Key Employee Themes in Business and Professional Ethics - Case Study Example

Assignment 3. Key Employee Themes in Business & Professional Ethics

Part 1. Business and professional ethics and the theme of workplace rights

All employees largely enjoy similar rights as are entrenched in protected fundamental rights and State of Nature Rights. The latter refers to those rights that an individual would have regardless of whether there was a government or not and include the rights to life, freedom and pursuit of happiness. Societies create fundamental rights by limiting the net power available to individuals. In comparison, governments ensure economic rights by using tools like taxation to ensure that everyone has access to social rights and amenities like access to food, housing, education and clean water. There are six commonly found in the different lists of rights. First, all individuals are entitled to freedom from suffering from hunger, the elements and pain. Second, individuals are entitled to freedom from fear through enhanced security of their person and their property. Third, everyone is entitled to freedom from discrimination from available opportunities and resources based on their personal and physiological differences. Fourth, everyone enjoys freedom from suppression, which allows them to be themselves and do whatever activities are enjoyable to them without fear of retribution or denial from others. Fifth, freedom from injustice guarantees everyone due process during prosecution, fair taxation and a fair economy. Last, everyone is entitled to freedom from ignorance through access to basic education and awareness of laws, rules and regulations.

Modern day freedoms and liberties can be attributed to the progressivism movement that started in the 1800s whose aim was the expansion of the list of statutory rights. Its efforts played a significant role in ensuring everyone had access to education, brought an end to slavery, granted women the right to vote and many others. Rights are, however, limited to the ability of the provider to guarantee such rights, which is why governments can only guarantee things that are within their purview like ensuring everyone has a phone. They are however unable to guarantee that everyone can live to reach a certain age since guaranteeing life is out of their control. This problem links rights to some other prerequisite condition without which the rights become invalid. Nature, the self and humanity are the three providers of rights in the world. Employers and producers inherently become rights providers due to their provision of value to consumers and jobs to their employees. Goods and jobs represent a mean to an end; goods being a means to solve consumer needs and jobs providing workers with their livelihood. There are however human elements in all these transactions that need to be treated with due care and respect or they run the risk of instrumentalism. Instrumentalism is the view that one should only do those things that result in a useful outcome to himself or herself effectively resulting in selfishness and disregard for the rights to fair treatment of others.

Providers can be categorised into natural and social providers. The former includes nature from where materials for making clothes and natural shelters can be found in fur and caves respectively. It also includes some individuals themselves especially those who have to depend on themselves for their survival and social constructs that pool resources and strengths together like families, herds and tribes. Social providers on the other hand also have three major classes that include free market entities, forced market entities that prescribe a set of statutory goods and mixed market associations of which universities are a typical example. The issue of providers and rights brings to the fore the question of what exactly constitutes the highest good. Several theories have tried to answer this question. Hedonism prioritises pleasure and happiness as being the highest good while epicurism gives good health, refined living and longevity more weight. Maximalism is the view that any proper action is worthy of being carried out fully although this raises the risk of developing an addiction in cases where pleasure is taken as the highest good. Idealism uses rational and logical constructs like religious values, professional codes of conduct and many other laws to inform their processes and decision making to ensure that there is a balance between pleasure and work, which has always been a challenge, faced in the workplace.

Leaders in business must strive to keep abreast with changing workplace demographics and dynamics by developing flexible policies and rules to ensure that they remain compliant with legislations and statutes (Erlanger, Garth, Larson, Mertz, Nourse and Wilkins, 2005). Employees need to have a safe work environment in order to enhance their productivity and in return offer higher returns on investment to their employers by driving up revenues and profits. There should be a process in place that encourages people to take up more responsibilities, which will ensure an increase in the development of rights. Employers can encourage this by actively rewarding proactivity in their employee’s effectively promoting meritocracy and fostering innovation and creativity. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. Higher responsibility increases an individual’s bandwidth to make informed decisions by giving the sufficient basis to shortlist available choices.

