Business ethic case - Essay Example

RACE The current report looks into responsibility for solving the problem of discrimination in the workplace. Discrimination is not just racial: it can also affect employees because of their sexuality, gender, age, disabilities, and other factors that come into play. But in the end, if the process of establishing negligence in terms of racist behavior in the workplace, the buck is passed from one to another. Some may say it is individual responsibility; others may argue that its HR. But, as the case example illustrates, perhaps the best place to look is the place where the buck stops.

“In the end, racist behavior by employees lands at the door of corporate executives. They face a dilemma: If they admit theres a problem, the company is exposed to lawsuits and negative publicity. But denial only makes matters worse. Until more employers confront the rise of ugly racism head on, Americans will continue to see behavior they thought belonged to a more ignominious age” (Bernstein, 2010). If employers confront this behavior, they can act on their impulse for social justice, and seriously influence company policy.

There are many stakeholders in the modern company, when one considers racism in terms of issues of causality, intention, and understanding. Different areas of the company can share the responsibility, even if the company ownership and directors must bear the ultimate responsibility. For it is the leadership of the company that determines its direction, and in eliminating bias, leadership can set an example as well as effective policy. Bias is being subjectively favorable towards one group or conclusion even when faced with contrary evidence.

It can be applied to a person’s race, gender, nationality, sexuality, disability, or other variables. For example, whether positive or negative a lot of reportage on African Americans tends to deal more with an in-group perceiving an out-group than a true cultural synthesis of understanding. This is far from a comprehensive definition of discrimination, which can also include social decisions that are based on the gender, disability, or race of a perceived group, to name just a few possible delineations.

The cause for most discrimination and prejudice in the workplace is the fostering of stereotypes that seek to assay out-group homogeneity from the perspective of the oppressor. This oppressor is also seen to organize the future of the system through a media system that emphasizes paternalist authority, causing psychological damage through discrimination of certain minority populations. Psychological damage in terms of self image can be attributed to the multifaceted cycle of discrimination in ways that connect it to homophobic and other oppression in many societies, in terms media and educational systems.

Historically, external perspectives often judge people according to their physical features or national origins, and try to paint a picture of the group without accounting for individual differences. This type of perspective in part explains the multifaceted cycle of discrimination in ways that connect it to the history of minority oppression in the U.S., in terms of poverty, low socio-economic status, and poor health and educational systems. Many are also concerned with how gender as well as ethnicity works in this cycle of discrimination that is used against the oppressed people, as shown through the struggles to make ends meet.

To further this impulse in the workplace is to deny the essentiality of a people, so overall, it is the responsibility of corporate executives to set firm examples and policies that are anti-racist.REFERENCEBernstein, L (2010). Racism in the workplace.