Moral Choices and Employees

Employees have various moral decisions to make. Many of these decisions should be made on the basis
of our moral obligations, but sometimes the morally preferable action could require courage and be
performed beyond the call of duty.

Obligations to the firm

Employees are hired to do something for the company. They obligate themselves to work for that
company for financial gain. The employer often sets various conditions to employment, such as a dress
code and respectful behavior.

Loyalty to the company

Most people assume that employees have a moral obligation to be loyal to the company they work for.
It is plausible that we are obligated to do our jobs in order to get our paychecks, but do we have an
obligation to help the company in any way beyond strictly doing our job?

Many employers seem to think so. “They may expect employees to defend the company if it is maligned,
to work overtime when the company needs it, to accept a transfer if necessary for the good of the
organization, or to demonstrate their loyalty in countless other ways”.

We think loyalty to the company is often a good thing and we hope that our loyalty will be rewarded
through raises, promotions, good letters of recommendation, and so on.

Conflicts of interest
An employee’s interests can conflict with the company’s. Some of these conflicts of interest are minor
and involve the fact that we might be doing something at work we would rather not. However, other
conflicts of interest are serious and can tempt employees to behave disloyalty.

For example, Bart Williams, sales manager for Leisure Sports World, gives all his firm’s promotional work
to Impact Advertising because its chief officer is Bart’s brother-in-law. As a result, Leisure Sports World
pays about 15 percent more in advertising costs than it would if its work went to another agency. Even if
Bart doesn’t act against his company’s interest, he could still be tempted to do so and the conflict of
interest will still exist.

Employees should try to avoid significant conflicts of interest by staying away from situations that could
tempt them from being disloyal, but it is difficult to decide when a conflict of interest is significant and
it’s not always clear what employees should do when they are faced with a conflict of interest besides
trying to resist the temptation to be disloyal.

Abuse of official position

The use of one’s official position for personal gain is often an abuse of power. This abuse can exist when
a conflict of interest leads to disloyalty. Examples of abuse “range from using subordinates for non-
organizational-related work to using a position of trust within an organization to enhance one’s own
financial leverage and holdings”.
Insider trading
Insider trading is when one person has access to information that’s unavailable to the public and will
likely have an impact on stock prices. For example, employees might know that their company is going
bankrupt before the general public and sell all their stock before it becomes worthless. People who buy
the stock will be deceived into thinking it is worth more than it really is. In fact, it’s also insider trading
for the employees to encourage family and friends to sell their stock using such “inside information.”

Insider trading involves difficult moral issues. It’s not clear exactly when employees can buy or sell stock
from their own companies; it’s not entirely clear how much information a company should “disclose to
stockholders about the firms plans, outlooks, and prospects;” it’s not entirely clear when such
information should be disclosed; and it is not entirely clear when a person is an “insider”.

Proprietary data
Companies often have secret information called “trade secrets” that they don’t want to be leaked
outside the organization, and employees would be disloyal to use such information to advance the
interests of competing organizations. Patents and copyrights are publicly available and protected by the
law, but there’s still a chance that many people can get away with breaking copyright or patent laws.
Companies have trade secrets to assure that the information isn’t used by competitors, but it is possible
for others to discover the trade secret on their own and use it. For example, the formula for Coca-Cola is
a trade secret, but anyone who discovers the formula can use it for their own soda company.

Additionally, employees often get jobs working for the competition and can be tempted to use trade
secrets to benefit the competitor. This is a difficult moral issue because people have a right to seek
employment and we can’t always separate proprietary information from a worker’s acquired skills and
technical knowledge. Trade secrets that companies seek to protect have often become an integral part
of the departing employee’s total capabilities.

Bribes and kickbacks

A bribe is a payment made with the expectation that someone will act against their work duties, and
bribes can be very serious when it leads to neglect or reckless behavior that can injure people. For
example, an officer, takes bribe from a construction company and award them a housing project over
agricultural land, compromised their impartiality and good judgment.

Kickbacks are a form of bribery that are attained after a person uses their work position to benefit
someone. If the officer gets paid after awarding the project, then the bribe is a kickback.

Gifts and entertainment

Gifts and entertainment can be used to reward and encourage certain behavior from employees, and
can cause a conflict of interest as a result. Entertainment is often provided as a gift, but entertainment
isn’t as likely to be morally wrong because “it usually occurs within the context of doing business in a
social situation”. In extreme cases gifts and entertainment can be equivalent to bribes.

Obligations to third parties

Sometimes an employee has obligations to the general public that can conflict with their loyalty to the
company. For example, a dishwasher can find out “that the restaurant’s chef typically reheats three- or
four-day-old food and serves it as fresh” and she might have a duty to alert the public, and a consulting
engineer could find “a defect in a structure that is about to be sold” and she might have a duty to tell
the customer about the defect. In some cases an employee could find out about negligent and reckless
behavior of a company that puts the public in eminent danger, such as when a company dumps toxic
waste without taking proper precautions.

Conclusion
Morality demands that we consider the interests of everyone who can be effected by our decisions, and
that we consider the situation we are in. Our job and position in society can give us unique obligations
and what we should do depends on all these factors. When considering our moral duties, the most
commonly cited moral principle is the right to non-injury. No matter what moral theory we agree to,
everyone seems to agree that non-injury is relevant to morality and employees have a duty not to cause
significant harm to innocent people. This is why it’s often morally preferable to be a whistle blower
when a company is causing significant danger or harm to the public.