Write a three-page essay on the following topic:
Choose a business entity in our world today and perform an “ethical audit” on its practices, employing
course materials.
When performing your audit, you should ask how the five philosophers we’ve studied this term would
think of the culture of your chosen company. But, of even greater significance, how well does this
company fare according to the standards expressed in
The Responsible Company
, especially with regard
to the “Checklists” in that work’s Appendix.
Five philosophers – Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Marx, Nietzsche.

Hyundai Motors Limited

Hyundai Motors is a global market leader in automobile manufacturing and distribution. Founded in 1967 in South Korea, the company has become a famous brand in the automobile industry. Each year the company makes multibillion-dollar sales, and it is estimated that it sold one million vehicles in 2003. The company’s chief executive officer is Chong Ho Kim, and the Co-CEO is Gap Han Yoon.  Hyundai Motors plays a significant impact on the growth and development of South Korea’s economy and other diverse cultures of the world.  This paper explores the organizational culture of Hyundai Motors Limited through an in-depth analysis of individual employee awareness of the corporate objective, risks, and controls to draw insights on the organizational culture.

Hyundai Motors is deeply rooted in the hardworking spirit and nature of Korean people. Employees are positioned to work in an autonomous environment where they know their goals and the company’s overall objective. Consequently, when the production or sales target is set, there is a rigid framework to facilitate effective communication, from the top executives to the junior of the key performance indicators to ensure everyone abides by the speculated goal and timeframe. Furthermore, Hyundai Motors has created a strategic model that allows employees to work, even if on a part-time basis, to oversee their social and environmental performance. This explains the company’s commitment to achieving the company’s targets while still considering the welfare of the employees to avoid social and environmental harm. In current contemporary times, the company has ruled a comprehensive framework to oversee the execution and operation of the business. Besides the commitment to hard work through a hands-on approach and dedication to meet all their targets, the employees have excessive knowledge of the manufacturing and production of Hyundai Motors Company’s flagship products.  The organization also offers incentives and rewards to motivate employees as outlined in the company payment policy, such as a 401(k) or equivalent retirement plan for all employees who have worked in the company for six months. This embraces Mill’s concept of liberal works on culture.  In hindsight, Mill would approve of Hyundai’s concept as it allows assimilation of minorities in the political sphere while still allowing individuals to maintain their cultural particularity.

Although employees in Hyundai motors boost a comprehensive good corporate working formula, Karl, commonly known as the enemy of the capitalistic system, would have differing views on the organizational culture. In his writing, Marx positions organizations at the center of class conflict. His pedagogical thinking and rationale are engrained on the low wages employees receive after accruing millions for an organization. Although his theory of culture was in the developmental states, Karl states that organizations invented culture to brainwash employees to conform to the unfairness of the capitalistic system. Through his understanding of politics and history Marx purports that the process of brainwashing employees to accept the inequalities of capitalism is rooted in the family, religion, and education. Although he is a significant contributor to philosophical literature, Friedrich Nietzsche’s culture concept has not been used scholarly. His concepts of culture were succinct and mostly appeared embedded in other topics such as “The problems of culture.” However, he perceives culture as the key to understanding all the different fragments of business. Therefore it is evident that he would agree with the integrated values, social formations, ethics, and power relations existing in Hyundai Motors.

With the continuous advancement in technology, the company has embraced the latest technologies to boost the quality of automobile products. The moral enterprise value of the company is reflected in the employees. Therefore there is a cohesive understanding of the working environment, and employees are fully aware of the risks and controls to management and financial issues such as fraud. In this regard, they can exercise an extreme sense of responsibility through accountability and quality management to create more excellent value and viable solutions for all their customers. Furthermore, Hyundai operates on firm policy to keep its customers, shareholders, and associates the top priority. The company runs on a customer-centric program that ensures all customers get high quality and services with all the value centered on the customer. Also, the company is passionate about SMEs and collaborates with them to boost creativity through community-based programs and workshops to help them achieve their goals.  This ensures that Kant’s philosophical interpretations of culture would resonate with the Hyundai Motor Company in contemporary modern times. In his precepts, Karl draws the intrinsic link between human beings’ social capabilities and their ability to develop, shape them into cultural institutions such as politically governed communities under the rule of law.

On the other hand, to mitigate the emerging risks, Hyundai Motors has leveraged the latest technologies to reach newer heights while considering the ever-changing customer preference. The risk and control policy in the company is embedded in the ultimate respect and value of its employees. Since its inception, Hyundai Motor Company has created a safe and fulfilling environment. The company embraces a close-knit tight environment characterized by integrity, mutual respect, commitment, trust, and passion (Hyundai Motor Group). From this perspective, this is the core value of the company. Through the company’s decentralized leadership, all the employees interact and nurture the professional relationship crucial for communication downstream and upstream. Although most of the company’s subsidiaries worldwide are run and operated by a country manager, the management is a mix of diverse races. As part of its environmental conservation strategy, Hyundai is seeking to gradually reduce carbon emissions emanating from their plants in the future. Hyundai restructured its supply chain to harness its commitment to ethical sourcing to minimize greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere as part of the global agenda to reduce environmental impact and our clients. Through Aristotle’s lens, Hyundai boosts an excellent corporate and social policy that encourages and nourishes individual honesty and the larger community.

In surmise, Hyundai Motors’ corporate culture is anchored on hard work, commitment, mutual respect, and transparency. The company embraces transparency as its number one value as the company receives massive product and sales that may affect the employees’ workout per production. These values should guide compliance with risk management and communication policies that outline a rigid model to run and operate an organization. In essence, Hyundai Motors boosts a healthy and well-integrated organizational culture attributed to employee awareness of their role, risks, and controls.

Works Cited

Hyundai Motor Group. Hyundai Motor Company Ethics Charter & Code of Conduct. 2020. https://www.hyundai.com/content/dam/hyundai/ww/en/images/company/sustainability/about-sustainability/policy/hyundai-ethics-charter-and-code-of-conduct-eng.pdf. 2021.