Integration of Faith: Ethical issues

Integration of Faith: Ethical issues. Social and ethical issues are present in many businesses around the world. While some businesses find ways to solve the ethical and social issues facing them, others struggle with ethical issues. Failure to solve the ethical problems effectively and on time often leads to bigger problems including legal suits and bad reputation. One multinational company that has encountered ethical issues in the recent past is the UBS. UBS is one of the largest banking institutions in the world (Rothaermel, 2016). The bank is located in Swiss and undertakes global business activities. Multinational businesses have significant impact in the economies of the home country and also in foreign countries. The UBS’s unethical business ventures goes against Christian teachings.

A company’s desire to become a global giant can lead to possible unethical behavior. For instance, UBS helped wealthy American citizens to hide billions of dollars in the bank to evade taxes.  As Rothaermel (2016) notes in chapter three of his book Strategic Management, a company is affected by a wide range of factors including political, economic and legal factors. These factors have both domestic and global implications. Government bodies can have significant influence on a company. For instance, the United States’ government requested that the Swiss banking institution release names of United States’ citizens suspected to be tax evaders.

Integration of Faith

Failure to release the names would cost the institution its United States’ banking license. Initially, the banking institution declined to release the names of the suspected tax evaders arguing that the country’s banking laws and regulations prohibits them from releasing their customer’s confidential information.  However, after the U.S. government threatened to revoke UBS’s U.S. banking license, the institution released names of individuals thought to have evaded taxes.

While a multinational firm has a role to play in cases where government regulations across countries are in conflict, individual employees have a responsibility to their employers and to their governments when there is a conflict. In the UBS scenario, the institution was involved in a conflict because the U.S. government wanted the institution to release names of American citizens who were evading taxes.