American Red Cross Ethical Issues

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The American Red Cross is an independent organization, supported by public financial donations and volunteerism. Its mission is to “Provide relief to disasters and help people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies” (Thorne, 2014 p. 502).
The key facts and critical issues presented in this case are many. Organizational and leadership turmoil are at the top. There has been a high turnover of top executives. The oversized board of directors is blamed. Per Paul C. Light a professor of public service at New York University “The board seems to think it is a hiring and firing agency, and does not see its role as building a strong Red Cross” (Thorne, 2014 p.503). There have been as many as seven different permanent or acting heads, …show more content…

After the September 11 attacks on New York City, the ARC was widely criticized for its response. The criticisms began the next day of the incident. The Virginia –based command center known as the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) had, for more than a day afterward, failed to activate the specialized teams normally sent out after a plane crash or similar disaster. The ARC was also criticized for its mismanagement of the financial donations from thousands of Americans (Thorne, 2014 pp 504-505). The American Red Cross responded to the disastrous effects of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, and an outpouring of donations from the American public were unsatisfied by relief efforts shown in the media. Because of this is kind of behavior and a request of congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote a report giving in detail the inadequacies of both ARC and the Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) (Thorne, 2014 p. …show more content…

FEMA accused ARC of not being consistent and making too many personnel l changes. ARC accused FEMA with failure to implement a comprehensive system to tract requests for assistance received from ARC (Thorne, 2014 p. 505).
Large organizations like the American Red Cross have several ethical dilemmas they face, some unique, some foreign but the challenges have to be met with maintaining effective and efficient operations to respond to disaster and transparently reporting the organizations accomplishments, failures, and opportunity for improvement in disaster response activities (Thorne, 2014 p.

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