Business Ethics - Assignment Example

At will employment can be defined as one in which the employee is free to quit from the job at any given point of time and the employer as well is free to terminate an employee for any reason at any given point of time except that the reason for termination cannot be an illegal one such as retaliation, discrimination and violation of public policy. Thus an employer does have any legal obligation as such to an employee prior to termination. At will employee may get terminated even for the most whimsical reasons, also an employer is free to change the employment terms such as compensation and job responsibility at his will.

At will employee’s employment is held as a voluntary action and under such an employment, the employee cannot be forced to work and an employer cannot employ them for an indefinite time (DelPo & Guerin, p. 34). However, there is a difference between legal and ethical obligations. Although legally an employer might not have an obligation towards his at will employee but ethically he might have as it is related to the morality of that person. However, since every person has his or her own sense of ethics therefore, it is hard to define what set of ethical obligation does an employer will have for his employee under at will employment.

Set forth a policy concerning romance in the workplace It is necessary for an organization to issue policies for couples in work place. In order to protect against claims of nepotism, favoritism and sexual harassment, organization must adopt policies on workplace dating. These policies stipulate the types of intimate relationships which are acceptable in the workplace and also mention those which are not and violate the office decorum. Some organizations provide clear code of conduct guidelines to its employees which are expected to be followed at work place.

The guidelines pertain to display of affection in public and also disclosure of relationship to the management. The violation of the guidelines of workplace dating policy by couples can pose a serious threat to the employee involved. Organization can go for informal counseling to formal interventions such as transfers, written warnings and also termination. According to Karl and Sutton employers favor a stricter policy when performance of couples suffers or the romance becomes noticeable to all the members.

Also management should not take any action when a couple’s performance does not suffer due to the relationship or rather shows improvement. In absence of formal work place romance policy, it is the duty of the manager to keep his eyes open so that the relationship or the romance does not hamper the general workflow. The dating policies vary from one organization to another thus it is necessary for employees to familiarize with both informal and written policies (Waldron & Kassing, p.120). Define insider trading.

Discuss whether insider trading is ethical. Insider trading is defined as a term that is used when a person is involved in insider trading if he purchases or sells the stocks in public company which is based on non public information about a particular company. The information that is gained by means of unfair advantage makes the trading unethical. But not all kinds of insider trading are illegal (Emanuel & Emanuel, p.253). A huge amount of quantitative and qualitative information exists in the markets which are an important part of free market system and thus it can be said that insider trading i