Chapter 8:

Applied Business Ethic in the Work Place

Applied Business Ethics In the Workplace

Nature

Basic Issues

Change

External forces

turbulence

Today’s challenges

Rational Workplace

Employees’ obligations

Firms’ duties

Employees’ rights

The Nature and Meaning of Work

• Sustained effort done to produce something of value for others

• 1850- Industrial Revolution- work is a drudgery

• 1920s- “scientific management” work is productivity and utility

• 1970s- work is self-fulfilment

• 1990s- work is related to inner needs beyond religious duty and material success

Basic Issues in the Workplace

• Civil liberties in the workplace• Personnel policies and procedures:

hiring; promotions; discipline and discharge; Wages

• Unions

Policies and Procedures in the Workplace

• policies, standards and decision regarding personnel matters must be directly job-related, based on transparent criteria and applied equally

•incomplete or non-specific job description can injure job-applicants by denying them the information crucial for occupational decision making

•aspects which are non-job related and thus should not enter personnel decisions: sex, age, race, national origin, religion, lifestyle, ill-considered educational requirements

•During interviews: interviewers should focus on the humanity of the candidate and avoid allowing their personal biases to color their evaluations

•in terms of promotions:management should promote on the basis of qualifications and personnel’s long term contributions to the company. Unfair treatment to other employees might result from promoting based on seniority, inbreeding and nepotism

Discipline and Discharge

•Due process and just cause must operate if treatment is to be fair.

•Due process- there should be procedures for workers to appeal discipline and discharge.

•Employers should provide sufficient warning, severance pay and displacement counseling

Union Ideals

•Protect workers from abuses of power at the hands of employers

•existence of equal or mutual dependence between the employer and the employees- basis for collective bargaining- negotiations between the reps of organized workers and their employers over wages, hours, rules, work condition and participation in decisions affecting the workplace.

Union Tactics

• direct strikes- must based on just cause (job-related matters); proper authorization; last resort

•sympathetic strikes- involve the discontinuance of work in support of other workers with a grievance.

•Primary boycotts- refusing to support companies being struck- seem morally comparable to direct strikes.

•Secondary boycotts - refusing to support companies handling products of struck companies- are morally analogous to sympathetic strikes

External Forces Changing the Workplace

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TheWorkplace

FUTUREPAST

Demographic Shifts

Technological Change

StructuralChange

GovernmentIntervention

CompetitivePressures

Turbulence in the Workplace• Corporate downsizing- workforce restructuring

• Wage inequality- (started from 1970s)- may due to competitive global labor markets, shift away from manufacturing, computerization of work, declining influence of the unions

• Revised employment contract- rise of contingency or contract workers, temporary virtual teams etc.

Controversy in Today’s Workplace

• Nature of privacy • the use of polygraph and personality tests,

employee monitoring and drug testing• working conditions• job satisfaction and enhancement of quality of

work life

Controversy in Today’s Workplace

• A firm is legitimately interested in whatever significantly influences job performance, but there’s no precise definition of “significant influence”. Organizations may be invading privacy when they coerce employees to involve in civic activities, to participate in wellness programs or in so-called intensive group experiences

• Information-gathering on employees can be highly personal and subject to abuse. Hence, there should be informed consent (deliberation and free choice) from the employees– deliberation requires that employees be provided all

significant facts concerning the information-gathering procedure and understand their consequence

– free choice means that the decision to participate must be voluntary and uncoerced

Controversy in Today’s Workplace

• Polygraph tests, personality tests, drug tests, and the monitoring of employees on the job can intrude into employee privacy. The exact character of these devices, the rationale for using them to gather information in specific circumstances, and the moral costs of doing so must always be carefully evaluated

• Health and safety is a moral concern in the workplace:– scope of occupational hazards, including shift work and

stress – the number of employees harmed by work-related injuries

and diseases

• management style greatly affects the work environment. Managers who operate with rigid assumptions about human nature or who devote themselves to infighting and political maneuvering damage employees’ interests

Controversy in Today’s Workplace

• Day-care services and reasonable parental-leave policies also affect working conditions.

• The underlying moral issues :– women have a right to compete on an equal terrain with

men– the development of the women’s potential capacity is a

moral ideal

• Redesigning the work process can enhance job satisfaction; increase the quality of work life, the well-being of workers and even productivity

The Employees’ Obligations to the Firm Are to Avoid:

• conflicts of interests

• bribes and extortion

• theft

• trade secrets- concern non public information

• insider trading

Conflicts of Interest

• arises when – employees have a personal interest in a transaction

substantial enough that it does, or might reasonably be expected to lead them to act against the interests of the organization

– when employees have financial investments in suppliers, customers, or distributors with whom the organization does business

The Question of Self-interest

• Prudential considerations based on self-interest can conflict with moral considerations, which weigh the interest of others.

• Employees must avoid the temptation to exaggerate prudential concerns, hence rationalizing away any individual moral responsibility to third parties.

Bribe:• payment in some form for an act that runs counter to

the work contract or the nature of the work one has been hired to perform. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits corporations from engaging in bribery overseas.

• involves injury to individuals, competitors, or political institutions and damage to the free-market system

• considerations in determining the moral acceptability of gift giving and receiving:– the value of gift– the purpose of gift– the circumstances under which it is given– the position and sensitivity to influence to influence of the

person receiving the gift– accepted business practice– the company policy– the law

Abuse of Official Position

• Insider trading- use of significant facts that have not yet been made public and will likely affect stock prices. It seems unfair and can injure other investors

• Proprietary data- an organization’s classified or secret information. The proprietary-data issues pose a conflict between two legitimate rights: the right of employers to keep certain information secret and the right of individuals to work where they choose

The Firm’s Duties to Employees:

• Fair wages

• healthy and safe working conditions

• create working condition that can path to job satisfaction

Employees’ Rights• The right to privacy

• freedom of conscience- the freedom to act when personal moral beliefs is violated

• whistleblowing- disclose wrongdoings of the corporation/employers

• the right to participate in management decision making which directly affect employees

• the right to organize/unionize

Whistle blowing

• Employee informing the public about the illegal or immoral behavior of an employer or organization

• is morally justified if– it is done from the appropriate moral motive– the whistle blower has exhausted internal channels before

going public– the whistle blower has compelling evidence– the whistle blower has carefully analyzed the dangers– the whistle blowing has some chance of success

Job Discrimination

• definition

•the statistical and attitudinal evidence of discrimination

•the historical and legal context of affirmative action

•the moral arguments for and against affirmative action

•the doctrine of comparable worth and the controversy over it

•the problem of sexual harassment in employment

Discrimination in Employment:

• Involves adverse decisions against employees or job applicants based on their membership in a group that is viewed as inferior or deserving of unequal treatment.

• Can be intentional or unintentional, institutional or individual

• Evidence of deep-seated attitudes and institutional practices and policies, point that most discrimination in the workplace are based on race and sex

Comparable Worth

The doctrine of comparable worth holds that women and men should be paid on the same scale for doing different jobs of equal skills, effort and responsibility

How to Promote Diversity in a Corporation

• Top management commitment

• Recruitment outreach

• Affirmative action hiring

• Training

• Mentoring

• Encourage social identity groups

• Collect data to measure achievements

• Adapt policies

• Set up reward systems

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