Discrimination and Favoritism --- Disrupting Business Ethics

1. Discrimination and Favoritism---Disrupting Business Ethics Lecture 10 November 30, 2012

2. Understanding Discrimination • How to manage the workplace peacefully, without clashes and human strife, depends on a manager’s management skills. • It is the task of a manager, by definition, to handle not only the economic resources, but also the “human” resources. • A person may be a brilliant professional and an able organizer, but if he is unable to control his anger, eliminate prejudices against socially different people, respect them and treat them all equally; all his abilities will be in vain. • Thus, management is all about action, working efficiently, and working with others to achieve organization’s objectives and goals.

3. Understanding Discrimination Cont… • Discrimination is defined as any practice or behavior, whether intentional or not, which has a negative impact on an individual or group. • Discriminatory practices in employer-employee relationships include unequal treatment towards individuals and groups. • Unequal or preferential treatment is based on irrelevant criteria, such as gender, race, color, religion, national origin, or disability.

4. Understanding Discrimination Cont… • Employment discrimination may broadly be defined as: • “Employment decisions or working conditions that are highly advantageous or disadvantageous to a member of one group compared to members of another group in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, and compensation, including various types of harassment.” • Some common employment decisions that anti-discrimination laws would apply to include: • Personnel selection, admission to training programs, promotions, work assignments, transfers, compensation, layoffs, discipline, discharge.

5. Understanding Discrimination Cont… • Almost all countries have developed laws that prohibit discrimination. • Some practices covered by these laws include: • Hiring and promotion • Discipline and termination • Training • Compensation – salary and benefits • Terms and conditions of employment • Privileges – such as additional benefits or company perks, including working from home, flexible hours, personal use of company car etc. • Retirement plans

6. Understanding Discrimination Cont… • The root meaning of the term discriminate is “to distinguish one object from another”. • It is usually intended to refer to the wrongful act of distinguishing illicitly among people not on the basis of individual merit but on the basis of prejudice and bias. • In this sense to discriminate in employment is to make an adverse decision (or set of decisions) against employees (or prospective employees) who belong to a certain class because of morally unjustified prejudice toward members of that class.

7. Types of Employment Discrimination The main types include: • Racism • On the basis of Gender • On the basis of Age • On the basis of Religion • On the basis of disability  • On the basis of National origin.

8. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Racial or Nationality Discrimination: • An employer should not determine whether or not to hire someone based on their race or ethnicity. • It is highly unethical to: • Harass and isolate employees(s) due to race or ethnicity. • Increase/decrease salaries, as well as promote/demote based on these factors. • Punish employee who reports racial or ethnic discrimination.

9. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Age Discrimination: • Age discrimination in the workplace refers to treating people unfairly because of their age.  • It is not just highly unethical, but also against the law to discriminate workers on the basis of age. • Unchecked, it can create an intimidating work environment and interfere with work performance, morale, and employment and advancement opportunities for workers (young or old).

10. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Gender Discrimination: • Gender discrimination is any unequal treatment based on gender. • Gender discrimination can apply most commonly to workplace scenarios, but it also applies to educational rights, in household gender roles and in community and organization roles. • Most frequently, it involves being denied an opportunity such as a promotion, position, scholarship, credit or loans. • It can also be used to describe receiving or failing to receive a punishment on the basis of gender.

11. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Religious Discrimination: • This refers to discriminating against an employee because of his/her religious practices or beliefs. • This also includes: • Forcing employees to take part in any religious event or activity. • Disallowing employees from taking part in their own religious ceremonies and holidays.

12. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Discrimination on the basis of disability: • This takes place when a person with a disability is unfairly treated. • This unlawful treatment may take place whether the person with a disability is in the workplace; is receiving or applying to receive services, such as job training, or benefits, or in a number of other contexts. • Also, even if a person does not have an actual disability, but has a record of a past disability (such as cancer or another disease from which he has recovered); he is still subjected to discrimination. • It is unethical and extremely insensitive to ask/probe about an employee’s disability or poor health (in interviews, as well as in the regular office workings). • Demoting, paying lesser salaries, and withholding trainings for disabled employees are common discriminatory practices.

13. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Other management related practices that are widely recognized as discriminatory include the following : • Recruitment Practices: Firms that rely solely on the word-of-mouth referrals of present employees to recruit new workers tend to recruit only from those groups that are already represented in their labor force. • Promotion Practices: Promotion, job progression, and transfer practices are highly prone to discrimination amongst employees.

14. Types of Employment Discrimination Cont… • Conditions of Employment: Wages and salaries are discriminatory to the extent that equal wages and salaries are not given to people who are doing essentially the same work. • Demoting and firing: an employee on the basis of discriminatory factors.

15. Employment Discrimination Terms • The two employment discrimination terms are: 1. Disparate Treatment: • It exists when an employee is treated less favorably than others based on the employee’s class. • In this, the employer simply treats some people less favorably than others because of their race, religion, or national origin. • This type of discrimination is intentional discrimination.

16. Employment Discrimination Terms Cont… • Disparate Impact: • Disparate impact focuses not on discriminatory intent, as disparate treatment does, but instead on discriminatory consequences. • Disparate impact involves employment practices that are facially neutral in their treatment of different groups but that in fact fall more harshly on one group than another and cannot be justified by business necessity. • In simple terms, disparate impact is the effect of a work condition or policy that was not necessarily intended to discriminate.

17. Favoritism

18. Understanding Favoritism • Favoritism is one of the most important sources of workplace conflict and stress. • It is also a cause and an outcome of politics and power struggles within organizations. • It leads to inefficient decisions and the loss of motivation and productivity. • Thus, some argue that perceived favoritism is a cancer within any organization.

19. Understanding Favoritism Cont… • Favoritism in the workplace means giving preferential treatment to one or more employees. • Preferential treatment can be intentional; for example, an employer could assign the choicest responsibilities to his favorite employee by explaining that his abilities justify the extra attention and tasks. • Preferential treatment can also be subconscious; for example, employees might notice that an older male supervisor seems to treat young female workers with friendly smiles and encouragement while benignly ignoring male workers in the hallways.

20. Understanding Favoritism Cont… • Favoritism exists in many workplaces in many forms.  • At lower levels it can be a harmless expression of personal preference or attraction.  • At moderate or higher levels it serves to rob the efficiency, engagement, creativity, and morale of other employees. • Favoritism in an organization breeds resentment, not only among peers, but also among management.  

21. Understanding Favoritism Cont… • People become competitive with their peers because they wonder why they are not the recipient of the added attention.  • In addition to this, teamwork suffers because of suspicion, distrust, and feelings of being undervalued.

22. How Does Favoritism in the Workplace Affect Other Employees? • Resentment: • One of the primary effects of workplace favoritism on employees is resentment. • Workers feel that, no matter how hard they work, it won't matter because preferred employees will always get better benefits, more attention and greater opportunities. • Employees often resent the special worker, treating them with unkindness and gossiping about reasons for preferential treatment. • Workers also resent their employer, becoming less willing to participate actively in the company mission.

23. How Does Favoritism in the Workplace Affect Other Employees? (Cont.) • Lower Motivation: • If employees feel that they are being passed over for new responsibilities or promotions because all goodies are funneled toward favorite workers, lower motivation results. • Employees slack off, taking less care with assigned duties and being more reluctant to volunteer for additional tasks. • This results in lower productivity, missed deadlines and lower overall morale.

24. How Does Favoritism in the Workplace Affect Other Employees? (Cont.) • Litigation: • Employees sometimes take legal action against employers who engage in favoritism, citing preferential treatment based on gender or ethnicity. • If workplace favoritism is widespread, for example, an employer offers preferential treatment to workers, employees could cite a hostile work environment. • This can lead to serious repercussions, including court fees, and loss of professional reputation.

25. Countering Favoritism Organizations can deal with favoritism in the following ways: • Assigning tasks: • It is important to make sure that tasks are assigned to the qualified employee and the employer is ready to defend his choice if need be. • Unless the reason is workload, make sure that the most competent employee is given the assignment. • Employers should remember the training aspect, however, they should not be afraid to delegate tasks to those who need improvement, offering them the chance to improve and grow.

