Steves Dilemma at his Workplace - Essay Example

 Most employees spend a greater part of their weekdays in their offices or other places of work. However, the employees face all types of dilemmas at work. Most of these dilemmas come on a regular basis. Thus, the employees are in a position to resolve the common workplace dilemmas without putting their job in danger or annoying their employers (Drucker). For Steve, who is an employee at an auditing firm called Ryan and Associates, faces a similar dilemma. Steve has to do an auditing for Pogo Retail Inco. However, he is not able to complete the work for HOC because of the urgency Pogo needs. Several weeks passed and the HOC work still remained unattended. Due to the large amount of work on Steve’s desk, his supervisor, Marcia, reassigns the task previously assigned to him to somebody else. The task to do an auditing for Help Our Children (HOC) is then reassigned to Abby. Abby was previously an employee at HOC but is a new employee at Ryan and Associates. Abby is assigned the task instead of Steve since he is the one who prepared the report the needs the auditing while at HOC (King). Interestingly, the supervisor does not allow Abby to sign any work papers despite being assigned the task. Her reason for not wanting Abby to sign any work papers is to avoid trouble. It therefore means the supervisor still does not trust the potential in Abby despite her being a new employee in the firm and being the one who prepared the report that she needs to work on. On the other hand, Steve is the one responsible for signing the work papers. In signing these work papers, he will be the one responsible for any resulting trouble. Steve is in a big dilemma since he is the one who has not been assigned the task and it is not his duty to sign the papers. The papers need to be signed by Abby since she is the one who has done the work. However, the duty to sign the papers is assigned to Steve to notify Abby. To some extent, Steve does not hurt Abby by signing her documents but Abby would find the signing of her work as a discredit to her abilities. Therefore, Steve does not want any blame from both Abby and Marcia since Abby can blame him for signing her papers while Marcia can equally blame him in case he does not sign the papers. On his side, he has to think twice before taking a step of signing the papers since he would be held responsible of any trouble that may arise. In the long run, doing anything concerning the signing of the papers may end up destroying his relationship with either Marcia or Abby (King). What Steve should have done Steve should have told Marcia that he thinks that it was not right for Abby to do the work. Since Abby was a former employee at HOC, it would not have been right for her to audit their books. In addition, she is the one who had prepared the records that needed auditing. In any case, she made a mistake while preparing the records at HOC since she could do anything to alter the documents and the mistake could not be noticed. Therefore, in case HOC realizes that Abby is the one who did the work, he is likely to take an action against Ryan and Associate. Generally, this would build a bad reputation Ryan and Associate with its clients. To avoid putting job at risk, Steve should have asked Marcia for more time to do the work. In case, Marcia would insist that she wants Abby to the work, Steve should have secretly exchanged his work with the one Abby was to do since there were risks involved in case Abby did the work. If that that would not work, he should have created some time and do the work (Lao-tzu). Steve’s other options Steve would still have the option of talking to Marcia again over the issue at hand. He needs to talk to Marcia and convince her concerning the risks involved in assigning the work to Abby. He also needs to tell Marcia that assigning the task to Abby can destroy the reputation of Ryan and Associates. Marcia needs to understand that Abby is not the one who is fit for doing the work despite her reasoning that Abby is the one who is fit for the work since she previously worked at HOC. To Marcia, she thinks that since Abby is the one who prepared the reports, she can effectively audit them. Steve therefore needs to convince her that even though Abby is the one who prepared the reports, she should not audit them. Equally, he needs to convince her that assigning the duty to Abby will cause more harm than good. On the other hand, Abby needs to be given some grace period to adjust to her new place of work before she is assigned such a sensitive task. However, the grace period should be limited and it needs clear articulation from Marcia who is the supervisor. She can then establish the expected objectives Abby needs to achieve once the grace period has elapsed. After the grace period, Abby can be assigned duties and be held responsible for her own work instead of spreading the risk to her colleagues like Steve (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania). In addition, he has the option of finding another colleague to do the work but not