Flexible Scheduling at WalMart: Good or Bad for Employees - Case Study Example

Flexible Scheduling At Wal‐Mart: Good or Bad for Employees? al Affiliation: Introduction The modern day, particularlyin the west, has been characterized by an increased rate of technological innovation and invention; this technological revolution has had many effects on the employment patterns and financial systems of many nations in the west, particularly the United States of America. Many workers in the contemporary American society have been lastingly wiped out of the economic sets of procedures that take place in the American economy because machines have taken their place. The interesting question however is; is the Wal-Mart’s adoption of flexible scheduling good or bad for employees? This paper explores this question with reference to the Wal-Mart’s adoption of a computerized scheduling system from the Kronos. What is the ethical dilemma facing Wal-Mart in this case? Do Wal-Mart’s associates also face an ethical dilemma? If so, what is it? Wal-Mart is faced with the ethical dilemma of adopting a computerized scheduling system for its employees, which will speed up the scheduling of its employees’ work shifts. The advocates of the rights of workers were strongly against the move arguing on the impacts the adoption of the computerized system would have on the lives of the workers. It is imperative to point that the store managers, who manually carried out the schedule arrangement, traditionally carried out the intended work of scheduling workers at the Wal-Mart’s big box stores. The store manager’s decisions were based on previous year’s weekly sales data and the store promotions. The process of scheduling the employees was traditionally a time consuming process that took the store managers a full day. It is significant to note that the manual scheduling of the employees by the store managers was an expensive endeavor given the fact that Wal-Mart operates a number of stores. The labor intensity that was required to schedule the Wal-Mart employees manually produced marginally beneficial results to the company, thus expensive. The use of the computerized system of scheduling employees in Wal-Mart the overall productivity of the scheduling process was achieved within a short time for all the stores. The adoption of the Kronos scheduling system is of great benefit to the company due to its flexibility, cost efficiency, cost effectiveness, as well as improved productivity. It is also significant to note that the store managers, with the adoption of the computerized scheduling system, can now concentrate on the effective management of their respective stores. The computerized employee scheduling system by the Kronos has an efficient system of tracking transactions, sales by individual stress, customer traffic, and unit sold as opposed to the traditional manual employee scheduling system by the store managers. The effectiveness and the efficiency of the computerized employee scheduling system is also evident it its ability to utilize fifteen minutes of the system logs in the tracking metrics for a period of seven weeks concurrently. The computerized system is also capable of drawing comparison of the data collected with the data collected from the previous years at the same time. The Kronos system also has the capability of integrating a number of data like the duration required to complete a transaction, or the average time required to unload a truck, or the number of customer inflow into the store at given times. This capability allows the computerized employee scheduling system to be able to forecast the total number of employees that may be required at given times. The Wal-Mart Stores is faced with the ethical dilemma of adopting the computerized employee scheduling system or consider the fact that adopting this technology would render other employees redundant. The adoption of the Kronos’ system would obviously result into the scheduling of sparse staff during the early parts of the day. The scheduling would also record that the number of workers scheduled during midday is significantly increased, and significantly reduced in the afternoon hours and increase in the number of workers scheduled during the evening hours because of the evening influx of customers. Wal-Mart believes that through their adoption of the computerized employee scheduling system would result into the productivity of the company and improvement in the satisfaction of the employees. The adoption of technology saw the Wal-Mart stores recording an improvement in the productivity in labor by 12 percent in the end of the January 31, 2008 quarter. The company is however, has in the past faced a number of criticisms regarding its labor practices that were considered unethical, for instance, lawsuits on gender stereotyping and discrimination. What ethical principles apply to this case? How do they apply? There are several ethical principles that may apply to the Case of Wal-Mart’s adoption of the computerized employee scheduling system. These include deontological, utilitarian and ethical egoism. It is very important to analyze the impacts on of these ethical models in business ethics. Ethical Egoism Ethical egoism is grouped under the teleological category of ethical models. This theory is based on the principle that individuals, and therefore business firms, must endeavor to attain the greatest benefit, pleasure or good for themselves alone. Ethical egoism