An ethical problem is when one is addressed to make a decision where conflict arises. In other words, this is when an organization’s moral standards are questioned. Ethical problems can be identified as a common occurrence, and everyone experiences it in life, basically at work, community, school, and even around family members. Ethical issues that happen to be serious can be categorized as ethical dilemmas; this refers to when one is pushed to choose where every action course is wrong in some important way. It is difficult to handle ethical issues without precedents or guidelines known. For this reason, people come up with ways of dealing with ethical issues. Strategies that show how ethical issues are analyzed, identified, and overcome in the experience of different life parts. Varying ethical issues are handled differently; for example, my past organization faced the ethical issue of discrimination and harassment, but the organization developed a process of dealing with and solving the issue.
What is the Nature of the Ethical Breakdown?
One of the most serious ethical problems in organizations is harassment and discrimination. When harassment and discrimination occur within an organization, the company might face financial and reputational consequences that are disastrous. Every working organization should be aware of the laws against discrimination and must be aware of workplace regulations to ensure employees are kept safe from unfair treatment. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (USEOC)defines the legislation of discrimination and harassment. Some of the legislation of discrimination and harassment defined by USEOC include legislation of age, which involves policies and treatment of individuals that are above 40 years of age (Arnold et al., 2019). The legislation also includes employees having a physical and mental impairment, and they here are given accommodations that are reasonable and equitable treatment.
What about the Situation do your question ethically?
Discrimination policies
I worked in a wheat flour company as a sales executive in the past, and I observed forms of discrimination and harassment due to colour, gender, handicap, ethnicity, and even age. Employee workplace discrimination, for example, based on a person’s race, culture, and ethnicity, can be portrayed in different forms. For example, an organization’s policies discriminate against people having varying ethnicities and race backgrounds, which might lead to disparate effects and disparate treatment and effects on employees. Employees can be divided into race-based classes, with varying promotion criteria and discipline (Nuseir & Ghandour, 2019). Still, employees can be placed in varying working sectors based on differences in race, ethnicity, and cultural orientation.
Employment Discrimination Laws
Job discrimination is banned in the federal and state laws in the Civil Rights Acts under Title VII. The laws of regulations that regulate the Civil Rights Act are usually enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the United States (Ross et al., 2019). The Civil Rights Act that equals chances must be granted to all employees within an organization, regardless of their ethnicity and race differences. The Civil Rights Act has also supported the Civil Service Reform Act as it prohibits punishment to anyone reported of practising ethnic discrimination.
What about the Situation do you find acceptable?
Job satisfaction and motivation
Behaviours of discrimination usually impact the satisfaction of all workers, not just those who are humiliated through discrimination. The work performance of employees determines the type of promotions, perks, and incentives given by the management to promote and motivate their productivity (Henning et al., 2017). When a particular worker realizes that candidates are promoted based on their gender, age, ethnicity considerations, one’s desire to develop the organization’s productivity through higher performance is, as a result, harmed. Equal employee treatment would help realize the full potential of the workers, and this would impact the company’s productivity and development at a higher rate.
How common is this problem?
Commitment, Loyalty, and turnover
Employees that faced prejudice in the wheat company regularly were highly inclined to quit working, and there occurred increasing turnover. Even if involuntary turnover is sometimes advantageous to the working organization, for example, through firing bad performance, excessive voluntary turnover makes an organization lose its experience and personnel that are competent (von et al., 2018). A company might incur higher costs in recruiting and training new replacements when excessive voluntary occurs, contributing to negative impacts on the production sector. For example, an employee will feel less motivated to work in the company if they feel they have no future in the company, leading to a decrease in the output. Even if an employee might not manage to secure another job, the fact that one does not remain permanently working in the organization means they are less devoted compared to those hoping to remain in the organization for a long time.
What guidance does the organization provide?