Part 2. The Core Issues of Concern Regarding Discrimination in the Workplace

There are currently sufficient cases and statute laws that cover discrimination but companies are also required to actively include them in their policies. Statute laws are the formal laws governing any sovereign land or jurisdiction (Nussbaum, 2013). Statutes significantly affect ethical business decisions due to the common interactions and features between common laws and tort decisions. First, both statutes and ethics are advised by practical necessities and outcomes making them de facto propositions. Second, there are precedents created in common law during cases and trials that become acknowledged as basis for decision-making in cases moving forward even if they are yet to be formally recognised as statutes. It is common for government institutions and agencies to develop de facto statute laws from values found in common law and torts that enhance oversight and regulation of business enterprises beyond their scope. These de facto statutes further serve a more important role in enhancing the efficiency of the economy especially is cases where there are protected classes (Sekerka, Bagozzi and Charnigo, 2009). Special classes are those segments of the economy or trade, especially those in public procurement. The government might reserve some segments for specific groups, like people with disability and gender groups, in order to empower them to compete for tenders and as a result, improve their standards of living.

Changing workplace dynamics are causing the number of lawsuits pertaining to disability discriminations to rise significantly due to the rising tendency by many people to disregard certain types of disabilities (Morrison and Milliken, 2003). Employers are also increasingly facing discrimination suits against people with disabilities who feel that the use of Bona Fide Occupational Qualifiers (BFOQs) in selection processes and procedures infringes on their rights to fair competition. BFOQs are provisions that allow employers to avoid considering persons with disabilities for positions on the condition that they can explicitly prove that the position requires a set of prerequisite abilities on the part of the employee for it to be completed successfully. Although common law champions the principle of fairness and common sense effectively ensuring that, the priority is given to the person with the least opportunity. The Federal Government went against all precedents and business sense to create a law to ensure that employers awarded jobs to their most protected and potentially qualified applicants. It has opened up businesses to a higher exposure to expensive lawsuits if they award positions to unprotected classes candidates even in cases where the applicant from a protected class lacks the ability or capacity to effectively perform the job as it is designed at the time of its advertisement.

The law places the burden of proof on the employer in cases of class discrimination (Morrison and Milliken, 2003). The employer should demonstrate that the protected class applicant would be unable to successfully execute the roles and responsibilities of the advertised position even with training or if the job was redesigned to make it simpler. The statute has however brought a lot of sanities back into industries and has increased the efficiency talent and skills allocation. When an industry allocates the positions and roles with the least requirements and qualifications, it narrows their scope of focus for higher-level vacancies that require higher-level skills and temperaments. These statutes further protect employees with disabilities, and in a deed from protected classes, from discriminatory discharge from employment. Statute laws can be found incorporated in many other areas of employment practices that sometimes even provide recourse to employers. Statute and tort laws have further played an important role in increasing the rights of employees in the workplace. Traditionally, employers had the right and ability to terminate employment contracts at will without the need to justify their actions and decisions, which was known as the At-will doctrine or principle. The At-will principle is affected by five factors; first, employment laws have evolved to require employers to develop and follow due process especially with regard to dismissals. Second, increased awareness has increased employees’ ability to actively negotiate the terms of their employment contracts effectively reducing their employers’ power to exercise their At-will power. Third, increased discrimination suits from protected classes have encouraged employers to practice due process when handling employee matters. Fourth, employees are protected from dismissal if the basis for the dismissal would have meant they would have been in contravention of established laws and legislations. Last, the prevalence of good faith covenants has enhanced employer-employee relations making each party to act in consideration of the other.

Increasing awareness has played a significant role in the development of laws like those against discrimination and sexual harassment by influencing the ways people speak up for their rights and values. Speaking out has helped highlight discriminations that were not covered under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It has further highlighted disparate impacts of some employment policies and practices resulting in the development of the reasonable person standard that provides courts with guidelines for determining fairness. Employee welfare like health further got a boost from the classification of businesses as social entities due to them having contracts between people. Businesses are therefore mandated to collect taxes and court awards involving third parties, compensate employees even when they do not have work for them, and provide employees and their dependents with healthcare insurance. The government’s mandate was increased to allow it to set wage rates.

