Ethical problems of managers: Managing the Basics

1. Ethical problems of managers:Managing the Basics Geoffrey G. Bell, PhD, CA University of Minnesota Duluth October, 2003

2. Hiring & Work Assignments • While the law appears to be clear-cut, there are many “grey areas.” • The anti-discrimination laws do not mean you have to put an employee into danger because they’re a minority. • Question – what do you do in hiring case #1 if you find that your customer simply is racist and doesn’t like your choice? Can you reassign your employee because of this? What if not reassigning led to losing the client? • Beware the “corporate profile” – Enron & Garrett. Do you guys fit the corporate profile? • Show on WPR this morning.

3. Performance evaluation • What are the ethical considerations in performance evaluation? How do they go beyond legal issues? • Utilitarianism – helping employees improve enhances your economic performance. • Kantianism – accurate performance reviews treats people as ends, and recognizes their worth. • What if you got the “ping pong ball”? What would you do? (Essentially, do you blow the whistle on phony job reviews?)

4. Discipline • Having multiple standards can be very problematic. It’s also probably unethical. • Note that you need to think about the situation carefully. In the case on page 142, Steven is actually getting much better. Maybe he should be commended for progress, not excoriated for failure. • Can you think outside the box to derive standards that satisfy everyone? • E.g., the 9-5 work routine failed to work in Silicon Valley. • Are your standards really measuring desired behavior anyway? • E.g., are you measuring what you really want in terms of performance or can you not see a better alternative? • If Steven is late for client meetings, does that really matter if he’s the top producer? Are you wanting timeliness or sales?

5. Termination nightmares • The spouse of a colleague of mine was facing a round of layoffs at work. To find out whether you were laid off or not, you called a 1-800 phone number and entered your employee number. • A colleague of mine was doing on-site research at a plant the day layoffs were occurring. The manager wanted to do the job as humanely as possible (avoiding problems like those above), so as he saw laid off employees in the hall, he called them into his office. The result – worker thought that the layoffs were random, and so figured that they wouldn’t be laid off if the boss didn’t see them. Many of them spent the entire day in a washroom stall or outside smpking.