in all these situations and am aware of them. There were certainly times I had to deal with neuroticism, I heard few situations where employees found mistreatment, misbehavior and so on. The people, mostly working in these companies are brought for lower wages, whose educational levels are very low and maturity levels are very very low. Especially these people are brought from other countries for very low cost. The solution would be to train them with Professional Values, Ethical Behavior and Organizational Behavior subjects. Not everyone in the vendor company behaves this way, there are few people who really do good jobs too. But an education to everyone will keep the employees safe and making the organization the best.

Ethical Dilemma Issue

The issue that I would be picking would be Ethical Dilemma and that I will be pointing out to “Cajoling/Coaxing” in Service based companies. These raised to popular now-a-days as many service-based companies tend to attract various clients by showing their employees that aren’t skilled in the required role or show someone and give someone (employees) and later promise false dates of delivery by saying that the product can be delivered by pressuring their employees by not providing enough support. This is a serious concern to both the client and employees of their own companies as pressures build up in employees while dealing the clients expectations and false delivery dates resulting in employees leaving the companies.

This can be dealt by considering the following actions:

Training the employees in necessary required skills before the requirement
Providing support with necessary skilled employees or Trainer on the required skills
Projecting the skilled employee to client and taking care of the rest of the project under the supervision of skilled lead
Not making false promises to the client for project deliveries
Actions and Decisions in the business process should more concentrate on human elements than considering as a money-making process.

Moral predicaments have dependably accompanied every progression in Information Technology. While development keeps on advancing, so do the choices Vendors and Clients must face. Only a couple of years back, programming theft was an issue for some organizations, anyway that is substantially less the case today. In the recent years, new ethical issues in delivering products have developed, similar to how client information ought to be secured, and how man-made consciousness ought to be utilized in a manner that fulfills, the law, however client’s desires. Now and again, development in handling projects have a method for expelling moral quandaries corporates confronted only a couple of years sooner. Notwithstanding, it has turned out to be considerably less of an issue for organizations. Since quality from pilfered programming costs organizations almost billions of dollars every year, it bodes well monetarily to utilize authorized management. Indeed, with appropriate supervision the board, organizations can expand their share of benefits.

Lately, the moral issues in companies have been confounded considerably further with the ascent of poor management and unethical attitude towards employees. Regardless of whether you have the information sponsored up, the time – and cost – of reestablishing your system might be more than the expense of paying the payoff. Vendors and Clients who pay the payment do as such realizing that it will urge the employees to do something very similar to another association.

In 2016, the ride-sharing administration Uber paid a $100,000 payment to employees who had gotten to the individual information of 57 million individuals, including data about Uber drivers and their clients. The moral and legitimate difficulty the organization evaded was whether to tell the open what had occurred. It wasn’t until an adjustment in the executives in 2017 that the payoff installment was uncovered. The outcome was a congressional hearing and a record-breaking fine of $148 million.

In different cases, the difficulties encompassing corporate ethics and morals spin around how it is customized. Human inclinations and even preferences can influence how the product carries on. In one occasion, a process utilized by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to help decide parole qualification of detainees demonstrated a particular inclination for Caucasian men over African-American and Hispanic men. The partiality was composed into the product by the employees.

How each course of action will benefit the Organization

These courses of action are consequential as consequentialism is a moral hypothesis that judges whether something is directly by what its results are. For example, a great many people would concur that misleading isn’t right. However, on the off chance that misleading would help spare an individual’s life, consequentialism says it’s the correct activity.

Expository and Creative Skills

The best administration specialists can climb even the steepest expectation to absorb information rapidly. They can come into another organization, accumulate data, survey the issue and offer an answer; they might be enlisted to execute the arrangement too. Accordingly, they have breathtaking diagnostic and critical thinking aptitudes. An organization that contracts an expert might search for an out-of-the-case arrangement, so specialists should show inventiveness during the critical thinking process. Top specialists give cures that are both innovative and commonsense.