Part 3. The Core Issues of Concern in Whistle Blowing

All organisations have systems in place for problem reporting which mostly entail a chain where problems are escalated up a chain depending on their nature, the level of difficulty and decision-making level and power required (Massaro, 2015). External whistleblowing refers to the actions of an employee to publicly highlight malpractices in his or her organisation after attempts to have them addressed at the organisation level continuously fail while internal whistle-bowing refers to situations where employees who discover malpractices and report them to the organisation’s officials rather than their immediate supervisor. Whistle blowing, however, brings to question the morality of the whistleblower since by skipping laid down procedures for reporting and effectively the chain of command, they are in breach of norms. There are five characteristics of whistleblowing. First, the problem in question must harm or be potentially harmful to people or the environment. Second, there should be tangible and verifiable proof of the existence of the problem through documentation. Third, internal mechanisms for problem resolution must have been exhausted. Fourth, the communication of the problem must ignore normal channels established in the organisation for reporting. Last, the whistleblower must believe that his or her decision and action to report malpractice will resolve the problem.

Whistleblowing has been blamed for being unethical in some cases especially where they are motivated by financial gain or media attention or where the whistleblower is undertaking the exercise out of spite. These can usually be determined by cross-checking the facts and evidence of the malpractice. Whistleblowers are given protection through the Whistle Blowers Protection Act of 1989 that ensures protection against retaliation, clearly defined timelines for the processing of complaints, guaranteed whistleblower identity anonymity and ensured that whistleblowers received their share of settlement payments promptly. These settlements might include reinstatement into former positions of seniority, back pay, interest, any other compensatory compensations to make the worker whole and any other distinct damages as might be awarded by the courts. Employers can institute some measures to encourage internal whistleblowing and ensure they maintain control over the narratives surrounding malpractices in their organisations. First, they can create well-defined processes for the documentation of complaints and how they are handled. Second, starting an employee hotline to ensure anonymity of whistleblowers is sure to encourage more people to volunteer information on runaway corruption and unethicality. Third, the firm should endeavour to carry out thorough investigations as soon as they receive complaints and last, a detailed report of the findings of the investigations should be made available to all stakeholders.

Whistle blowing, however, has several dire consequences making it usually an action of last resort. Whistleblowing incidents result in loss of jobs and demotions, lawsuits for breaches of contract and confidentiality, health and psychological problems, drug and alcohol abuse, loss of livelihoods, homes and the breakup of families, divorce from inability of spouses to withstand the pressures associated with the scrutiny of such high profile cases, attempted suicides and bankruptcy for the involved parties. Companies can limit their exposure to possible whistle blowing through confidentiality and privacy agreements and the threat of legal recompense through tort lawsuits. Companies can use tortious interference to prejudice whistleblowers effectively making it hard for their testimonies to stand in court and in public opinion. Whistleblowing can be traced back to the ancient Greeks where Plato’s Euthyphro also became the first known instance of an ethical dilemma. Most whistleblowing cases involve ethical dilemmas and the inability of the available structures and systems to adequately address them in a sustainable manner. Organisations and leaders must be able to strike a balance between self-interest and public interest even in situations where their actions might not be necessarily illegal but only unethical. Illegality is a factor of the things one cannot do while unethicality refers to the things one should not do.

All employees have a duty to their companies to ensure that they maintain high levels of ethical behaviours. Employers can ensure this by enhancing their reporting systems and procedures to ensure they are fair and accountable. They should further ensure they handle reports with expediency to enhance the credibility of their established systems and processes. Officials should further stay abreast with developments in their company to ensure they are able to hold their managers accountable and increase their ability to adequately respond to allegations of wrongdoing. Ignorance can no longer be a defence especially where a company’s actions significantly threaten the well-being of the public or of the environment. Leaders have a responsibility to their followers to set a good example that will ensure they act in accordance with the law and laid down ethics policies.

