There is a common saying regarding business negotiations that states that a good deal is one in which no one leaves the table happy. Much of the complexity of business negotiations comes from trying to compromise on the unimportant aspects of a potential deal, while maintaining the best possible outcome for the individual’s interests.
The best possible outcome is not always accessible via ethical or moral channels, which is why the business world has strict ethical and moral standards for interactions between individuals, groups, companies, and corporations. These are not always followed, of course, but they exist to protect the integrity of the market, as well as the personal integrity of managers and employees alike.
Different types of businesses will face different types of ethical dilemmas, both internally and externally. Within companies, there are a variety of different types of ethical dilemmas that individuals can face, and the consequences of making a choice become more far-reaching and impactful as the individual ascends within a company.
When an ethical dilemma occurs within the workplace, it will probably fall to the managers of the workplace to come up with a workable solution to the problem. No matter what the issue is, there is a set logical process to go through when considering any type of ethical dilemma within the workplace.
The first question that must be asked about the situation at hand is if anyone acted in a way that violated any types of laws, whether they are civil or criminal laws. The second facet to this line of inquiry is whether or not anyone violated any company or corporate rules that are set in place to ensure ethical standards are met.
For instance, if a female employee is receiving unwanted sexual advances from another employee, the second employee is in violation of a number of civil and criminal codes, and most likely some of the company’s policies regarding sexual harassment and workplace decorum, as well. This is a relatively straightforward dilemma; the manager can easily see who is in the wrong, and move forward according to workplace protocol. If the workplace has no protocol, then criminal or civil charges may need to be filed.
However, given another, slightly less-straightforward situation, the manager’s job becomes much more complex. In this situation, an employee has a personal blog, and is posting information about the company in defiance of the non-disclosure agreement that all employees sign at the beginning of their employment.
If the manager can discover who the employee is, that employee can be disciplined, fired, or even sued; however, the manager must take care not to violate any of the employee’s privacy rights in an attempt to discover his or her identity. This is an important segue into the next aspect of management in regards to ethical dilemmas that managers may face in the workplace.
The second question that must be asked regarding any ethical dilemma that surfaces in the workplace is whether or not the action the manager (or supervisor) is taking is a fair and balanced action in regards to all parties. If the action is not fair and balanced, then the behavior of the manager or supervisor is not only morally and ethically wrong, it can legally come back to haunt him or her in the future.
In the first scenario, the woman who is being made uncomfortable by her coworker is clearly not in the wrong. However, if her coworker has done nothing overt-- has made no attempt to touch her or harass her openly-- the best course of action may be a discussion with the individual, rather than jumping to the harshest punishment available to the manager.
On the other side of the same situation, if a manager expects a victim to deal with harassment and makes no effort to curb said harassment, he or she is party to the behavior of the individual who is doing the harassing. In this case, the balanced action would certainly not be to do nothing and expect the woman to handle the issue alone.
Similarly, in the blog scenario, if the coworker has fallen short of truly breaching his or her non-disclosure agreement, perhaps the harshest course of action will cause more harm than good. A severe warning regarding the seriousness of the non-disclosure agreement and the reminder that breaching such an agreement will end in legal action, combined with a request to remove the blog should be an effective way to deal with the situation.
Lastly, the individual dealing with the ethical dilemma in the workplace should ask him or herself how he or she feels about the decision that he or she is about to make. Human intuition, while certainly rash, is also a generally good judge of the moral and ethical responsibility of an action.
Intuition should not, however, override the other two questions that the manager or supervisor must ask in regards to the ethical dilemma he or she faces. If a manager knows that an employee has breached his or her contract in such a way that he or she deserves termination, then the ethical thing to do is almost certainly to terminate the employee’s employment, no matter how the employer feels about the employee on a personal level.
In today’s world, a supervisor or manager will be faced with an increasing number of difficult ethical and moral dilemmas in the workplace. Having a well-structured method for thinking through any situation that arises is an excellent way to ensure that the manager or supervisor makes consistently good decisions in the face of moral quandaries. No one is perfect, of course; the goal should not be for the manager to never make mistakes, but to develop a methodology for dealing with issues that minimizes mistakes as much as possible.
References
Ethicsgame.com (2012). EthicsGame: Online Ethics Curriculum Tools for Higher Education. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.ethicsgame.com/exec/site/business.html [Accessed: 3 Mar 2013].
