Human Resource Management - Assignment Example

Human Resource Management Name: Institution: Question 1: Ethical Issues in the Case Ethical concerns and areas of conflict arise in organizations regularly. In this case, a senior employee is engaging in fraudulent deals against the company. With the kind of responsibility that the senior vice president’s office has, forging receipts for more reimbursements from the company is unethical. The basic principle of ethics is about choosing the right instead of wrong as guided by moral standards. Ideally, this is just another form of corruption, which is one of the most unethical things that one could do with or against public entities. The fact that the senior vice president is engaged in a behaviour that is not right and one that he would not like to be known to his fellow employees of event, this is indicative of the unethical and unacceptable organizational behaviour. A junior employee catches Dan Murphy in fraud, and internal auditor is faced with a difficult situation contemplating on whether to report the issue to a senior person or give it a blind eye. In this case, the internal auditor is under moral obligation to report this to put a stop to the bad practice at the organization. The Human Resource Director is in the same situation and nonetheless, the ethical requirements and responsibilities that Sue Davenport has as a Human Resource Director force her to report the issue. Filling up managerial and leadership positions is a decision that every organization occasionally makes. The process is usually demanding, all in the effort to find a suitable person who has the company’s interest at heart. Nonetheless, a rising employee can be put in a leadership position by various means, including fraudulent ways. However, if they do not exhibit quality interview skills, they may be considered to be unfit for managerial roles. Since ethics is about principles of right and wrong, it is evident that the senior vice president was abusing office and duping the company of money not spent. Thirdly, the company and the top managers who are presented by this issue are faced with a question of ethics when a senior employee engages in unacceptable behaviour and junior employees seek punishment. When presented with the issue, the C.E.O initially rejects the claims and does not want to believe accusations. This is the wrong choice because essentially, he is letting fraud and breaches of standards go on in the organization. The right thing to do, at least by the standards of morality, is to put an end to such practices and to punish the crime so that others learn the essence of integrity and zero tolerance to unethical practices. According to the Utilitarian Theory (Robertson & Walter. 2007), these acts are unethical because they result in more harm and cost to the company than they do well or benefits. Besides the above, from a view of business ethics, the organization is not expected to retain employs that do not follow standards and go against ethics of conduct. Therefore, the company has an ethical issue at hand that has a bearing on its image, depending on whether they retain or relieve Dan Murphy of his position in the organization. Drawing from this, ethics in business remain vital tenets of business practice. Like the Human Resource Director postulates, if this the much that Dan Murphy has done in secrecy, then there could be more that has done that are yet to be known. The company has to do the right thing, thus ethical, and punish such a person. At least this is what designers of business ethics expect of the organization. If this is let to pass, it will render the ethics and standards useless and subsequent lack of guidance through such complex dilemmas. An ethical issue also resurfaces where, the human resource manager, Sue Davenport sticks to her ground to report Murphy to higher authorities in the organization. This is irrespective of the warning by Robert Drew that Murphy surpasses him in the organization rank. The human resources manager makes the choice to approach the CEO and report the matter. Ethical decision is defined as the choice made by an individual or a company among several alternatives, and it involves either the right choice or the wrong choice (Jex, 2002). Therefore, in choosing to report Murphy to the higher authorities in the company, Sue Davenport is faced with an ethical issue. The organization also faces the ethical issue of embracing what is right for the organization, or brushing off the wrongs done by Murphy and in trying to save the face of the organization. Either way, the decision to brush over what Murphy has done presents an ethical issue in that, if other senior employees decide to emulate what Murphy had done, there will be no justification for the company to punish the employees for Murphy also, was not punished. Question 2: What options does Sue Davenport have? From the basic principle of ethics, which is choosing between and right, moral requirements advocate for right over wrong all the time. Therefore, initially, all that could have been right in the perception of morality is for Sue Davenport to investigate the matter, as reported by the internal auditor, to the level she can. She would then report to the relevant authorities like the C. E. O, who would then engage the board of directors or a committee to hand the matter. Since the senior vice president was guilty for unethical organizational behavior as per Sue Davenport’s investigations, he should be punished accordingly. However, the final decision to this matter lies with Sue Davenport’s bosses and so whatever they decide will put the case to a close. Appreciably, to this point, Sue Davenport had done her bit in terms of adherence to ethics of conduct even by following the right procedures. This goes a long way in setting an example to other junior employees, in matters related to organizational behavior. In subsequence, Sue Davenport has the option of giving in and following the decision of the company’s audit committee just to save her job. It is clear that the company executives want to save the image of the company from the embarrassment of having the issue known by other employees. Based on the actuality that Murphy is a senior employee and a valuable one for that matter, the company is reluctant to discipline him for that case. In addition, the company’s CEO had threatened that, both Sue and Andrew can be replaced easily whilst retaining Murphy. However, Sue must have thought of the greater consequences awaiting the company and that is why she decided to pursue a correction of this kind of act. After all, this is part of her job and she has the responsibility of explaining to the C. E. O the said consequences, which are greater than saving a company image. The reason why it was right for Sue to do this is that in the event that this matter would be left to go unpunished, then the other employees would have the mentality that they can also do the same and get away with it. Consequently, ethics and moral organizational behavior shall have lost meaning this company. Despite all these desires and explanations, she still had to fall in line and follow the decision made by the committee. To the point detailed above, Sue Davenport had done the best she could in trying to maintain relevance of ethics. Her efforts were meant to show the other employees that ethics and codes of conduct are important to the organization. Although she had handed over the issue to the higher authorities who came up with an undesirable decision, she