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CHAPTER 5
THE VALUE OF WORK &
EMPLOYEES RESPONSIBILITIES
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LEARNING OBJECTIVES Discuss the goals and values of career and
workplace decision
Explain the variety of meanings and values
attributed to work
Explain the nature and range of employeesresponsibilities
Explain the agency view of employees
responsibilities
Explain managerial responsibilities Summarize responsibilities of employees
Define self interest and moral obligation
Describe the concept of conflict of interest
Elaborate on the effects of conflict of interest
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Discuss the goals and values of career and workplace
decision
Work is a very important part of our lives and it isnot easily abandoned
Aristotle: necessary for the good life
Martin Luther: the toil of work contributes to a higher
cause
Karl Marx: through work we express our humanity;
labor alienates us from this end
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Means-ends reasoning
To the degree that work is a burden that we must all
endure, business ethics is challenged to articulate
and defend the conditions under which work can
be made fair, just and humane
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The Meanings of Work
The word work has a variety of meaningsA noun
A verb
A job, a profession, a career, trade, labor,
occupation, vocation or a calling
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The Value of Work Why work?
What is work good for?
Instrumental value
Psychic goods
Does business have a responsibility to provideemployees with meaningful work?
Do we have a right to work?
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The Conventional Views of Work
Work is something that must be endured.
- The Classical interpretation of work conceives of
humans as intellectual beings, even though work
is physical.
- The Hedonistic interpretation understands work
as a necessary means for obtaining lifes
pleasures.
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The Human Fulfillment Model Work is the primary activity through which people
develop their full potential as human beings. Telos (Be all that you can be): Psychological
benefits
Social benefits
However, not every job contributes to thedevelopment of the human potential.
What will this work do for me?
What will this work do to me? What kind ofperson will I become through this work?
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The Human Fulfillment Model E. F. Schumacher: Bad work is mechanical,
artificial, divorced from nature, utilizing onlythe smallest part of mans potentialcapabilities
Karl Marx: Under capitalist production,workers inevitably face a life of alienation fromthe products of their work, from the creative
process of work, and from their essence associal creatures
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The Human Fulfillment Model
Pope John Paul II: work is one of thecharacteristics that distinguish humans from the
rest of creaturesonly humans work.
Humans work in order to attain their needs and
wants, but work also shapes humans.
Gregory Baum: It is through labor that peoplecreate their world, and it is through the same
labor that in a certain sense they also create
themselves
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The Human Fulfillment Model
Through work- we exercise our freedom and autonomy inmaking choices
- we develop our talents and exercise creativity
- humans create their society and culture
- we express our nature as social beings
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The Liberal Model of Work
The Liberal Model of Work occupies a middleground between the conventional model and
the human fulfillment model.
- Workers should be free to choose the endsof their work.
- Humans can be significantly influenced by
their work; we should make ethical
assessments of work based on how it affectspeople who perform it
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The Liberal Model of Work
Norman Bowie One of the moral obligations of the firm is to provide
meaningful work for employees
But what is meaningful work?
Should meaningful work be given an objectivedefinition?
What justification can we find for any normative
objective definition of meaningful work, if work is
subjective?
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The Liberal Model of Work
Liberal theories of justice argue that individualfreedom is a fundamental and necessary element
of social justice.
Primary goods of work include autonomy,
rationality, and physical and mental health
The liberal model of work argues that individualshave certain rights in the workplace and that
these rights function to protect certain central and
primary goods.
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Business Responsibility for Meaningful
Work
The classical model argues that to thedegree that work is necessary and
physical, it can not be made meaningful
Liberals argue that business has a range ofresponsibilities to provide meaningful work
The Human fulfillment model argues that
employers cannot have the responsibility of
making employees better people
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What do I owe other people? It depends. Workers are employees and the employment
relationship establishes a variety ofresponsibilities that employees owe to their
employers. Managers, while employees, are agents of the
corporation and have specific responsibilities tothe stockholdersand to others.
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Employees as AgentsAgent-principal concept
An agent is a person who act on behalf of anotherperson
Not all agents are employees
Common law in the U.S. historically has treated allemployees as agents of employers, establishing afiduciary responsibility
Agency relationships variety in the latitude ofdecision making
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Employees as Agents Managerial employees have greater discretion
and responsibility than other employees Managerial employees are free from close
oversight
The law holds that employee-agents owelegal duties of loyalty, trust, obedience andconfidentiality to the employer-principal
These duties override employee personalinterests
Is this narrow view ethically defensible?
Why would anyone believe this view?
