Bahauddin Zakariya

University, Multan
Institute of Management Sciences

Chapter No. 8

Ethics And The Employee (Part II)

Group Members
Ayesha Nadeem (BB-12-03)
Mirza Daniyal Khursheed (BB-12-05)
Sonia Yaqoob (BB-12-12)
Saba Saleem (BB-12-54)
Rabeea Rasheed (BB-12-58)

The Political Organization

Employee Rights
Observers pointed out that the power of Modern Corporation is similar to that of government. Companys
management is a centralized decision making body like government, top management has a power to
impose decision on subordinates like government has power to impose decision on citizens, management
has the power to distribute income, status, and freedom among the subordinates like government has the
power to distribute resources among the citizens. Both the government and the management possess
monopoly on power. But there was some objections to these similarity arguments these were that the
centralized body in the government was freely elected by citizens but in management centralized body
comes from the ownership and the power of corporate management is limited by union and the cost to
escape from the power of management is less the cost of escape from the power of government. But there
was some counter argument to these objections that the owners are not the decision makers they are just
stockholders and most of the workers are not unionized today and sometimes the cost of leaving the
company is difficult and traumatic. Thus the workers of corporations are like citizens of a government as
government protect civil rights of their citizen rights of workers should also be secured by organization.
Right to privacy
Employee has the right to privacy it can be defined as the right people have to determine what, to whom,
and how much information about themselves shall be disclosed to others. There are some threats to
employee privacy these are the technological threat, polygraph test, genetic testing, urine test, and the
written psychological test. There are two types of privacy one is psychological privacy and other is
physical privacy. These innovations made a persons privacy more vulnerable, but they have come at time
when managers are particularly anxious to learn more about their employees. Whether the information that
managers collect about their workers privacy is ethical or unethical is determined by the three factors:
Relevance, consent, and the method. Information must be relevant to the issue at hand not related to his
personal life like information about person social beliefs and political values is an unethical. But when you
are hiring the executive level employees you have to go to go in depth to get information because the
executives represent the company. You can collect the information about the employee when the employee
shows freely consent. Methods to collect information must be ordinary and reasonable that company use
to collect the information. And the companies also use the extraordinary method these are the use of
microphones, hidden cameras, lie detector test, and blood test. Extraordinary methods are justified when
the companies bear such a serious loss and there is no other method to get rid of this loss except
extraordinary method.
Right to freedom of conscience:
Employees sometime find that organization is involved in something that is morally wrong. Responsible
employees feel that it is their moral duty to get the company to stop this. If he fails to get help from
management or superior. He sometimes takes help from government agencies. For this he get punishment.
Atheists claim that people should have freedom of conscience they give many arguments on this .A few
laws have been passed about whistleblowing.
Whistleblowing is an attempt by a member of organization to disclose wrong doing in or by the
organization whistle blowing can be internal or external. Is doing is reported to higher ups within the
organization. It is internal whistle blowing. If it is reported to external individuals it is called external

whistle blowing. When employee enter in an agreement on the behalf of employer it is his duty to keep
organizations information secret. But it does not impose on employee unlimited obligations. He cannot
impose to do something immoral. So internal whistle blowing is justified when it done to prevent a wrong.
Here is clear evidence of wrong doing, serious actions have been taken to prevent this and it is certain that
external whistle blowing will prevent the wrong.
The right to participate and participatory Management:
A democratic political tradition has held that government should be subject to the consent of governed
because individual has right to liberty which implies that they have right to participate in those decisions
that affect them. Democracy should be embodied in business organization as well said by many authors.
Three major steps toward organization democracy:
First step: Decisions affecting workers should made by full, free and open discussion with workers.
Second step: Giving right to employees to make decisions about their own immediate work activities.
Third step: Workplace should allow workers to participate in major policy decisions that affect the
general operations of the firm
Full organizational democracy has not been popular in United States. Moreover some management
theories urged managers to adopt a leadership style. One of the earliest theories were Douglas McGregor
describe two theories or assumptions management make about employees
Theory X: In this theory managers assumes that employees are self-centered prefer to be led and resistant
to change. Managers who subscribe to theory X tent to be more authoritarian and less consultative.
Theory Y: Management assume that the employees want and develop the capacity to accept responsibility
have an inherent readiness to support organizational goals. Theory Y of McGregor held is more accurate
description of modern workforce. Managers according to theory y should use participative and
consultative style of management. Theory y leadership McGregor held, will create a more effective and
ultimately more productive organization.
A later theory of Raymond miles went a step beyond McGregor theory not two but three models.
Traditional model: Assume that most employees dislike work they care more about how much they earn
than what they do. Human relation model: Most employees want to be recognized and feel useful and
important and that meeting these is more important to them than what they earn. The HR manager should
try to make each employee feel useful and important. Human resource model: People mostly want to
contribute to meaningful goals that they help establish and most employees can be creative and
responsible. The HR manager should create such environment that encourage full participation.
Participative Management is a management style that emphasizes inclusion of employees in evaluation
and decision making process. However the research that has been conducted on whether participative
management is more effective and productive has not come to firm conclusions.
Employment at Will
The doctrine that employers may dismiss their employees at will.