26. Countering Favoritism Cont… • Praise all, often: • If the project is going well and is a huge success, be sure to praise everyone on the team. • Do not just praise the lead and expect them to pass the praise along, it may not happen. • A moment of praise in front of the entire group or going around and personally congratulating each person on the team will dispel questions of favoritism. • Respond equally and fairly: • E.g. If workers are required to be on-time to work, then make sure that all violators are dealt with in the same equal manner.

27. Countering Favoritism Cont… • Other ways in which organizations can avoid favoritism include: • Establish a code of ethics and standards of business conduct for your organization. • Open lines of communication. • Support training across the board on specific skills that reinforce the desired behavior. • Empowering HR to take direct action to address unacceptable organizational behavior. • Seek employee feedback frequently. • Educating the leadership team.

28. Dealing with Discrimination- Affirmative Action & Equal Employment Opportunity

29. Avoiding Discrimination • Being a truly non-discriminatory employer is not an easy task. • In addition to good-faith compliance with law, employers must be fully aware of the concept and make deliberate efforts to discourage and avoid it. • It is important to discuss what is involved in pursuing a policy of non-discrimination by examining three basic steps in hiring and promotion processes: • Analyzing the job to be performed. • Recruiting applicants. • Assessing the applicants for suitability.

30. Avoiding Discrimination Cont… • Job Analysis: • In order to ensure that decisions on hiring and promotion consider only job-related characteristics and result in finding the best person for the job, it is necessary to conduct a “job analysis”. • A job analysis consists of two parts: • An accurate job description that details the activities or responsibilities involved in a position. • A job specification listing the qualifications required to perform the job as described.

31. Avoiding Discrimination Cont… • Job Analysis (Cont.): • Because a job analysis focuses on the specific activities or responsibilities of a position rather than on the people who have traditionally held it, certain kinds of work are less likely to be stereotyped as belonging to one group or another. • Thus, it lessens the chances of job discrimination.

32. Avoiding Discrimination Cont… • Recruitment and Selection: • After a job analysis is done, a company is faced with the task of recruiting applicants in a non-discriminatory manner. • An obvious first step is to make sure that information about an opening is widely and openly disseminated. • The next task is to select the person who is best suited for the job. • Discrimination can enter into this stage of hiring, and dealing with it here is the main test for the employers. • Bias, prejudices, small differences in treatment can show their discriminatory behavior, thus, discouraging the applicants.

33. Avoiding Discrimination Cont… • Subjective Evaluations: • These are important sources of discrimination in both, the hiring and promotion processes. • Evaluations are formed on the basis of personal interviews or the recommendations of supervisors, and discrimination can very easily be the driving force here. • In this regard, these evaluation procedures should reflect the personal characteristics of the employee/applicant being assessed and evaluated and NOT of the person doing the evaluation.

34. Affirmative Action • Affirmative action is instituted to ensure that minority groups within a society are included in all programs. • The justification for affirmative action is that it helps to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation and to address existing discrimination. • In simple terms, affirmative action is designed to help eliminate effects of past discrimination.

35. Affirmative Action Cont… • It is a process in which employers identify areas of improvement, set goals, and take positive steps to enhance opportunities for protected class members - individuals with disabilities, minorities and women. • Affirmative Action focuses on hiring, training, and promoting qualified members where they are underrepresented. • It was initiated in the U.S. in 1960s and was designed to counteract historic discrimination faced by ethnic minorities, women and other underrepresented groups.

36. Affirmative Action Cont… • To foster diversity and compensate for the ways such groups have historically been excluded, institutions with affirmative action programs prioritize the inclusion of minority groups in the employment, education and government sectors, among others. • Even the best efforts of companies did not always succeed in increasing the advancement opportunities for women and minorities. • As a result, many organizations established “affirmative action plans” in order to address the problem of discrimination more effectively.

37. Affirmative Action Cont… • An Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) consists of statistical analyses of the employer's "underutilization" of individuals from certain protected classes and includes the steps that will be taken to improve their representation in the employer's workforce. • Separate AAPs are created for women, minorities, disabled individuals etc.