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Employees as Agents
First, managerial employees in particular play aparticular role within the economic system
Second, managerial employees in particular must
protect the property rights of owners and prevent
economic harms they might suffer from otheremployees
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Employees as Agents
Nonmanagerial employees have aresponsibility to obey only when
employer demands are reasonable,
job-related and do not violate legal orethical duties
We have to consider what
nonmanagerial employees owe totheir employers
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Employees as Agents
The narrow view of employeeresponsibilities is more plausible
when the employees hold positions of
managerial authority In general, managerial employees
have an ethical responsibility to act in
the best interests of their employersto a limited degree
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Employees as Agents
There are cases in which ethicalresponsibilities take second place to role-
specific responsibilities, e.g. physicians
and lawyers But does the role of a manager, like the
role of a physician and a lawyer, serve
social ends important enough that people
in those roles can sometimes be exempt
from ethical responsibilities?
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Employees as Agents
January 1986, the Challenger spaceshuttle explosion
Morton Thiokol and NASA
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Explain the agency view of employees
responsibilities
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Professional Ethics & Gatekeeping
Our responsibilities are a function of therelationships that we have with others
Professionals have very specialized knowledge or
expertise that serves the public good; certification
by some public agency is usually involved
Within the business and economic context, some
professions have evolved to serve important
functions: attorneys, auditors, accountants and
financial analysts
Many of these professionals are paid by the
business that they are responsible for watching
over
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Professional Ethics & Gatekeeping
Real conflicts of interest exist betweenprofessional duties and a professionals self-
interest
But knowing what ones duties are and fulfilling
those duties are two separate issues
What does the word reason mean?
- In one sense, a reason refers to the legitimacy
or justification for acting in a certain way- In another sense, reason refers to a
psychological state in which we act, like
motivation
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Managerial Responsibility & Conflicts of
Interest
Return to Enron- Who are the owners of Enron?
- How many different desires existed in Enron at
the time of the scandal?
- What is the cult of the shareholder? How did it
become the biggest reason behind the
accounting scandal at Enron?
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Managerial Responsibility & Conflicts of
Interest
Return to Enron
- If the varied interests of various stakeholders
are the interests that a business manager
ought to serve, how does the managerprioritize these interests, and what interests
might inappropriately conflict with these?
- What are the costs stakeholders endured as
a result of managerial decisions?
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Managerial Responsibility & Conflicts of
Interest
A Kickback is an illegal payment that occurs whena portion of some payment is paid back to thepayer as an incentive to make the originalpayment.
Soft money occurs when financial advisorsreceive payments from a brokerage firm to pay forresearch and analysts services that should beused to benefit the clients of those advisors.
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Trust and Loyalty in the Workplace
To trust someone is to be confident in and rely upontheir judgment when one is vulnerable to their
decisions.
Trustworthy managers develop and maintain
professional competence and expertise
Loyalty, in business, is understood as a willingness
to make personal sacrifices in the interest of the
firm.
- To what degree do employees have a
responsibility to make personal sacrifices for the
firm?
- Ronald Duska ar ues em lo ees have no
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Trust and Loyalty in the Workplace
Claims for loyalty by the firm can often be little morethan a disguised way to exploit employeeswillingness to make sacrifices for the firm
However, until and unless the firm is willing tosacrifice for employees, those employees havelittle reason to demonstrate loyalty to the firm
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Trust and Loyalty in the Workplace
Is the case different for managerial employees?- Sherron Watkins
- Andrew Fastow
If loyalty means willing to sacrifice ones own
interests by going above and beyond ordinary
responsibility, then we ought to be suspicious
of calls for employee loyalty.
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Honesty, Whistleblowing & Insider Trading
Honesty: Are there situations in which dishonesty iscommon and acceptable?
There are three reasons to explain the ethicalresponsibility to be honest: Dishonesty undermines the ability of people to
communicate
Honesty and trust create essential preconditions for allcooperative social activities
A dishonest person must have more than one identity,which undermines his integrity
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Honesty, Whistleblowing & Insider Trading
A bluff can only work as a bluff if the person beingbluffed believes that it is true (is being deceived).
While a dishonest act can have beneficial social
consequences, routine dishonesty erodes the
trust that seems essential to social cooperation.
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Honesty, Whistleblowing & Insider Trading
A whistleblower is an employee or other insiderwho informs the public or a government
agency of an illegal, harmful, or unethical
activity done by their business or institution.
- Whistleblowing puts the employee at risk
- Whistleblowing pits responsibilities to third
parties at odds with employees
responsibilities to their employer
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Honesty, Whistleblowing & Insider Trading
Richard DeGeorge argues three conditionsmust be met before whistleblowing is ethicallypermissible:
- There must be a real threat of harm that
needs to be addressed- The whistleblower should first seek toprevent the harm through channels
- The whistleblower, if possible, should
exhaust all internal procedures for preventingthe harm
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Honesty, Whistleblowing & Insider Trading
Insider Trading generally refers to thepractice of buying or selling securities
on the basis of nonpublic information
that one has obtained as an insider.
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Honesty, Whistleblowing & Insider Trading
Three arguments are cited in ethicalcriticism of insider trading:
- Property rights
- Fiduciary duties
- Unfairness claims