Reputation and Recruitment
An organization’s tactics of discrimination have a negative impact on its reputation in the community (Ballard & Easteal, 2018). For example, if a company provides its clients with poor services due to particular demographic factors of race and ethnicity, they may be affected by discrimination. A company’s clients can also be subject to indirect discrimination. Another form of discrimination in the flour company was that the store’s entry was accessible through stairs; this denied disabled client’s ability to conveniently access the firm whenever they needed to make orders. The impact of disgruntled employees should be underestimated on the image of the company and the probability of acquiring competent employees. Dissatisfied employees complain to their families and friends, and they can decide to move their skills to other organizations. Job searchers who happen to be smart carry out thorough homework before applying to an opportunity; therefore, a firm with a record lawsuit involving discrimination of workers who have openly expressed their displeasure in their working experience with the company can face a damper during the efforts for recruitment. Proper employee treatment will always drive the best applicants towards the field of seeking job opportunities in a favourable organization.
What actions would you recommend?
Company managers should be respectful of the cultural and ethnic diversity of employees. Professional demeanour and speech should be maintained within the organization, but not throwing insults to employees when giving orders and providing appropriate instructions when production standards as not met. Supervisors should refuse to engage, instigate, and condone discrimination and harassment. The senior employee should not make cultural or racial related comedy and pranks around the employees’ environment. I would recommend employees to first familiarize themselves with an organization’s workplace regulations and adhere to them to avoid unnecessary quarrels with their seniors.
What did you learn new about managing ethical challenges?
Discrimination and harassment are terrible practices within an organization and are unlawful; this is as described by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under Title VII (Williams et al., 2017). The Acts include the Americans with Disabilities Act, Age in Discrimination in Employment Act, and Genetic Information and Nondiscrimination Act. In the governments’ practice of preventing discrimination, employees are directed by state rules on the steps to take whenever discriminated. I also learned that managers spend a lot of time and effort dealing with employees complaints of discrimination. Some organizations do not have the Human Resource department, which aids in dealing with discrimination and harassment cases, and whenever such complaints arise, an attorney is necessarily hired to investigate and make a report regarding employee treatment in that company. It is essential to hire an attorney if a company does not have an HR department as it provides a bottom-line insight of equalness’ even if the allegation is dropped at the end.
Ultimately, varying ethical issues are handled differently; for example, my past organization faced the ethical issue of discrimination and harassment, but the organization developed a process of dealing with and solving the issue. Employees that faced prejudice in the wheat company regularly were highly inclined to quit working, and there occurred increasing turnover. Employee workplace discrimination is based on race, culture, and ethnicity. Job discrimination is banned in the federal and state laws in the Civil Rights Acts under Title VII. Behaviours of discrimination usually impact the satisfaction of all workers, not just those who are humiliated through discrimination. Even if involuntary turnover is sometimes advantageous to the working organization, for example, through firing bad performance, excessive voluntary turnover makes an organization lose its experience and personnel that are competent. An organization’s tactics of discrimination have a negative impact on its reputation in the community. Proper employee treatment will always drive the best applicants towards the field of seeking job opportunities in a favourable organization.
References
Arnold, D. G., Beauchamp, T. L., & Bowie, N. E. (2019). Ethical theory and business. Cambridge University Press.
Ballard, A. J., & Easteal, P. (2018). The secret silent spaces of workplace violence: focus on bullying (and harassment). Laws, 7(4), 35.
Henning, M. A., Zhou, C., Adams, P., Moir, F., Hobson, J., Hallett, C., & Webster, C. S. (2017). Workplace harassment among staff in higher education: a systematic review. Asia Pacific Education Review, 18(4), 521-539.
Nuseir, M. T., & Ghandour, A. (2019). Ethical issues in modern business management. International Journal of Procurement Management, 12(5), 592-605.
Ross, S., Naumann, P., Hinds-Jackson, D. V., & Stokes, L. (2019). Sexual harassment in nursing: ethical considerations and recommendations. OIJN Online J. Issues Nurs, 24.
von Gruenigen, V. E., & Karlan, B. Y. (2018). Sexual harassment in the work place: Its impact on gynecologic oncology and women’s health. Gynecologic oncology, 149(2), 227-229.
Williams, B. M., McEntee, C., Hanson, B., & Townsend, R. (2017). The Role for a large scientific society in addressing harassment and work climate issues. Annals of Geophysics, 60.
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