Part 4. The Core Issues of Concern in Hostile Work Environment

A hostile work environment is a term used to describe any workplace where all employees or a group of employees are subjected to some form of discrimination or prejudice without adequate processes to report or have action taken. Discrimination defines any actions or speech directed towards an individual or group based on their differences in gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, age or in retaliation for actions taken against them for misconduct. Hostile work environments adversely affect employee morale and motivation effectively decreasing their productivity and increasing their turnover (Judge, Scott and Ilies, 2006). Many legislations have been passed over history to ensure that organisations, though privately owned entities, consciously adhere to the rule of law and human rights laws. Another common example of a hostile workplace condition today is sexual harassment, which entails the solicitation of sexual favours for services or other considerations. There are two types of sexual harassment legally recognised under the law; first, cases where an individual’s privileges are pegged to his or her ability to consent to requests of a sexual nature. Second, the lack of adequate policies and procedures to make the workplace free from any forms of sexually explicit overtures that make the workplace untenable for some or all employees.

Due to the subjective nature of sexual harassment, claims have to be supported with specific elements especially if they are presented before a jury in a court of law. First, the accuser must prove that his or her harasser explicitly made a demand for a personal relationship. Second, he or she must further prove that the harasser had expressly indicated that the delivery of offering of benefits or considerations being sought would be subject to his or her acceptance of the conditions above. Benefits and considerations in this case often refer to employment, continued employment or career development opportunities, or a combination of two or more or all of the above mentioned. Third, the accuser must prove that at the time of the incident, his or her harasser was in a position of power in the organisation relative to his or her own or held an agency role. Last, the accuser should be in a position to prove that as a result of the incident, they suffered some form of harm or loss regardless of its nature. The nature of a loss, in this case, can be either psychological or financial. Psychological losses are those that might cause an employee to lose their morale and motivation to work or to go into the workplace. Financial loss refers to the monetary losses that an employee loses due to his or her refusal to comply with the demands of the sexual harassment incident.

Antidiscrimination and harassment statutes were developed to ensure that organisations treat employees like human beings and not as property. Property mentality is the major cause of harassment in the workplace. Once people, especially those in power, begin to view their subordinates and the relationship between them in terms of property, that is where seeds of contempt are planted and discrimination and harassment become the order of the day. Organisations are very much like families, with leaders playing the role of parents and employees children. Just like children, employees emulate the actions of their leaders which can create a situation where there is runaway harassment ensuring that the work environment is hostile and untenable. It can further result in the unhealthy transfer of domestic roles by managers who might want to run their departments and indeed the organisation like they would their household; commanding and assuming to know what is best all the time. Possessiveness in the workplace is unhealthy and counterproductive as it makes employees feel bullied and pressured to do things that would rather not be doing in the first place. Harassment can also escalate into targeted character assassination and sanctioned stalking through structured work assignments and travel. 1986 was an exceptional year for the fight against workplace harassment with the establishment of the precedence to hold employers culpable in sexual harassment cases where sexual favours are a prerequisite for considerations and benefits. This principle came into effect during the case between Meritor Savings Bank versus Vinson.

Five years later, The Supreme Court ruled that any employer was culpable in the event that their employees were victims of sexual harassment even where no psychological harm is involved. Four elements were also added to the definition of the hostile work environment to avoid ambiguity. First, it does not include any quid pro quo; second, it increased its scope to cover employee-to-employee relations; third, employers would be held liable even if they were ignorant of the events or were not involved; last, the amount of damages awarded would be inversely proportional to the conscious development of preventive policies. These principles increased accountability by forcing institutions to ensure that they remained proactive in enhancing their workplace environments. They further allowed employees an increased bandwidth to identify and report workplace bullying by outlining six principles. First, the situation must feature a difference in power. Second, there must be proof of disregard for the individuality of a person. Third, others must have been able to come to the aid of the victim. Fourth, the bully must have actively prevented the victim from accessing processes and institutions for legal recourse. Fifth, there must be evidence of disregard for one’s property. Last, there must be evidence of disregard for a person’s rights.