Organizational Ethics
Kevin Day
ETH/316
April 21, 2015
Jennie Wong

Organizational Ethics
In the Rent to Own industry there arises many unethical behaviors and Rent A Center as the industry leader of the questionable practices. It is easy to get the nicest merchandise available in a rent to own store at a cheap weekly and monthly rate. But in the rent to own world its not what it seems because to get this merchandise you are expected to pay as much as 311 percent in interest just to own that product. With the high interest rates is the reason they are referred to as “predatory lending”. And high cost isn’t the only thing that is the problem with the rent to own industry; the industry is also being questioned in their business practices. For instance the allegations against companies such as Rent A Center and Aarons include: failure to disclose damage that happened to the prior rental property, having employees make collection call before the due date, including contract provisions that illegally barred law suits against the company and allowing the employees to use collection actions to bang on doors, use foul language at customers, threatening arrest and demanding payments from the third party. The rent to own companies tell you that they offer a service to people that are unable to get credit at a larger retailer and cant afford to buy product all at once. Because people ignore all the warning sign customers still continue to flock to these companies as of 2011 causing the rent to own industry to boast 4 million people. The pressure to grow and keep up with the demand makes the companies seek out more profit as much as possible even if its at the expense of the customer that they suppose to be helping. When it comes down to it the blame falls on these organizations to have the better policies and procedures in place to protect ethical integrity of a business. The customers are the social pressures for this industry making it hard for them to get new customer, because the current customers are reporting that the employees are banging on door, yelling out customers personal information. For instance, it is not illegal to do a field collection to visit a customer home but what the employees are told to say raises questions if it’s an unethical practice. There are ways to clean up their ethical issue simply by just make merchandise more affordable to begin with.
The managers as employees must hold themselves accountable for what happens when no one is around and they have to make a moral decision to do the right thing. One way a company can make sure the employees are not violating their ethical code of conduct to have better training standards. A positive and healthy corporate culture improves the morale among workers in the organization, which may increase productivity and employee retention; this, in turn, has financial benefits for the organization (Kelchner 2014). The manger may promote someone based upon if someone is doing