could have opted to protest the decision. She could have chosen to leak the information regarding Murphy’s actions to the other junior employees. The outcome would have been that, the employees would rally their support to have him removed from office. However, this could have turned her into an activist rather than a Human Resource Director. Even more interestingly, such an option would have jeopardized her future in the company. Consider that when she first mentioned this issue to the CEO, her job was threatened and it was made clear to her that it was very easy to replace her together with Andrew. Nonetheless, this would have been a wrong choice because other ethical questions would have arisen regarding her actions and those of other employees. This then would afford the managers a good ground on which to relieve her of her duties. Question 3: Analysis of Answers in light of moral theories John Straut Mill, the proponent of Utilitarian theory holds that, when deciding among actions that should be taken, the greatest utility should always be aimed, whether the action decided leans to the right or the wrong side (Robertson & Walter 2007). In analysing, the best available option for Sue, the human resource manager, took the option of agreeing with everyone though reluctantly that, it was not worthy to punish Murphy for many in the company did not know the actions that he had done. In the end, her job was not compromised and Murphy had agreed that he was not going to fraud the company again. In the end, the Utilitarian theory comes into perspective in justifying that the highest utility has been achieved for the parties that were affected (Robertson & Walter. 2007). This is in the sense that, Murphy retained his job, Sue had performed her duties as a human resource manager together with Robert Dew, the internal auditor and their jobs are no longer at stake, the company on other hand had retained its valuable employee (Murphy). In addition, the company has saved its image by saving the embarrassment it could have faced had other employees known that such senior staffs were capable of defrauding the company among other justifications which can be outlined to show that the highest utility had been achieved for the greatest number. At least according to Robertson and Walter (2007), these acts are unethical because they result in more harm and cost to the company than they do well or benefits. Looking at the senior vice president’s behaviour from this theory’s view, he defrauds the company of some money. In fact, he does this at the expense of the company and the other employees. It is at the expense of the company in the sense that the company spend, or rather losses money that could have been used on other profitable purposes. On the other hand, the employees are in expense because this practice could contribute to limitation of resources and equipment in the company. At the end of the day, some employees are unable to complete their tasks or achieve their objectives because of lack of resources. It does not stop there but rather leads on to the possibilities of organizational conflicts, for example, conflicts due to incompatibility of goals. Organization Conflict Theory holds that when Dan Murphy sets to pursue his own interest and goals at the compromise of organization objectives, the other departments fail since their goals depend on Murphy executing his tasks. However, when he puts his interests before those of the organization, then his contributions to the organization become invalid and so does his relevance in the organization. Teleological theory on the other hand states that, an action cannot be termed as right or wrong by itself. The results of the actions are the ones that make it right or wrong (Bandura, 2002). In simpler terms, the inclination to decide when behaviour of an action is either right or wrong reflects teleological theory. Concerning this, the results of Murphy are the ones that make the action he did to be termed as wrong. It was found that, he has defrauded the company money that can amount to $30,000 over the three years through extremely expensive meals, multiple receipts from the same taxi companies for same days, duplicate meal receipts and other suspicious charges. His actions can be termed as wrong. Another incidence is the manner in which the issue was handled. It seems inappropriate for Murphy to go unpunished and this would not have applied if junior members were involved in such an ethical issue. The CEO and the audit committee in making their decision considered what was best for the company. They choose to let Murphy off the hook. Despite the fact that it was a small issue, Murphy needed to be reprimanded to serve as an example to the other employees. Through this, they would have sent the right message to employees that no form of unethical conduct can be condoned in the organization. The other theory is the deontology theory, which was to concretize ideas supported by Immanuel Kant and Ross W. The theory states that, what makes something bad or good is the fact that it in a way conforms to some rational duty (Waller, 2005). Though Robert is a junior staff in the company, he feels that its right and he will be fulfilling a duty if he reports the ethical issues that are related to Murphy’s actions. The basic principle of the theory revolves around the concept of fulfilling duties towards others and self. When Robert chooses to report the issue, he does so since he believes that the action conforms to his duty as an internal auditor in the company. This theory also ought to have guided the CEO and the audit committee in making their decision (Leonard & Dunn, 2009). They failed to make good use of the theory when they opted to get Murphy out of the hook. Based on their positions, they have a duty to reprimand Murphy but they failed to do so. Though it is arguable that they did so for the benefit of the company, it would have been right if they took the right measures in dealing with the problem. Finally, another theory that proves relevant in analyzing the ethical issues, in this case, is the Categorical Imperative Principle (Bordum, 2002). In this view, an action becomes unethical when an individual engages in certain activities yet they have no moral rights to do so. Evidently, Dan Murphy has no moral right to seek compensation with fake receipts for the fund not spent on behalf of the company. According to this theory, he is entitled to compensation of money paid on behalf of the company only and not any other reimbursements that he thinks he deserves. On the other hand, the human resource director has the right and full responsibility of following up this issue, and informing his relevant authorities. As such, it was within the ethics of conduct for her to investigate the senior employee on the matter at hand, before approaching the senior most personnel. References Bandura, A. (2002). Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education, 31, 101-119. Waller, B. (2005). Consider Ethics: Theory, Readings, and Contemporary Issues. New York: Pearson Longman. Leonard, J. & Dunn, P. (2009). Business & Professional Ethics for Directors, Executives & Accountants. Boston: Cengage Learning. Robertson, M. and Walter, G. (2007). A critical reflection on utilitarianism as the basis for psychiatric ethics. Part 1: Utilitarianism as an Ethical Theory, 2.1. Bordum, A. (2002). The Categorical Imperative: Analysing Immanuel Kant’s Grounding for Metaphysics of Morals. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. Read More