Correspondence and People Skills

Since there might be inner hatred aimed at experts who come in as contracted weapon issue solvers, the executive’s specialists must have amazing relationship building abilities. Great advisors ought to have the option to build up a confiding in association with workers rapidly and effectively.

Setup a shadow

Someone who is new to the workforce probably won’t comprehend what sort of employment would be a decent counterpart for their range of abilities and interests. On the off chance that you are contracting in various divisions, it is frequently worth enabling a contender to invest energy in a few zones so as to see which position may be a solid match. During the activity shadow, urge the candidate to pose inquiries and watch ordinary errands. A short time later, follow up to perceive how they felt about the experience. It is additionally essential to request input from the individual being shadowed so as to get their impression of the applicant.

Mentoring employee

Occupations are regularly frightening. Numerous unpracticed staffs will, undoubtedly, have a few difficulties to defeat with respect to building working environment connections and incorporating into another condition. On the off chance that they have never needed to do this, it will be a lot harder for them than for someone who has involvement in changing occupations.

Action	Pros	Cons
Having Creative skills	If everything goes right, you get high client satisfaction	Additional cost to bad work while trying for new things
People skills	You can effectively manage your environment	Speaking moreover much marks you disclose more
Set up a shadow	Makes you feel better as you can get some inputs from your shadow about the performance of your employee	You are making your employee more dependent
Mentoring employee	Additional benefits to your company	Too much motivation may lead to frustration of employee

Choosing A Course of Action

The Course of Action that I will be pointing out is “Actions and Decisions in the business process should more concentrate on human elements than considering as a money-making process” in Service based companies.

Values at work

Questions that we need to ask ourselves and values that we need to bring into the organization are:

Ethical decision-making: Are the choices employees make animated by values or expediency?
Organizational justice: Are senior executives and high performers held to the same standards of conduct as other employees?
Freedom of expression: Do employees talk up and enthusiastically contribute and exchange ideas?

Since this action is a powerful one and can address many situations and would be more suitable to most of the companies that are outside, I would like to choose this Course of Action.

This can also be caused because of the following issues:

The conventional corporate view – in which the interests of the organization exceed singular worker needs – has fortunately turned into a relic of the past. In my training work, I’ve seen a noteworthy move, with many disregarding the mentality that a representative is some way or another effectively superfluous and replaceable.

Turnover is costly, yet it’s not simply the expense of supplanting an employee that is an issue here. As Josh Bersin, central and author of Bersin by Deloitte, brings up, the genuine estimation of employees just increments after some time. “We have to remember that people are what we call an ‘appreciating asset” he clarifies. The longer the employees stay with an organization the more production the companies/employers get –

employees learn the systems,
employees learn the products, and
organizations learn how to work together

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

The existing employees with less skilled or the new employees with no skills gets the necessary support thus reducing stress and so meets the client’s expectations and better understands the project
By not making false promises the employee can give the time estimation for the project deliverables thus the vendors can talk to the clients on the same
Businesses by being more human side can broaden more projects thus giving chances for more employees and even people outside tend to work more in such environments

Weaknesses:

The amount spent on employees may go waste if the employees go seek another employer after making them trained on specific skills. This can occur either because the current employer is not good or new employer attracts him with more money for the same requirement.
The skilled employee can expect more salary as he takes lead of the project. As more service-based companies look for money instead of human values, this is little hard situation to get hold of the existing employees

Conclusion

I conclude that this case can be resolved by vendors fairly treating their employees in professional ways, providing them with the needs and support so work-life can be balanced, being open to client on the resource so no more pressure is added to employees, gathering clear requirements of the project and agreeing upon with client to make employees work on that specific issue, giving more preference to human values and providing them with enough moral and technical support can help the company grow in terms of ethically, making more business with various clients and incoming huge profits and various skilled employees across.

This can ideally solve out the following issues: