Ethical Dilemmas of Human Being - Essay Example

Ethical dilemmas Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Option 2 Introduction Different people behave in unique ways according to personal ethics which guide the person in behaving the way he or she behaves. Since people behave in different unique ways, there are differences in opinions between two or more people working together. Therefore, a dilemma situation arises when there are differences in opinions between individuals. At any workplace, there are many dilemmas which face the managers and they should be able to solve them in order to improve the relationship among the employees (Bellow 2004). If the management of a health organization is not able to address the ethical issues, it will be hard to maintain its quality of services of the organization as there will be conflicts among the employees at the workplace. In this essay, therefore, it will discuss the ethical dilemma in my workplace which occurred recently, my personal position on the ethical dilemma and the strategies for improving the ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemma description There are many ethical dilemmas which can occur at work places. If not properly managed, they can affect the performance of the organization. The ethical dilemma which has affected the performance in my workplace is nepotism (Elstrodt 2003). This is where the management of the organization fills vacant positions by employing their relatives who are not qualified and which is against the policies of the organization. This has led to poor performance of the company and has affected the morale of the employees. Recently, there our Health organization decided to expand operations to the new places and this created many vacant positions which needed to be filled. In order to ensure success of the new market operations, there were specific skills which were needed such as the dentists who are qualified and the pharmacists who are qualified (Elstrodt 2003). These skills will help to improve the management of the new venture so that it can be able to create a competitive advantage of the organization as well as improving the performance of the health facility. Instead of selecting the most qualified skills from those who applied, the human resource manager filled the vacant positions with his relatives who some were not qualified to take the positions. This created an ethical dilemma in the organization (Elstrodt 2003). The health providers had different feelings that the positions could have been filled by them through promotions as they had experience and some had worked for the company for more than five years. This ethical dilemma led to many conflicts between the management and the health service providers. The effect of the conflicts between the management and the health care providers is that there was low morale among the employees. It was difficult to manage the new venture because the employees did not cooperate to implement the new changes which could lead to success of the new venture (Laird 2006). It was decided by the top management that the opening of the new market be stopped until further notice. Some of the employees who had complained about nepotism were dismissed and this led to restructuring of the organization to create good relationship among the employees. My personal position In my view, the human resource manager had caused all the problems in our health organization. This is because he did not consider the organizational policies concerning recruitment and selection. Instead, he decided to favor employees from his family who were not qualified to take up the position. The manager made decisions which are unethical and this led to ethical dilemmas in the way the human resource manager conducted himself (Judy & Miriam 2013). In my own opinion, the human resource manager could have filled the vacant positions with qualified employees either from the internal source or external sources through advertisement. Alternatively, the human resource manager could have promoted some of the employees to new positions because they had experienced as they had worked for the organization for some time. This could have encouraged the employees to work together as a team towards the achievement of the new venture. Hiring the right skills to fill the vacant positions has the following rationale; To start with, hiring the right skills will improve the performance of the new venture. For instance, an experienced marketing team could enable the organization to offer quality medical services well, which can lead to acceptance of the services in the new place (Salter 2007). This could have enabled our organization to achieve better results in opening the new venture in the new market. Further, through hiring the right skills could have motivated the employee to work together as a team. The human resource manager could have done internal sourcing before going external sourcing (Salter 2007). Some of the internal employees had relevant experience to take up various positions instead of bringing new blood to the organization. Therefore, hiring the right skills could have motivated other health providers. On the other hand, through hiring the right skills could have improved the reputation of the organization. The employees will be satisfied with their positions and they will talk good of the company (Baker & Dahl 2009). This will promote the reputation of the company, hence it will be able to attract and retain competent skills from the labor market. Through these skills, the performance of the organization will improve and it will even be easier to open up the new health center. Finally, if the manager could have hired the right skills through effective screening it could have led to selection of employees without any favors. In this effect, it could be easier to discipline the employees in cases of any indiscipline (Baker & Dahl 2009). Nepotism makes it hard to discipline the family members of the senior human resource manager. Through discipline, the employees will be responsible and behave ethically and this could promote the health services of the organization. Strategies and actions to avoid nepotism There are many actions and strategies which could be applied to protect the organization against nepotism. The first action is to ensure the organization hires the right skills. Hiring the right skills can only be achieved if there are procedures which should be followed when recruiting and selecting health service providers. There should be a vetting panel whose responsibility to find out how the recruitment exercise was done (Baker & Dahl 2009). If the human resource manager did not follow up the procedures, he will be warned for the first time and if he repeats the unethical practice again he should be dismissed. One of the best strategies that the company can apply to avoid nepotism is setting clear employment policies and procedures. There are strict rules which should be followed when hiring employees for the organization (Salter 2002). For instance, vacant positions should be advertised, short listing done and then interviews done finally selection of the best employees is done. This process will help to avoid incidences of unethical practices such as nepotism. Another strategy which can be applied by the organization to avoid nepotism is by verifying personal information with the original documents (Salter 2002). This is one of the strategies that can be applied to ensure during recruitment, the applicants possess the real skills as their details. It helps to avoid nepotism because the recruitment panel will disqualify whoever details do not match the requirements as there is no personal decision for selecting employees. There should be thorough screening during the recruitment process. Before the employee is selected, the referees should be asked almost the same details as shown in the application documents. The aim of doing this is to determine if the applicant was genuine when providing references (Hantzes 2007). If the details do not much, the applicant should be disqualified due to different information between the applicant and the referees. In addition, there should be strict rules against nepotism which should be followed to the latter. The nepotism policy will help to reduce incidences of any favor when recruiting new employees (Nish 2005). If there is a breach of nepotism policy, the human resource manager will be held accountable for his actions. This will help to reduce incidences of nepotism at the workplace. Moreover, there should be employee scorecards which help to assess the performance of each employee. When an employee scores less than the expected results, the management can make some inquiries and follow up how the employee secured the position (Nish 2005). This will help to identify if the employee was selected for the job through favors hence nepotism will be discouraged. In addition, health care service providers should be involved in decision making for the organization. The employees should be asked how they feel about nepotism (Josephson 2007). If they think that nepotism is good for the organization, the organizational policy should be reviewed to consider the views of the employees. In most cases, the employees will be against nepotism hence the management has to develop strategies which discourage nepotism in the organization. Finally, the managers should make sure that all employees under his or her command should avoid any incidences of nepotism. For instance, the human resource manager should make sure that all staff under his command should avoid all practices which can lead to nepotism (Judy & Miriam 2013). This can be done by ensuring the policies and procedures of the company are followed to the latter. In this effect, every employee will be held responsible for his or her actions and they will do all they can in order to avoid nepotism so that they will not face disciplinary actions in case they engage in nepotism. Conclusion Ethical dilemmas are behaviors which lead to unethical behaviors such as nepotism. Different people behave differently in their workplaces because of their different values. Nepotism can affect the performance of an organization. At my workplace, nepotism has caused many problems in managing the performance of the organization. This is because through nepotism, the organization has hired incompetent skills to fill vacant positions which lower the quality of services and products offered to customers. It also lowers the productivity of the organization by lowering the morale of the employees. Among the strategies and actions which can be taken to avoid nepotism include setting clear policies for the organization which should be followed during recruitment. There should be clear ant nepotism policy, careful screening during selection, verifying personal details with the original documents use of employee score cards, and conduct periodic employee survey about nepotism and finally encouraging all health service providers such as dentists to avoid nepotism practices. References Baker, J & Dahl, J 2009, “How Are Your Ethics?” Associations Now, Griffith University, Brisbane. Bellow, A 2004, In Praise of Nepotism: A History of Family Enterprise from King David top George W. Bush, Anchor Books, New York. Elstrodt, H 2003, “Keeping the Family in Business,” McKinsey Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 94–103. Hantzes, N 2007, Ethics Helps, Not Hurts, Effective Decision Making, Executive Idealink, London, Elsevier Ltd. Josephson, I 2007, How to Improve Work Life with Ethical Behavior, Executive Idealink, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Judy, N & Miriam, S 2013, Favoritism, Cronyism, and Nepotism, Santa Clara University. Laird, P 2006, Pull, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Nish, S 2005, Good Ideas for Creating a More Ethical and Effective Workplace, Los Angeles, Josephson Institute of Ethics. Salter, F 2007, On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, London, Springer. Salter, F 2002, Risky Transactions: Trust, Kinship and Ethnicity, Dhaka, Bangladesh Read More