38. Affirmative Action Cont… • Advocates of affirmative action argue that special strategies and programs are required as a matter of “simple justice”. • These advocates believe that employers have a moral responsibility to provide job-specific training to any new employees who need it. • Such affirmative action strategies help give previously disadvantaged groups the skills and confidence to compete on equal terms with everyone else. • They also help ensure that employers get the best performance out of all employees in their workplace.

39. Affirmative Action Cont… • Opponents of affirmative action state that not all affirmative action plans are justified because the individuals who are given preferential of affirmative action treatment are often not the same as those who are victims of discrimination. • They mainly argue: • Affirmative action encourages its beneficiaries to become excessively conscious of their ethnic or racial identity, thereby viewing themselves as separate, aggrieved, victimized enclaves;  • Affirmative action policies tend to benefit mostly those minorities who are already economically and professionally successful. • Affirmative action takes the focus off the actual causes of inequality and underrepresentation, wrongly attributing all imbalances to discrimination.

40. Some Problems with Affirmative Action • Affirmative action has some significant undesirable consequences that must be balanced against the benefits of preferential treatment programs. • Three arguments in particular are commonly used by opponents of affirmative action. • These are: • Affirmative action involves hiring and promoting less qualified people and lowering the quality of the workforce. • It is damaging to the self-esteem of employees who are favored because of certain discriminatory factors. • It produces race consciousness, which promotes rather than fights discrimination.

41. Equal Employment Opportunities • Equal Employment Opportunity prohibits discrimination against anyone. • It attempts to ensure that all applicants/employees, males-females and all races have a fair opportunity in a hiring process, in competing for promotions, and equal access to training/professional development opportunities. • The equal opportunity argument addresses not only the harm done to individuals from past discrimination, but also the barriers posed by discrimination in present day society.

42. Equal Employment Opportunities Cont… • The interpretation of equal opportunity as equality of means entails that rewards should be distributed on the basis of some relevant criteria. • Artificial barriers to advancement, such as racial characteristics, are irrelevant and should be removed. • Equal opportunity, on this view, means a chance to compete under fair conditions.

43. Equal Employment Opportunities Cont… • Equal opportunity or equal treatment? • Some defenders of affirmative action have argued that the goal ought to be not equal opportunity but equal treatment. • Equality of treatment provides a more solid basis for affirmative action.

44. Discrimination, Favoritism and Equal Employment Opportunities in Pakistan

45. As already discussed, the worst form of human behavior in society is discrimination. • This is against the laws of nature and laws of Almighty. • Caste system is also discrimination. • Our Holy Prophet (S.A.W) in his last Hajj sermon very clearly said; whites have no preference over blacks and Arabs have no preference over non Arabs. • Basically discrimination is when two persons are placed in similar position but are treated differently by unduly favoring one against the similarly placed other person. • This behavior is also called favoritism.

46. Constitution of Pakistan 1973 contains number of provisions prohibiting discrimination in clearest possible terms and whenever it comes to the notice of the High Courts and the Supreme Court that a discriminatory treatment has been meted out in a commercial behavior such as award of contracts of national/multinational nature, appointments or promotions in service, even admissions in educational institutions; the same is stuck down.

47. Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 • The Constitution of Pakistan, 1973, provides the following: • Article 2-A provides that Objectives Resolution is substantive part of the Constitution and is attached to the Constitution as its Preamble. • Para 4 of this Objectives Resolution/ Preamble to the Constitution of Pakistan 1973 provides as follows: “Wherein the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed.”

48. Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 Cont… • Para 8 states; “Wherein shall be guaranteed fundamental rights including rights of equality of status, of opportunity and before law, social, economical and political justice and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, subject to law and public morality.” • Article 25 says; “All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law”. • “There shall be no discrimination of basis of sex”.

49. Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 Cont… • Article 26: “In respect of access to places of public entertainment or resort , not intended for religious purposes only, there shall be no discrimination against any citizen on ground of race, religion, caste, sex, residence or place of birth” • Article 27 provides safeguard against discrimination in services.

50. Discrimination & Favoritism – Pakistani Scenario • In Pakistan the base for the equality of all citizens was provided in the Objectives Resolution which was passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan in March, 1949. This resolution later became a substantive part of the Constitution of Pakistan. This Constituent Assembly framed a Constitution for the sovereign independent State of Pakistan; wherein the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed.