American Red Cross Ethical Dilemmas

The American Red Cross has faced multiple ethical dilemmas associated with their operations. Since their goal is to provide aid in emergency situations and they receive donations for that aid, their organization and many like it, are held to higher standards in the public eye. Individuals expect them to do the right thing and abide by their code of ethics. Many believe that organizations which are dedicated to helping others are more inclined to do the right thing always and be free of ethical dilemmas. But many times organizations can lose sight of their own internal operations because they are too busy focusing on the external mission.

For the American Red Cross, their organization was faced with many changes that caused the organization

to face ethical issues. Some of those changes or lack of, which crippled the organizations ethical awareness were, frequent turnovers at the executive level (in the first decade of the twenty-first century caused the firm to have seven different permanent or acting heads) weakening the organizations ability to carry out its federal mandate, oversized board of directors with wrong focus for the firm, years of underinvestment in telecommunications, technology and other infrastructure keeping the firm from its mission (Ferrell, Ferrell, & Fraedich, 2010). With so many changes in leadership and leadership styles the ARC was not able to be consistent with their core values which can cause standard business practices to be inconsistent as well.
Although no organization can totally guarantee they will always do the right thing, they can put measures in place which assists them and shows the external customer their goal is to do the right thing always. In order to turn their operations around and begin to operate under their code of ethics, the organization needs to have consistency at the top level. Since June 2008, they have maintained consistency in their leadership by appointing Gail McGovern as the President and CEO (American Red Cross, 2012). This consistent leadership provides the organization the ability to standardize their practices regarding where relief funds are used creating a relationship with the stakeholders, how they organization operates, open lines of communication both internally and externally, incorporate technology into their business practices in order to monitor receiving and distributing funds, and follow structured set of guiding principles. By enhancing their business operations and keeping processes standardized gives them the ability to fix many of their issues they have encountered in the past.