Abby. Finding a substitute for Abby would neither cause problems to Steve nor Ryan and Associates. At the same time, using somebody else apart from Abby would not destroy the reputation of Ryan and Associates. However, Steve would still find himself in trouble. Doing contrary to his supervisor’s instructions would still land him in trouble. He will still be the one answerable in case of any trouble. Moreover, reassigning the task to somebody else would have its own ethical implication. For the supervisor, she would know that the work was done by Abby, but in the real sense it will have been done by somebody else. It would therefore mean that Abby would take credit of another person’s work (King). Taking a step of reassigning the work to somebody else would be unethical. Abby would feel being belittled and harassed by Steve when her task is assigned to somebody else. Therefore, she can take action against Steve by reporting him to higher authority or Marcia who is the supervisor. In so doing, it would cause confrontations in the organization (Lao-tzu). Steve can create more time by staying up late to finish the HOC case to avoid more troubles. On the very day that the work was assigned to Abby, he would have told her not to do the work but leave it to him. He would then work on Pogo Retail Inc. case even till late in the night. However, doing so would still raise ethical questions, either from senior management or Marcia. They would question him why he has stayed at workplace till late. Thus, it will unethical for him to do official work of the firm during odd hours. To Marcia, she will question him why he did not allow Abby to do the work and submit it in the required timeframe as she had wanted. He would then be considered to be doing his work in an unprofessional manner. Lastly, Steve would have the option of talking to Marcia’s supervisor. Taking this step would make Marcia to bow to pressure of Steve not wanting her to give the work to Abby. However, doing this would still cause more problems to him. For the top management, it knows that Steve is the one who has the mandate of doing the auditing for the firm. Taking a step of reporting a colleague would be violating ethics that are required of him. He needs to solve the issue with his supervisor instead of reporting her to her supervisor (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania). Multiple analysis of the problem From the discussion, it is evident that being under pressure to deliver can distract employees. In most cases, employees tend to get distracted from the truth deterred from behavior that can help them in the long run. Pressure on employees to deliver on some growth targets amid unsure economic policies can probably lead to fraudulent practices. These practices include corruption and bribery. Within the financial sector, irregularities in financial reporting are so rampant in most companies. Interestingly, the board of directors and senior managers are aware of these incidents. For example, in India, many believe that offering cash payments to retain or win business can be justified. However, others believe that financial reporting is mostly exaggerated (King). Dealing with dilemma Different leaders who have different leadership styles would deal with the dilemma differently. For a good leader, he or she should not have assigned the task to Abby. Instead, she should have assigned the task to Steve. For Marcia, she seems to use a commanding leadership style in her position. She stops Steve from doing the work, but forcefully assigns it to Abby without consulting anyone. Further, she directs Steve to sign the documents which Abby is supposed to sign. In the process, she forcefully puts Steve’s job at risk (Drucker). For Steve, he is a good leader. He takes every duty assigned to him with seriousness. In this case, he practices a visionary style of leadership. He has a vision to achieve the best from whatever he does. He attends to tasks that need urgency at the expense of those of those that do not need urgency. Reflective exploration Being in a leadership position at Ryan and Associates, I would follow all the professional rules and ethics to ensure that other employees deliver the objectives of the firm. I will articulate specific performance objectives for employees to ensure that I do not spoil my reputation as a leader. Explaining objectives that employees need to achieve will be an important factor when I want them to achieve these objectives easily. Works cited Drucker, Peter. Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review Article. 1999. Print. December 15, 2014. King, Ralph T J. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Apr 25, 1996. pg. A1, 1 page. Print. December 15, 2014. Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching, Sacred Books of the East. 1991. Web. December 15, 2014. http://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/taote.htm Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. When Do Exaggerations and Misstatements Cross the Line? June 23, 2010. Print. December 15, 2014. . Read More