Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Ethics and Social Responsibility
Nikki Wallenstein
PHL/320

                                              December 16, 2017

                                                Carolyn Harrison

Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

This paper is going to discuss a decision that was made in the year 2006 by Yahoo International Corporation. Terry Semel the then CEO of Yahoo announced an overwhelming restructuring of the corporation. Due to her decision, the company replaced its previous product- associated structure with one that is more focussed on the advertising customers and users. This involved bringing together a total of seven product units to form a group termed as Audience. In addition, some other seven units were merged to form the Advertisers and Publishers group. There was the formation of a unit called Technology which was to offer the resources for the newly created operating groups (Rogers et al, 2010). The main motive of this decision was to speed growth by leveraging on the economies of scale across the enormous collection of Yahoo’s advertisers and audience products.

Under Semel’s leadership, the team had actually thought that they had accurately described the duties and responsibilities under the newly introduced structure. However, decision making and implementation became stuck. The Audience demanded adaptable remedies that the Technology unit was unable to provide services at an affordable cost. Publishers and Advertisers required its individual set of specific products and therefore was always in competition with the Audience for limited developer time. In its feedback, Semel’s team developed new management levels and roles to harmonize all the units. After the change of strategy, the organization rapidly expanded to twelve layers. There was an increase in the overhead costs, reduction in product creation and a stalling in decisions.

The ethical implications are on the part of the CEO, employees in the affected department started developing a negative attitude towards the executives, some even thought that they were to be retrenched. Reorganization meant that there were people in certain units who were to lose their jobs for the sake of the company and other employees. In this regard, the executives ought to treat the staff with utmost respect as they were being regarded when they were joining the company. All the stakeholders ought to be involved in the decision-making process as this involves a crucial decision.

This experience demonstrates how inadequate attention in the process of decision making can affect the overall desired reorganization and hinder performance. In the end, it is clear that the value of a company is either no less or no more than its management and the aggregation of the decisions reached. The company’s capacities, structure, and assets are worthless and are dependent on the executives and management’s ability to come up with the fundamental decisions pertaining the organization. Moreover, they should ensure that regularly make the right decisions.

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