is thus bent on the pursuit of self-interest and welfare (Richards, 2004). In ethical egoism what makes the actions of a firm good/bad or right/wrong is that it meets the desires of the firm. According to Friedman (1970), “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. By making this statement, Friedman (1970) was depicting commercial organizations as ethical egoist in nature. Commercial organizations that utilize the ethical egoist approach in their business ethics framework make use of the organizational capabilities and resources in pursuing activities, which are aimed at increasing the firm’s profits (Smith, n.d). This, however, does not mean that the firm breaks the set laws and regulations governing business. Utilitarianism The core principle of utilitarianism is the “Greatest Happiness Principle”. The utilitarian ethical theory of business ethics purports that business conduct is only good or right only if the business decisions made bring about the greatest good, pleasure or happiness for the greatest number of people. In this case, the term “good” is described as the total profits that the stakeholders affected by business decisions enjoy. One of the most important principles of utilitarianism is that it examines actions in order to determine whether the action produces more good/right outcomes than bad/wrong ones (Marx, 1959). The use of the utilitarian approach in business ethics requires businesses to fairly consider all relevant stakeholders in their decision-making processes. According to Freeman (1988), the main goal of every firm is to ensure maximum returns for the entity. The shareholders, suppliers, customers and the local community are the main stakeholders of a corporation. Deontological Ethical Theory The fundamental principle of deontological theory of ethics is the fulfillment of obligations or responsibilities toward the self or other relevant individuals. According to Guha (2007), deontology means the science of duty. In the field of business, deontological moral systems refer to stress on why certain duties are performed in certain ways. The systems are concerned with moral rules and duties that are directly related to the business environment. This ethical theory thus, proposes that an action or conduct is judged to be right/wrong or good/bad based on its conformation to some rational duty. Commercial firms operating under this ethical theory are therefore expected to conduct themselves in a manner that best kowtows with their acknowledged obligations. The Deontological ethical system can be applied in business ethics to come up with a moral system for people in the business industry. These systems derive from the moral beliefs of those to be impacted if applied (Carroll &Buchholtz 2010). For an action to be morally right, it should be consistent with the universal human rights regulations and have a positive effect or consequences for its applicants. A moral system to be beneficial to any entity should champion for a mutually beneficial relationship among all the stakeholders of an entity. Since deontological systems are mostly developed from moral standing that guide the society, they help to shape decisions of individuals and determine motives behind actions, for instance, the adoption of the computerized employee scheduling system is meant to improve employee productivity and the satisfaction of the customers. What are the potential effects of computerized scheduling on employee morale? What are the consequences of these effects for Wal-Mart? It is important to accept the fact that the adoption of the computerized scheduling would reduce the morale of the Wal-Mart’s employees because of the impacts such technology has on the stability of their jobs, as well as the eminent creation of financial problems. The Kronos would require that the employees become very flexible in their working hours. This notion, coupled with the unpredictability of the computerized scheduling system. This unpredictability greatly affects the morale of the employees as their lives become disorganized due to the inconsistent paychecks and the irregular hours of work. The store managers may avoid some payments like full-time wages and overtime payments due to the system alerts. It is noteworthy that employees tend to give his or her best performance when working conditions are favorable, thus the reduced employee morale would drastically reduce the service delivery by the employees. References Carroll, A. B., &Buchholtz, A. K. (2010). Business & society: Ethics and stakeholder management. Mason, OH: CL-South-Western Cengage Learning. Guha, D. (2007). Practical and professional ethics. New Delhi: Concept Pub. Co. Freeman, R. E. (1988). A stakeholder theory of the modern corporation. Perspectives in Business Ethics. Friedman, M. (1970). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York Times Magazine (September 13th) Marx, K. (1959). Estranged labor. In “Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844” (M. Mulligan Trans.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. (Original work published 1932). Richards, I. (2004). Stakeholders versus Shareholders: Journalism, Business, and Ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 19(2), 119-129 Smith, A. (n.d.). Of the division of labor. In An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth Of nations. Retrieved on November 25, 2014 from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2HCH0001 Read More