Week Three.

First and foremost , I would like to say that the first time that I have really "touch" ethics issue is during my very semester four , while I'm taking my "Managing people in the service industry" subject , which is taught by Dr.Rod . 

I started making some research as my lecturer mentioned in the class that an ethical behaviour is so important when it comes to decision making, no matter in both simple or complex situation. According to the information that I've surf on net, I found out that in general, work ethics can be defined as a group of moral principles, standards of behaviour, or set of values regarding proper conduct in the workplace.  

For my personal opinion, after the first class conducted by my lecturer during the "Contemporary Ethics and Corporate Citizenship" subject, I have a deeper understanding of Ethics as well.

"Ethics is about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that will cost more that we want to pay”, as stated by The Josephson Institute of Ethics.

In my personal opinion, it's true that we might face various type of situation in the future which is unpredictable and all the temptation may challenge our own standard of ethics from doing the right thing during decision making process.  It could be small issue which doesn’t generate much impact to the parties involved such as the daily routine happened in our daily life but what if it's one of the decision making associated with a bigger scale of company?

A simple decision made could generate a large impact to the society, as the level of impact increases, the number and type of parties involved do also varies.

Hereby, I would like to share a big issue in Malaysia which is the Lynas project, which located in Kuantan.

Here is the brief explanation upon the issue stated above:

The Lynas Advance Materials Plant (LAMP) has been built near Kuantan, Malaysia. It has been chosen due to the factor that all the resources which are required to run the plant are lower than the amount of cost which is originally approved in Western Australia. Furthermore, a 12-year tax exemption is provided by the Malaysian government granted by the company “pioneer” status.

This big action has generated a huge response due to the local community in Malaysia especially the residence living nearby the area which is involved in the Lynas Project. As we can see the case of The Chernobyl disaster, the unusual level of radiation has influence the whole human life-cycle, in a long-term duration.

In the perspective of science, the radiation level of Lynas may generate a huge negative impact towards the whole life cycle involving the human being, marine life in the river as well. For example, there will be abnormal babies and dead marine lives due to the unusual radiation level.

Mitsubishi set up a polluting rare earth processing plant in Bukit Merah in Perak. It has resulted to the deformities in babies and great number of pre-matired deaths nearby that area. The plant had been shutdown but somehow , untill today its toxix radioactive waste is still scattered in unknown illegal dumps in the surrounding areas posing a s serious healt hazard to unsuspecting locals.

The reason why I’m bringing out this case study is that this is one of the unethical decision made by the parties involved due to my personal opinion, where the government has generated a large negative impact towards the whole society without paying corporate social responsibility.

In a smaller scale of perspective in the workplace, the facilities provided by the company is purposely for employees convenience for a better outcome , there are facilities such as printing machine and telephone is hard to be check by the company whether that particular employee is abusing the company facility. So this comes to the employee’s personal responsibility of being ethical while using the company facilities in the right way.

But somehow, Ms.Diana has thrown a question during the class that how if a particular party is trying to corrupt me from doing something unethical in a situation by using a value of RM1000? The answer might be no and how if it is a big amount of RM1 billion?

There’s no standard norm of ethical behaviour but from what I have observe is that throughout ethics , it teaches ourselves from being able to set our own set of ethical value upon doing what is right or wrong during some hard situation. Also, an ethical value ensures us from minimizing the negative impact while doing several decisions making towards the party involved.

Also, I would like to share a personal experience which is one of the unethical decisions making that I have made.

It was a Sunday while I was taking KTM (One of the Public Transport in Kuala Lumpur) , the ticketing system is that customer have to either purchase a ticket from the counter or by charge by using Touch n Go , and I’m planning to depart from Bandar Tasik Selatan Station to Mid Valley Station , as I heard from my friend that Bandar Tasik Selatan usually doesn’t check ticket from the people which exit from the station and I was so determined as the moment I enter the Bandar Tasik Selatan Station as there are no people standing behind the checking machine.

 So on the way back from Mid Valley Station I have made an unethical decision that I decided to enter the station without buying the ticket and scanning the Touch n Go, but the moment I reach Bandar Tasik Selatan, it was so unlucky there’s a staff standing behind the machine as well.

It was a bad experience that I’ve been caught as the police ask me to scan the Touch n Go card and my card has been blocked and freezed as I have offended the public transportation law and I am asked to go to KL central to ask the staff there to unblock my card.  It caused me much inconvenience as I supposed to reach home much earlier but it’s lucky to be told that I don’t have to pay any penalty due to the action that I have made.

After this incident , I’m so regret that I’ve made such an action due to my own greedy intention , and I promise myself that I would never make such action anymore.

Also, after having this class my self-awareness upon the importance of ethic value has becoming more and more significant which it could be even applied in my daily routine.