Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical Dilemmas

1. Organizational Justice

   • Justice means that an individual receives fair treatment in all interpersonal relationships. Some justice includes how an organization treats their employees in certain ways as a matter of principle regardless of consequences. If the employees are suspected in doing criminal activity, there are three principles that have to be implicated. The three principles are: reciprocity, the presumption of innocence, and due process. Reciprocity means the employee or individual have an obligation to be committed to a party, or exhibit loyalty to an organization. The presumption of innocence refers to a general meaning of ethical conducts within the criminal law. Due process means that an individual has the opportunity to speak for themselves when accused of doing wrongdoing.

2. Privacy

   • The constitutional right protects individuals against state and federal government against certain decisions and conducts. It is a common law right to privacy against invasions of their private space. Although there is a privacy right for individuals, it does not protect them entirely. The moral right to privacy refers to a broad range of intrusion into a personal affair, the publics dissemination of ones secrets and the type of constant supervision and monitoring associated with Orwell's. Employees of a private organization have little legal protection against their employers invasion of privacy in the workplace. Employers can in fact do intense monitoring on their employees. By entering their employment relationship, employees waive their right to privacy to a certain degree.

3. Confidentiality

   • Confidentially is the principle involved is keeping one's word. If one party reveals information to a second party, the second party must latter promises to keep the information confidential, the promise is also kept confidential to the first party as well. To obtain information and disperse the information to others under a promise, it is considered fraud. Confidentiality is necessary to facilitate the flow of information through the organization. Most employees are afraid of revealing information due to suffering consequences for their employees from unethical or illegal behaviors. The obligation to promise confidentially is recognized by all normative approaches to business ethics. By keeping the promise confidentially, is it intended to avoid fraudulent for the stakeholders. This is another method of maximizing profits. There are two ways to keeping information confidentially. One way is to form a communication between employees and employers.
     • Employers can create a hotline to encourage the employees to use as a line of communication to upper management. The second way is to encourage their employees to provide information to corporate counsel under the protection of the attorney-client privilege. This can protect the organization from civil lawsuits and criminal charges.

4. Trust

   • Trust does not embody an ethical principle. There is no independent moral obligation to trust others. Trust can have advantages on organizations when three conditions are met. These conditions include vulnerability, assumption of duty and openness. Trust requires vulnerability. Trust requires that firms and individuals and firms expose their vulnerabilities to another one when there is uncertainty and risk harm could come to the firm or individuals. Second, the the trust requires the trusted party to voluntarily assume an obligation to protect the interests of the vulnerable party. The third principle is that trust requires openness. Trust depends on the individual or firm to open up to each other to reveal private information. Trust in the business aspect has been defined as "the reliance by one person, group, or firm upon a voluntarily accepted duty on the part of another person , group or firm to recognize and protect the rights and interests of all others engaged in a joint
     • endeavor or econmic exchange.

5. Ethical Self-Assessment

   • In a business, managers are required to have good faith efforts to honor them. They are required to know what is going on within their organization. An organization's structure can impede the flow of information within the organization. Organizational block are usually found in larger organizations which includes role models in the organization, strict line of command, the development of task groups cohesiveness, the separation of decision making authority, and the division of work between different units of the organization have all been identified as organizational blocks. As a manager, it is important to create trust between employees because they are usually the source of information needed to know what is going on within the organization. It is up to the managers to keep the flow of communication going by having hotlines provided to them to use. The laws with white collared crimes creates a conflict for managers, they must undertake the type of self-assessment necessary to meet
     • its ethical and legal obligations.