Introduction
In all spheres of life, people have their rights and responsibilities, and it is of vital importance to respect all of them. In business, employees and employers have to develop mutual trust and understanding in order to achieve high performance, success, and various benefits. The purpose of this paper is to discuss workers’ rights and responsibilities and leaders’ ethical duties. Moreover, several ethical business dilemmas and their explanation will be provided.
Employees’ Rights and Responsibilities
The staff must do their work thoughtfully and carefully. This condition is of vital importance because it is related to the company’s success and may affect other workers’ safety. Employees have the right to a safe workplace that is free of all potential safety hazards, and they are legally able to refuse to perform any tasks that put them in immediate danger of severe harm. This is rather crucial to know and respect since this directly relates to the health and life of workers and the reputation of the company and its leaders. Employees have also the right to be free from harassment of all types, including, for instance, gender, age, religion, and race discrimination. Workers need to feel protected and cannot be made ashamed of being female or too young. All employees deserve to be heard and respected, and if they are, the company’s performance will be high.
Employers’ Ethical Responsibilities
The responsibilities of the organization’s leaders are divided into legal and ethical. The second group includes those duties of a leader that he or she needs to follow in order to maintain a good reputation and great relationships with employees, including mutual trust and understanding. For example, employers have the moral duty to provide their staff with reasonable expectations, fair pay, and a safe work environment.
Moreover, leaders of the organization have to ensure that the staff understands corporate ethical policy. Thereby, employers need to organize ethics training and make all new workers attend them as a part of the onboarding process. This is indeed a crucial responsibility of a company’s leaders since not all employees are aware of ethical rules. Since it is essential for them not to make any unethical decisions and mistakes, they need to learn how to escape them.
Ethical Business Dilemma
An ethical business dilemma is a decision-making process issue with the necessity of choice between several possible options, neither of which may be considered entirely acceptable from the moral point of view. Even though most of such dilemmas come with relatively straightforward solutions, they are extremely challenging problems that are not easy to solve. That is why all leaders and employees need to have the skills and abilities that help to find the best solution in such situations.
The situation that happened a week ago to Rose, a supervisor of a major company, is a perfect example of an ethical business dilemma. The problem started when Mark, who is responsible for checking and signing a balance sheet, asked his friend and co-worker Mary to do his job that evening because he wanted to leave early and spend time with his son. Mary, whose work was completely different from that of Mark, agreed to help her friend and perform his duty. However, while counting his cash drawer, she made a significant mistake, which became evident a week later and was evaluated as a disaster.
That is when Rose, the supervisor, faced an ethical business dilemma since she had to determine who is guilty. On the one hand, this was Mark’s duty, which he decided to escape. He left his work without permission and asked a person who is not related to this position to take it; if Mark was more responsible, he would not let himself violate the company’s rules. On the other hand, Mary also broke the organization’s law by agreeing on performing someone else’s task, which led to a disaster.
Ethical Business Dilemma: Evaluation
There are two ethical theories from which it is possible to evaluate the described business dilemma. Utilitarianism is a moral perspective that distinguishes the wrong from the right by focusing on the outcomes of the situation. Punishing both of the employees equally or differently will teach Mark to be responsible for his duties and honest with his managers. As for Mary, she will learn to perform only her job and say no to her friends if their request is not appropriate.
The second theory, relativism, states that morality is determined based on the norms of one’s culture. Hence, what is right for one person may be completely wrong and unacceptable for another. It is evident that it was rather appropriate for Mark and Mary to behave like this and endanger the company’s performance. However, this is not acceptable for Rose, and this is why she decides to punish both of them.
Ethical Decisions: Employer and Employee Perspective
The ERMC Aviation company manages the contract for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is a customer experience program called Airport Customer Experience Specialist. Several days ago, Kevin, one of the managers of this program, decided to stay at work and finish some business. Suddenly, he heard that the computer of Elena, who is his co-worker, was making annoying noises. Realizing that she forgot to turn it off, Kevin went to her table and noticed a strange e-mail. It contained the information about Elena’s violation of the company’s rules, which was not yet evident for the leaders but promised to cause severe problems. Kevin was rather confused; he realized that he had to report this but was afraid to get punished for violating the Privacy Policy.
Another ethical business dilemma was faced by Carol, a recently hired manager. A week ago, she started feeling dizzy at work, but because of being new, she did not want to take a leave home. Three days after she suddenly realized that she made a crucial mistake the day she felt sick. This problem was already being eliminated, but no one could understand who was guilty of creating it. Carol did not know if she had to keep silent and save her reputation or tell everyone that it was her who made a mistake and should get punished.
Ethical Decisions: Explanation
In each of the described situations, there are two possible decisions. Kevin chooses to report his co-worker’s mistake and defend his violation. He defended himself by saying that this was not his intention to read Elena’s e-mails and find incriminating evidence on her. However, this random act let him discover a severe mistake that was posing a danger and seriously threatened the company’s success and reputation.
Carol, however, decided to keep silent and hide her mistake. She defended her choice by convincing herself that the issue she has created was almost eliminated and did not cause any severe consequences. Carol’s rationalization for this situation was that she was still inexperienced, and any new employee could have made the same mistake. Besides, she felt rather sick, and that is why she could not pay enough attention to her work in the first place. Moreover, Carol decided that if she tells the truth, it will not help anyone; instead, she chose to assist to solve the problem and keep the fact that she was guilty as a secret.