ethical dilemma and challenges facing FIFA

ethical dilemma and challenges facing FIFA

Executive Summary

This paper examines the ethical dilemma and challenges facing FIFA. Reports have highlighted the organization’s unethical business culture, disrupting its efforts to manage the beautiful game. FIFA leadership has failed to handle its crises in an ethical manner. The corruption scandal has continued to get worse each year. Unethical issues raise the need for an organization to implement accountability and transparency. Ethical practices are critical in an organization to ensure trust with their stakeholders.

Introduction

Ethics is critical in decision making for any organization. Ethics is a set of values and principles, varying from one organization to another. Therefore, these values dictate the code of conduct for every employee and manager in an organization. Also, it spells how they should operate. The code of ethics and values are formulated from shared values, company policies, and principles. The code is not written, hence enforcing them in an organization becomes difficult. Organizations often face ethical dilemmas and challenges in everyday operations.

An organization upholding ethical standards not only attract employees but also attract investors who are assured their investment aligns with moral standards.  Organizational culture helps an organization to align its practices and values. The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)-the world’s football governing body, has faced numerous claims of unethical practice in more than forty years. Recently, the corruption issues led to the banning of its president Sepp Blatter and other top executives. This paper will evaluate the FIFA’s ethical challenges and dilemmas, the impact of organizational culture, and the role the organization executive and non-executive members played in the unethical practices.

Literature review

According to Birtch & Chiang (2014), ethical practice is beneficial to an organization upholding them. Thttps://studygroom.com/discussion-in-detail-of-personal-response/o begin with, the ethical code of conduct builds customer loyalty. Consumer loyalty is the key to a successful business. Besides, a company’s reputation on ethical behavior creates a positive image for the company, especially with the digital world. Carroll and Buchholtz (2015) further state that ethical behavior harnesses a positive work environment for the company to retain the best employees and avoids legal issues that may arise. Thus, complying with ethical standards benefits the business in the long run.

Anitha (2016) states that a culture of unethical behavior hurts future businesses.  Corporate malfeasance often ends with the top being executives charged with abetting a crime.  Consequently, the rapport of any organization is disrupted. A culture of ethical behavior helps instill corrective actions to prevent unethical circumstances from occurring.  One way of upholding ethical culture in any organization is by hiring business executives or board members with a track record of upholding ethical standards (Anitha (2016). In the workplace, a set of ethical standards is set for employees to follow.  Organizational culture on ethical behavior helps achieve high-quality services.

No leader would want their organization involved in unethical circumstances. However, ethical leadership plays a key role in crisis management. Elsmore (2017) states that the ultimate test to ethical leadership is the management of a crisis. Instances of unethical leadership have occurred in history; for instance, the management of the BP oil explosion in Mexico (Chatterjee et al., 2015). According to Wittmer (2019), there are three stages involved in crisis management-(a) pre-crisis (b) crisis (c) post-crisis. An ethical leader understands that building a culture of ethical practices is handy when a crisis strikes.

Methodology

The research methodology defines how to measure progress, what constitutes success, and what the activity of the research entails. The research design is descriptive – a case study of FIFA ethical strategies. The secondary data collection method was used to collect data on FIFA. Moreover, a literature review on the ethical practices and leadership was carried out.

Discussion

Over the last forty years, FIFA has been engulfed in claims of corruption scandals. In 2015, the widespread corruption reached the greatest heights where several top officials, including its president, Sepp Blatter, and the UEFA president, Michel Platini, were interdicted (Verver, 2015). The scandals have undermined football games and tinted the image of FIFA.  The corruption scandal has left the organization in a series of ethical issues and dilemmas.

The FIFA scandal reveals the organization is embroiled in a toxic culture of non-compliance, corruption, and unethical behavior. Moreover, ethical questions were raised in the awarding of the 2022 world cup to Qatar-A nation with questionable human rights and labor violations and no footballing history.

The existence of FIFA’s corruption at high levels is undebatable. FIFA is corrupt. It is believed the corruption levels tarnished the beautiful game (Verver, 2015). However, football has continued to grow despite the unethical claims; the same cannot be said on FIFA. The corruption claims have created a disconnect between the fans and the body that governs the sport.

In response to the allegations claims, FIFA convened a special congress session in 2016. Moreover, Infantino was elected the president to clean up the organization. The congress approved reforms package to address its shortcomings (Wittmer,  2019). The reforms include performing constant integrity checks, limiting the presidential terms, transparency in operations, and transitioning from a political to management organization. Besides, FIFA’s independent ethics committee was mandated to investigate the code of ethics violation In its corruption scandals.

Ironically, FIFA does not have another competitor, as it the sole governing body of football worldwide (Wittmer, 2019). The organization management has failed to implement fast reforms on its unethical behavior and non-compliance. The president has frustrated the process of reforms that he stood for at the time he was elected in office. The slow pace not only represents FIFA in a negative light, but it costs them a fan base.

The organization lacks the moral authority to solve issues facing the beautiful game such as racism and match-fixing. Investigations by Europol revealed that more than 680 matches had suspicious results. As the backroom, ethical issues continue to drag on; the on-field issues continue to pile up (Esposito, C., 2016.). In 2011, the anti-corruption head of FIFA resigned, citing the organization’s non-compliance in implementing reforms.

Fans believe the organization has failed to implement reforms to tackle its unethical issues.

The organization’s top leadership resistance to transparency deeply highlights its non-compliance behavior. Several investigations on corruption issues facing the organization have failed t be made public. The action not to publicly publish the report means that the top executives are involved in the unethical practices, and the crisis management in the organization is poor. For instance, the reports on the venue selection of 2018 and 2022 world cups were never released, and the investigator was relieved of their duties.

Conclusion

From the analysis above, it is clear that ethical practices should be upheld in every organization. Ethical behavior is important in creating a reputation for the business. Thus, organizations should maintain transparency and accountability. FIFA lacks the ethical leadership to handle its scandal issues that have marred its operations.  The organization leadership has failed to make ethical decisions to impact the organization positively. An ethical leadership development plan would be appropriate for the organization. The leadership development plan supports tie organization professional growth. The plan would consist of core values, long term goals, and the identity of the organization’s leadership.

The leadership development plan would include an internal and external communication strategy in case of a crisis. Internal communication ensures that all employees n the organization work in a team towards the shared vision and goals of the organization. It helps to build a common culture for the organization and cut out unethical practices. On the other hand, external communication builds confidence between the organization and its stakeholders. Having the internal and external communication strategy in the leadership development plan outlines the goals of the organization.

The organization should apply the foursquare protocol in handling its scandals. For instance, in the 2015 scandals, the FIFA presidents should have (a) dig into facts (b) examination of individual reactions to past solutions (c)seek similarities with pa solutions and (d) examining the decision-making scenario. In doing so, some of its scandals could have been solved.

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