ESSAY PREPARATION: ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM 2

Introduction

According to Blok (2017), ethics can be broadly defined as the moral guidelines that
govern how people behave or how an activity is conducted. Ethics is closely related to morality
and is founded based on strong principles that dictate personal behavior. These codes of morals
and principles are essential as they aim to provide answers on what is right and what is wrong,
what constitutes a vice or a virtue, and what is and what is not. They form the basis of acceptable
behavior between individuals. It is worth noting that morality's concept may differ between
different classes of people depending on their beliefs and convictions. However, there are basic
general principles that constitute ethical behavior that is universally accepted.
A different school of thought has classified ethics into different classes. However, the
major ethical branches are applied ethics, normative ethics, descriptive ethics, and meta-ethics.
Davies (2017) states that, irrespective of the branch of ethics, the objective is the same. Ethical
behavior aims to ensure that there is decorum and fairness when different individuals are dealing
with each other. Ethics as a subject can be identified as an arm of philosophy. However, ethics is
applied across different disciplines ranging from business setups to politics and social
interactions.
The following study aims at identifying and discussing a key contemporary ethics issue
of McDonald's Chief Executive Officer, CEO, engaging in a relationship with employees within
the broad scope of the concept of ethics. The study will base the foundations of the arguments on
business ethics. For this study, the paper will focus on unethical behavior ranging from sexual
harassment to discrimination by the then McDonald's CEO in November 2019 that eventually led
to the CEO being sacked.

ESSAY PREPARATION: ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM 3
In business ethics, professionalism is one of the core values. According to Pinto-Garay
(2019), when conducting business and company operations, individuals must follow a code of
conduct based on ethical values and principles. This code of conduct binds them, and their
actions must be in line with the same. Professionalism is one of the core values of ethical
business behavior, and it forms the basis upon which professionals interact and conduct their
business. According to Lehman et al. (2019), professionalism constitutes the distinct qualities
that a professional individual exhibits. These are qualities such as respect, competency in what
they do, honesty in their undertakings, respect for colleagues, and confidentiality in business
matters.
Definition of the phenomenon of interest
The area of interest in this case study involves a case of a MacDonald's CEO involved in
a sexual relationship with employees of the company back in 2019. Additionally, there were
allegations of discrimination. Over the years, most top-level managers have found themselves in
macky situations due to relationships with their employees. In this particular case involving
MacDonald Company, unethical behavior and lack of professionalism were by the company's top
executive officer.
Opportunities and threats created.
Darwish and Abdeldayem (2019) state that, unethical behavior in business environments
often creates opportunities and threats. However, the threats outweigh the opportunities. The
presence of opportunities acts as an incentive to the unethical individual, while the consequence
of this action becomes the company's threat. In the case of MacDonald’s chief executive officer,
the threats include the lawsuits laid against him as well as the imminent death of his career.

ESSAY PREPARATION: ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM 4

Impacts of the issue on the individual and the company
As a consequence of the unethical behavior, the CEO is still facing a myriad of legal
suits. Legally, the law protects from sexual harassment, and in the event, an individual is
sexually harassed, they have a legal recourse where the party involved is held into account.
However, it is important to understand that there is a distinction between morality and law.
According to Purwanto et al. (2019), laws are enforceable, and action can be immoral but legal.
In the CEO's case, he is still facing multiple charges where many women came out to claim to
have been sexually harassed by him. From this, it is evident that his career went downward
spiral, and due to the position that he had been entrusted with, no company