Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical Dilemmas

1. Engendering trust within the organization

   • Trust is different from justice, confidentiality, and privacy in that there is no real ethical obligation to trust. While trust between employees and their employers can boost business, it is not a necessary moral obligation. However, trust can be linked to ethical concerns as it closely relates to the three previous principles. Trust between employers and superiors has become the basic practice for management as it leads to commitment to the organization. Trust is formed based on the three conditions of vulnerability, assumption of duty and openness are met. First, trust requires vulnerability from the trusting parting. Employees must expose their vulnerabilities to employers knowing there are a risk and vice versa. Assumption of duty requires both parties to assume the duty of protecting the other party's best interests. Lastly, openness is created by not creating misleading expectations between the two parties. Trust in business means the employee and employer rely on each other to
     • to protect each other's best interests and is essential in running successfully. Nevertheless, white-collar crime laws counteract the formation of trust. Organizations are held liable for any of their employees' actions and the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines punish organizations that fail to prosecute employees suspected of committing a criminal offense. These conditions make it difficult for employees to put significant amounts of trust in their superiors and undermine the assumption of duty, and openness required to build trust. Assumption of duty means the organization would have the employees best interest in mind which criminal prosecution goes against. Under the OS Guidelines, assuming the duty of if protecting employees’ best interests places the business at risk of obstruction of justice. Openness is compromised if the business promises confidentiality or privacy and disregards that during prosecution as it ensures there will not be misleading expectations between the two
       • As a result, employers are left to find a balance between their ethical and legal obligations.

2. Engaging in ethical self-assesmemt

   • Due to the large amounts of individuals and organizational block systems seen in the average business model, corporate managers are unable to ensure their organization is functioning ethically and legally by simply looking at the information presented to them. Instead, they must search for information themselves to see what activity is actually happening in the organization. This means they must have an ethical and legal self-assessment to ensure work standards. This self-assessment typically established through “confidential” discussions to find any potential issues within the company. To learn about other potential legal issues, organizations have their corporate legal counsel conduct internal investigations under the attorney-client privilege which promises employees that their statements to counsel will not be used against them. However, under the OS Guidelines and white-collar crime laws, self-assessment could result in the organization receiving large financial penalties. This is
     • because self-assessment could reveal evidence of criminal activity resulting in an investigation. Since businesses are held liable for their workers actions, they would only receive reduced penalties under the Guidelines for the prosecution of one of their employees rather than complete immunity. Additionally, in order to receive the reduced penalties, the organization must disclose any information relating to the investigation, even that under the attorney-client privilege. This could result in later civil charges from the employee promised confidentiality. As a result, organizations will avoid self-assessment. The white collar crime laws forces employers to avoid doing self-assessments of their organization by punishing them for the information discovered during them assessments. Employers have the ethical duty of ensuring there is no ethical or legal wrongdoing in their organization however, they receive less sanctions for failing discover them.

3. Maintaining needed confidentiality

   • The principle of confidentiality follows the ethical obligation of keeping one’s word. Obtaining information from employees under the guise of it remaining confidential and then releasing that information would be a clear ethical violation of privacy similar to fraud. However, confidentiality is required in business as some information would not be disclosed otherwise, especially that involving criminal misbehavior. Confidentiality in business encourages lower-level employees to report any violation of the ethical and legal responsibilities and keeps the business from receiving lawsuits or criminal charges. Since legal confidentiality can between employee and employer be compromised by legal prosecution, most businesses will simply promise to act in good faith to maintain confidentiality. This puts the focus on the employer's ethics surrounding confidentiality. The prosecution of white-collar criminals particularly challenges confidentiality as the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines
     • promise businesses less financial penalties for cooperation. The guidelines also require “the disclosure of all pertinent information known by the organization” which directly counteracts confidentiality agreements. In order to avoid financial sanctions and legal prosecution, an organization must compromise its confidentiality agreement with employees. This puts businesses in a position where they must promise employees confidentiality unless it is in the business's best interest to share the information. Without confidentiality agreements, whistleblowing is less likely putting the business in further danger. The laws surrounding white-collar crime make it impossible for businesses to not breach the ethics of confidentiality.

4. Properly respecting employees' privacy

   • Similar to justice, maintaining privacy faces both legal and ethical dilemmas. Our constitutional right to privacy protects us from certain searches and seizures however the ethical scope behind privacy covers much more. Since businesses are private practices, they are not protected by the constitution and businesses can monitor their employees how they see fit. However, workplace ethics will dictate how much privacy their employees are given at the workplace. Businesses must find a balance between legal and ethical privacy to improve their loyalty between their workers and employers. Employees knowingly give up their right to certain privacies to their employers so that they can ensure the worker is acting appropriately performing. Ethical privacy comes into account when employers try to look into an employee's personal life or monitor their work for other reasons than checking their performance. This is ethical privacy is challenged however with the prosecution of
     • white-collar criminals and the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines. Under these guidelines, employers are encouraged to determine if employees are likely to violate the law through the intense monitoring of their work. This law encourages employers to violate the ethical principles of privacy and they are forced again to put a price on their relationships with employees.

5. Realizing organizational justice

   • One of the difficulties in prosecuting white-collar criminals relies on the fact businesses consist of many interpersonal connections in which each person must be respected. Justice requires the fair treatment of each individual however, the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines put on businesses counteract the principles of how workers suspected of criminal wrongdoing should be treated. The three ethical justice principles used for the treatment of workers suspected of criminal wrongdoing are reciprocity, the presumption of innocence, and due process. Reciprocity refers to the obligation workers will have for their organization and the organization will have to them due to their mutually beneficial relationship. Businesses expect their employees to act with their best interests in mind and workers expect the organization to do the same. Employees act in accordance with their duty of loyalty to the organization. Presumption of innocence means that organizations must assume their
     • workers have not committed any criminal wrongdoing without sufficient evidence. Lastly, due process refers to an employee's right to a fair trial. If justice wants organizations to follow these three principles, then their legal and ethical obligations will contradict each other as following the requirement of the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines. Since organizations are responsible for their employee's actions while in employment, they will cooperate with the government investigation and ultimately join the prosecution of their employee. This in itself violates the three principles if the organization knows the employee is innocent or is unsure of their guilt. Reciprocity is violated since the organization is breaking the mutually beneficial loyal relationship with the employee through prosecution. Presumption of innocence is violated as the organization is taking action against an employee without sufficient evidence. Due process is violated by the employee being denied a fair
       • trial or other derogating actions. While these actions violate the proposed justice principles, they are exactly what the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines enforce and organizations could be criminally prosecuted financially if they do not conform. This leaves employers with conflicting legal and ethical dilemmas as the law demands cooperation from organizations while that goes against ethical business principles. Employers must face the ethical dilemma of what the price of loyalty is.