11 Oct Discussion Topic Business Ethics? For your main post, analyze and discuss to what extent an employer may infringe upon or monitor the private life of an employee. Do you agree or disagree
Discussion Topic
Business Ethics
For your main post, analyze and discuss to what extent an employer may infringe upon or monitor the private life of an employee. Do you agree or disagree with this? Defend your position.
At least 175 words.
Chapter 8
Required Text(s): Business EthicsAuthor(s): William H. ShawEdition: 9thYear: 2021Publisher: Cengage
CHAPTER 8
The Workplace (1): Basic Issues
Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter students should be able to:
· Address some of the more frequent concerns that employees encounter in the workplace today—erosion of civil liberties, job tasks, working conditions, wages, and promotions.
· Understand the historical factors that affect the tension that exists today between employers and employees, especially with regard to the rise of authoritarianism in the workplace.
· Appreciate the ways in which various legal doctrines are employed to balance the competing claims of employer and employee.
· Consider the ethical aspects of personnel policies and procedures such as hiring, promotions, discipline, and wages.
· Understand employees’ attempts to balance power through collective bargaining and union tactics.
Glossary
1. boycott: When workers or their supporters refuse to buy from a company to support workers who have a grievance with that company.
2. civil liberties: Our moral rights that aren't always protected by the law.
3. corporate campaign: When unions enlist the cooperation of a company’s creditors to pressure the company to allow its employees to unionize or to comply with other union demands.
4. due process: The principle that a person's moral or legal rights must be respected. Due process often requires that employees have a way to appeal decisions made by management.
5. direct strike: Cessation of work by employees with the same industrial grievance.
6. inbreeding: When people are promoted to management positions from within an organization rather than hiring people from outside.
7. nepotism: Showing favoritism towards relatives. Generally manifested by hiring and promoting relatives.
8. sympathetic strike: When workers strike who have no grievance of their own to help support other workers who have a grievance.
Chapter Summary Points
1. Shaw agrees that we have moral “civil liberties” in the workplace. Writers such as David Ewing believe that too many corporations routinely violate the civil liberties of their employees. Historically, this authoritarianism stems from (a) the rise of professional management and personnel engineering and (b) the common-law doctrine that employees can be discharged without cause (“employment at will”).
2. Some very successful companies have taken the lead in respecting employees’ rights and human dignity. Corporate profits and efficient management are compatible with a fair workplace environment.
3. Fairness in personnel matters requires, at least, that policies, standards, and decisions affecting workers be directly job related, based on clear and available criteria, and applied equally.
4. Misleading job descriptions and inaccurate job specification can injure applicants by denying them information they need to reach informed occupational decisions.
5. Ordinarily, questions of sex, age, race, national origin, and religion are non-job related and thus should not enter into personnel decisions. Discrimination against the disabled is now expressly forbidden by law. Screening on the basis of language, physical appearance, lifestyle, or ill-considered educational requirements may also be unfair.
6. A test is valid if it measures precisely what it is designed to determine and reliable when it provides reasonably consistent results. Tests that lack validity or reliability are unfair. Tests may also be unfair if they are culturally biased or if the performance they measure does not relate directly to job performance.
7. Most moral concerns in interviewing relate to how the interview is conducted. Interviewers should focus on the humanity of the candidate and avoid allowing their personal biases to color their evaluations.
8. A key issue in promotions is whether job qualification alone should determine who gets promoted. Seniority, or longevity on the job, is not necessarily a measure of either competency or loyalty. The challenge for management is to accommodate its twin responsibilities of promoting on the basis of qualifications and recognizing long-term contributions to the company.
9. Inbreeding, or promoting exclusively within the organization, presents challenges similar to those presented by seniority. Nepotism—showing favoritism to relatives or close friends—is not always objectionable, but it may overlook managerial responsibilities to the organization and may result in unfair treatment of other employees.
10. Most moral issues in employee discipline and discharge concern how management carries out these unpleasant tasks. Just cause and due process are necessary for fair treatment. Due process requires that there be procedures for workers to appeal discipline and discharge. To ease the trauma associated with discharge, employers should provide sufficient warning, severance pay, and perhaps displacement counseling.
11. The factors that bear on the fairness of wages include the law, the prevailing wage in the industry, the community wage level, the nature of the job, the security of the job, the company’s financial capabilities, and the wages it is paying other employees for comparable work. Also important are job performance and the manner in which the wage is established. Fairness requires a legitimate work contract, one arrived at through free negotiation and informed mutual consent.
