18 Oct Business Ethics Projects Content: How important is privacy to you personally? Describe a situation, work-related or otherwise, in which you felt your privacy was threatened. 2. Does bu

[removed],

CHAPTER 9

The Workplace (2): Today’s Challenges

Learning Objectives

After completing this chapter students should be able to:

· Have a clear sense of workers’ rights in general and the demarcation of the zone of privacy.

· Consider some of the moral issues raised by the ways in which employers seek to examine, influence, and judge the private lives of their employees and prospective employees.

· Understand the responsibilities of employers with regard to workplace safety and OSHA.

· Appreciate the ways in which different management styles and theories of management affect the working environment.

· Examine and evaluate some of the ways that companies are seeking to improve the quality of work life while improving worker satisfaction and productivity.

Glossary

1. false positives: If a test is less than 100% accurate, then it's possible for it to have the wrong results. It's a “false positive” when a test is used to find for something, and the test false indicates that it's found. For example, an imperfect lie detector test will find that some people lie who don't in addition to finding that some people don't lie who do. In some cases, more innocent people will be found “guilty” than people correctly identified as “guilty.” If a 90% accurate lie detector test is used on 110 people and 10 of them are liars, then it will probably find 10 innocent people to be liars and 9 guilty people to be liars. More innocent people could be punished than guilty people as a result.

2. Hawthorne effect: Workers have been found to respond well to getting attention and recognition, and they can be more productive as a result.

3. Wellness programs: Programs meant to help employees live healthier lifestyles. Some companies try to pressure employees into joining wellness programs.

Chapter Summary Points

1. Individuals have a legal right to privacy, in particular a right to control certain information about themselves, to shelter aspects of their lives from public scrutiny, and to make personal decisions autonomously, free from illegitimate influence. Shaw seems to assume that we also have a moral right to privacy and argue that organizations shouldn't infringe on an individual’s personal sphere unless they can justify that infringement.

2. A firm is legitimately interested in whatever significantly influences job performance, but there is no precise definition of “significant influence.” Organizations may be invading privacy when they pressure employees to contribute to charities, do volunteer work, or participate in wellness programs.

3. Information-gathering on employees can be highly personal and subject to abuse. The critical issue here is informed consent, which implies deliberation and free choice. Deliberation requires that employees be provided all significant facts concerning the information-gathering procedure and understand their consequences. Free choice means that the decision to participate must be voluntary and uncoerced.

4. 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.

5. Health and safety remain of foremost moral concern in the workplace. Employers have a moral obligation not to expose their workers to needless risk, and employees have a right to know about and refuse hazardous work. The scope of occupational hazards, including shift work and stress, and the number of employees harmed by work-related injuries and diseases are greater than many people think. Enforcement of existing regulations has too often been lax.

6. 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.

7. Day-care services and reasonable parental-leave policies also affect working conditions. Despite the genuine need for and the ethical importance of both day care and flexible work arrangements for parents, only a handful of companies make serious efforts to provide them.

8. Studies report extensive job dissatisfaction at all levels. Various factors influence satisfaction and dissatisfaction on the job. Redesigning the work process can enhance the quality of work life, the well-being of workers, and even productivity.