Supporting Argument: Employee owns company this ownership gives his right to decide whether and
how long an employee will work in his or her company. Everyone has a right to do what they choose to
do. Business will operate most efficiently if employers have freedom to hire or fire employees as they see
fit.
Criticism: Employees are not free to accept to reject the employment because of limited choices.
Employees do effort to contribute to firm with hope that they will be treated fairly. Finally rights of
owners are balance against right of others.
Right to Due Process: The right to a fair decision making process when decision makers impose
sanctions on employees. Employees should be given on antecedent notice of rules they never to follow.
Right to work
Right to work means the right to earn ones living by work. This is also universal declaration of human
rights. It is justified because of the interest we have in intrinsic and instrumental values. Work is an
instrumental value it is means t our survival. Work is an intrinsic value because it is our basic economic
contribution to society and helps us feel worthwhile. It helps us as a potential and identity as a particular.
It helps us to develop our character. It is a source of our self-respect. The right to work is threatened by
unemployment because of the recession, use of new technology, outsourcing of job to low wages, free
trade shift from manufacturing to services. Company layoffs because of following reasons decline in
demand, change in consumer demand. Right to work can be protect by two approaches (1) palliative
approach (2) preventive approach. Its effect can be minimize by following methods: 1) advance notice 2)
health benefits 3) early retirements 4) transfer 5) job retraining 6) employee purchase.
Right to organize
The right of worker to associate with each other to establish and run a union as owner have a right to join
to form a company. Union have a right to strike so long as doing so does not violate others right. Union
memberships have decline 35% to 14% from 1947 to 2010. Some countries like US allow their worker to
unionize anyway.

Organizational Politics
The process in which individual or group of people of an organization use informal sanctioned power
tactics to advance their own aims.
Sometimes there is a conflict between ones own aims and organizations aims. But this argument is
contradicted by the 2 factors.
1- The careers of individuals depends upon health of an organization
2- Loyalty bond created over period of time.
Following are some types of political tactics used within an organization:
Blaming or attacking others
It means blaming your opponents for the failure of any plan or project.

Controlling information
Withholding information, statistical data and other useful knowledge to ones own self so one can take
advantage over others.
Developing a base of support
Getting others to support your ideas before the meeting.
Image building
Creating ones on image of being honesty, sensible and confidence.
Ingratiation praising superiors to create good rapport with them.
Associating with the influential
Trying superiors to feel that one is a friend.
As power comes with the sense of dependency. Dependency can be created by:
1) Establishing favorable relationships.
2) Getting control over resources required by others.
Ethics of political tactics
Whether political tactics are ethical or unethical it is defined by following four questions:
1) The utilitarian question: Are the goals one intend to achieve by the use of tactics socially, beneficial
or socially harmful?
2) The rights question: Do the political Tactics used as means to these goals treat others in a manner
consistent with moral right
3) The justice question: Will the political tactics equally distribute burden and benefits?
4) The caring Question: What will be the effect of political tactics on employees relationship in the
organization?
The utility of goals
If organization is providing any type of benefit to the society and political tactics can harm these social
benefits then political tactics are unethical.
If organization is producing such products that are harmful for the society then the use political tactics in
the organization are ethical. But many of the time organizational goals are not clear then every group of
people have different aim and one has to decide which aims are to be supported by determining whether
they are beneficial for society or not.
Political tactics and moral rights
Political tactics are usually deceptive and manipulative. However deceptive and manipulative tactics are
always wrong?
Not necessarily, if all the members of organization uses such type of tactics against each other and
everyone freely choose to remain within an organization and defend themselves against such tactics

Political tactics cannot be used against a person if:

Person do not accept such tactics, or not free to leave organization, or not skilled to defend himself
against such tactics.
The Justice of results
If political tactics treat people having same qualifications or skills differently or political tactics shows
favoritism to anyone then it is unethical.
The impact of caring
If the political tactics can create good relations among the people of an organization then they can be
used but if they create difference between the people having power and people without power then they
are unethical.

The Caring Organization

In this model of the organization the focus of employees is not on the pursuit of power, profit or personal
goals, but on the caring interpersonal relationships that exist among the individuals within the organization
and those external with whom the organization interacts.
Trust flourishes in such organization which reduces that cost of disciplinary actions, theft and absenteeism
etc. In a genuinely caring organization caring is not motivated by the desire to reduce cost but is perused
for its own sake.
It has been argued that business organizations in which such caring relationships flourish will exhibit
better economic performance than the organization that restricts itself to contractual and power
relationships.
The organization develops a concern for serving the customers and creating value that in turn enables such
organization to achieve a competitive advantage.
In the contractual model, the key ethical issues arise from the potential for violations of contractual
relation. In political model, the key issues arise from the misuse of power. While the key ethical issues
from the perspective of caring model are the potential for caring too much and from the potential of not
caring enough.
Unfortunately, research and thinking on the caring organization is so recent that no clear consensus has
emerged on how such issues should be resolved.