12. Unions attempt to protect workers from abuse and give them a voice in matters that affect their lives. Critics charge that forcing workers to join unions infringes on autonomy and the right of association. They allege that union workers receive discriminatory and unlawful favoritism.
13. A direct strike is justified, argue some moral theorists, when there is just cause and proper authorization and when it is called as a last resort.
14. Sympathetic strikes involve the cessation of work in support of other workers with a grievance. When the companies involved are different, questions arise concerning possible injury and injustice to innocent employers, consumers, and workers.
15. Primary boycotts—refusing to patronize companies being struck—seem morally comparable to direct strikes. Secondary boycotts—refusing to patronize companies handling products of struck companies—are morally analogous to sympathetic strikes. In corporate campaigns, unions enlist the cooperation of a company’s creditors to pressure the company to permit unionization or to comply with union demands.
Additional Resources for Exploring Chapter Content
Internet Resources
· AFL-CIO Website
· AFL CIO page on Workers’ Rights
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/workersrights/index.cfm
· AFL CIO page on Unions 101
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/union101.cfm
· Information about employee rights
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employee-rights/
Other Resources
Film
· On the Waterfront, 1954
© 2017 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
8-1
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Part IV: The Organization and the People in It
Chapter 8: The Workplace: Basic Issues
Chapter 9: The Workplace: Today’s Challenges
Chapter 10: Moral Choices Facing Employees
Chapter 11: Job Discrimination
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Chapter Eight:
The Workplace –
Basic Issues
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Overview
- Chapter Eight examines the following topics:
- The state of civil liberties in the workplace
- The efforts of some successful companies to respect the rights and moral dignity of their employees
- Moral issues concerning personnel matters such as hiring, promotions, discipline and discharge, and wages
- The role and history of unions, and the moral issues raised by them
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Introduction
- Traditionally a business’s single obligation toward its employees was to pay them for their work.
- Today’s workplace philosophy is much more complex, involving social, political, and moral issues.
- What are the obligations of an employer toward its employees?
- How does American emphasis on civil liberties affect the workplace?
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“The sudden announcement of [Republic Windows and Doors]’s bankruptcy and the discovery that the recent recipient of a federal government bailout, Bank of America, had closed the company’s line of credit outraged many—as did the subsequent revelation that the company’s owners had planned to strip the factory and move its machinery to another plant.”
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Civil Liberties in the Workplace
- Authoritarianism at the workplace: David Ewing, formerly of Harvard Business Review, believes that too many corporations routinely violate the civil liberties of their employees. Historically, this authoritarianism stems from:
- The rise of professional management and personnel engineering
- The common-law doctrine that employees can be discharged without cause (“employment at will”)
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Civil Liberties in the Workplace
- Modifications to “employment at will” doctrine:
- The Wagner Act of 1935 prohibited firing workers because of union membership or union activities.
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent legislation prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, creed, nationality, sex, or age.
- Public sector employees enjoy some constitutional protections on the job and can be fired only “for cause.”
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Civil Liberties in the Workplace
- Current trends: The law seems to be moving away from the doctrine of “employment at will.”
- But, some businesspeople support it as a desirable legal policy and embrace it as a moral doctrine.
- They deny that employers have any obligations to their employees beyond those specified by law or by explicit legal contract.
- They view employees as lacking any meaningful moral rights, seeing them as expendable assets, as means to an end.
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Civil Liberties in the Workplace
- Companies that look beyond the bottom line: Those that respect employee rights and ensure a fair workplace tend to outperform others.
- Some successful companies have led the way in respecting employees’ rights and human dignity.
- Examples include Polaroid, IBM, Donnelly Mirrors, Delta Air Lines, and others
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Hiring
- Organizational conduct affects the welfare and rights of employees via personnel policies and procedures (hiring, firing, paying, and promoting).
- Fair policies and decisions evolve from criteria that are clear, job-related, and applied equally.
- Determining what is fair is not always easy.
- But the hiring process may be fairly approached based on its principal steps – screening, testing, and interviewing.
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Hiring
- Screening: The first step of the hiring process, the pooling and ranking candidates with qualifications – when done improperly, it undermines effective recruitment and invites injustices into the process
- A description lists the details of the job
- A specification describes the required professional qualifications
- Both must be complete and accurate
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Hiring
- Wrongful discrimination: A moral concern in which candidates are judged on physical or ethnic traits rather than qualifications.
