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Chapter 8:
Applied Business Ethic in
the Work Place
Applied Business
Ethics In the
Workplace
Change
Nature
Basic Issues
Rational
Workplace
External forces
Employees’
obligations
turbulence
Firms’
duties
Today’s
challenges
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, illconsidered 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
C17-S1
External Forces Changing the Workplace
PAST
The
Workplace
Demographic
Shifts
Technological
Change
FUTURE
Government
Intervention
Structural
Change
Competitive
Pressures
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 socalled 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
C18-S8
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