Business Ethics
1. What is the ethical dilemma in this case?
According to Collins (2009), rating other employees or providing feedback on others may cause negative impact on employees who may "anxious about giving or receiving critical information (p. 197)" about each other. Although, it must be realized that it is better to rate employees than to rank, as this case is doing (rating the honesty level of employees rather than ranking employees with regards to their honesty level); however, it is necessary to realize that the opinion of the union president has some serious basis.
Mainly, we got into a dilemma of employees not rating or providing reliable and truthful feedback. It could be that someone may have gotten trouble or quarrel with another employee and this could be a motivation to give a poor feedback. Even if the survey is warning employees that giving false appraisal is a serious one, it is impossible to separate the emotion or past experiences of employees from their responses to the survey. As a result, the survey becomes more “ratting” on each other, as the union president puts it.
Second, it must be noted that the case is not fair in its perspective. It is giving employees the options to sign their name or remain anonymous. It could have been that the case generally asked employees to provide names. This will help the study to verify the truthfulness of the results. If employees remain anonymous, it could lead to false claims because they won't be subjected to questions regarding what they have written in the survey.
2. What is the conflict in values that causes the dilemma?
Trevino & Nelson (2010) noted that conflict in values happen within the ethical dilemma principle when two or more values are in direct or indirect conflict with each other. In this case, the ethical dilemma is the fruition of the problem of loyalty to friends or co-employees and being honest to the survey, or it could be being honest and trustworthy to the survey and taking revenge against other employees through the survey responses. If an employee has a close friend who does have a poor honesty level, the employee could either choose being loyal to his friend and responding good to the survey, but the other way around says that the employee breaks the loyalty with his friend to become honest and truthful with the survey. The second situation is the same in principle of values conflict. The employee could remain truthful to the survey by responding honestly even if this means saying good things about an employee he has conflict with.
Either way, we see the problem of the reliability and trustworthiness of the survey. There are always problems with the system because it deals with human beings who have emotions. And worst, the survey deals with a subject that is very touche with people. It could be that the survey is to evaluate the honesty level of employees, but employees who responded to the survey are not being honest with their feedback with each other due to the conflict of values that play primary role in this situation.
3. What steps would you take to the solve the conflict between county officials and the union president?
As per the conflict of opinions and perspectives of county officials and the union president, it is necessary to address the root. The root of the problem is the way these two parties see the case or the survey. Mainly, rather than just using 180 employees for the survey, the county officials can include all 4, 000 workers. The size of the population is not too big and the county has the authority to distribute the survey questionnaires to its workers without the ethical problem of permission from authority. By including every worker of the county, the fear of the union president that those who are included in the survey will just “rat” on other employees will be eliminated and addressed properly.
Second, rather than asking to provide honesty level on employees, the survey should take a different turn of addressing the situation. It should keep questions general, rather than specific. Rather than asking for the honesty level of a particular person, the survey should ask for the honesty level of an entire team, department, or the entire organization. This way employees will be hindered from making negative feedback on the honesty level of particular individuals of the organization. And this will resolve the fear of the union president that the survey will just build a negative atmosphere within the organization.
4. Do you favor such surveys exposing unethical and illegal business practices going on at the place of employment? Give reasons in support of your answers.
Exposing unethical and illegal business practices is a good thing because it helps to create a business environment of truthfulness. However, doing surveys that try to evaluate these unethical and illegal practices may not really be trustworthy. We need to realize that surveys or other evaluations are subject to the emotions of the respondents. The reprisal of the management or anybody of the organization becomes an obstacle that stops surveys from being truthful. And as a result, the evaluation of unethical and illegal business practices within the organization may not really be truthful and reliable. And when individuals use these surveys to check on these practices, the unreliability of the survey is translated to another set of unreliable actions of the management or anybody.
Second, in making surveys with regards to unethical and illegal business practices, the question is how people will work on it. This will build distrust between management and employees, or between employees. Instead of building a good organizational culture, the organization is struck down with the survey's impact. Instead of crafting a better organization free of unethical and illegal practices, the organization becomes detached from each other and this builds a series of problem. The organization may find employees exposing each other to the management to protect each other. And this is not a good start to really address the problem of unethical and illegal issues.
References:
Collins, D. (2009). Essentials of Business Ethics: Creating an Organization of High Integrity and Superior Performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Trevino, N. & Nelson, K. (2010). Managing Business Ethics. John Wiley & Sons.