- Sex, age, race, national origin, and religion are generally not job-related and generally should not affect hiring decisions
- Discrimination against the disabled is illegal
- Considering language, lifestyle, appearance, ill-considered educational requirements, or gaps in work history may also be unfair
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Hiring
- Testing: Tests are an integral part of the hiring process, especially in large firms – often designed to measure the applicant’s verbal, quantitative, and logical skills.
- Tests must be valid: Validity refers to whether test scores correlate with performance in some other activity (i.e., whether the test measures the skill or ability it is intended to measure).
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Hiring
- Tests must be reliable: Reliability refers to whether test results are replicable (i.e., whether a subject’s scores will remain relatively consistent from test to test).
- Tests that lack validity or reliability are unfair.
- Tests may be unfair if they are culturally biased or if the skills they measure do not relate directly to job performance.
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Hiring
- Interviewing: Moral issues in interviews usually relate to the manner in which they are conducted.
- Interviewers should focus on the humanity of the candidate and not allow biases, stereotypes, and preconceptions to color the evaluation.
- Situational interviews: Those interviews in which job candidates must role play in a mock work scenario – some believe this makes it harder for a candidate to put on a false front.
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Promotions
- Inbreeding: The practice of promoting exclusively from within the firm – it presents similar moral challenges as in the case of seniority.
- Nepotism: The practice of showing favoritism to relatives and close friends – it is not always objectionable (especially in family-owned businesses) but may affect managerial responsibilities, hurt morale, create resentment, or result in unfair treatment of other employees.
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Discipline and Discharge
- Two basic principles in the fair handling of disciplinary issues:
- Just cause: requires that reasons for discipline or discharge deal with job performance
- Due process: refers to the fairness of procedures used to impose sanctions on employees
- Dismissing employees: Employers have the right to fire employees who perform inadequately – but should provide sufficient warning, severance pay, and sometimes displacement counseling.
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“The 2009 movie Up in the Air relates the story of a corporate downsizer. What ethical obligations do you believe companies have to employees they terminate?”
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Wages
- Salaries should reflect an employee’s value to the business and be based on clear, publicly available criteria that are applied objectively. For example:
- What is the law?
- What is the prevailing wage in the industry?
- What is the community wage level?
- What is the nature of the job itself?
- Is the job secure?
- What are the employer’s financial capabilities?
- What are other inside employees earning for comparable work?
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Wages
- Two other factors in determining the wage level:
- The employee’s job performance
- The fairness of the wage agreement terms
- A living wage is supported by moral grounds:
- Utilitarian element promoting human welfare
- Kantian principle of respect for human dignity
- Commonsense view that some wages are so low as to be inherently exploitative
- Critics of living-wage laws believe they cost jobs
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Labor Unions
- History of the union movement: Employers have opposed unions at almost every step.
- But, unions have increased the security and standard of living of workers and contributed to social stability and economic growth. Examples:
- The Knights of Labor: The first truly national trade union, established in 1869
- The American Federation of Labor (AFL): United the great national craft unions in a closely knit organizational alliance, founded in 1886
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Labor Unions
- The National Labor Relations or (Wagner) Act (1935) prohibited employers from:
- Interfering with workers trying to start unions
- Attempting to gain control over labor unions
- Treating union workers differently from others
- Refusing to bargain with union representatives
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Labor Unions
- The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) set several regulations:
- Outlawed the closed shop (the requirement that a person must be a union member before being hired)
- Permitted individual states to outlaw the union shop (the requirement that a person must join the union within a specified time after being hired)
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Labor Unions
- Today 22 states are right-to-work states with open-shop laws on their books – they prohibit union contracts requiring all employees to either join the union or pay the equivalent of union dues.
- The plight of unions today: Unions are responsible, directly or indirectly, for many of the benefits employees enjoy today.
- But, a changing economy, hostile political environment, and aggressive anti-union policies have weakened them.
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Labor Unions
- Union ideals: The protection of workers from abuse gives unions a voice in important matters.
- They redefine power relationships, making employers more dependent on their workers
- A rough equality or mutual dependence results
- Collective bargaining: Negotiations between representatives of organized workers and their employers regarding wages, hours, rules, work conditions, and participation in decision making that affects the workplace.
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Labor Unions
- Union ideals: Critics charge that forcing workers to join unions infringes on autonomy and the right of association – and that union workers receive discriminatory and unlawful favoritism.
- In response, union sympathizers stress fairness and the importance of solidarity.
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“This map shows the states (in green) where employees at unionized workplaces can be required to be members of the union (or to pay dues or fees to the union) as a condition of employment and the states where the law forbids this.”
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