Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

Management Ethics [ON02 ON]

Karim White

December 10, 2016

In any corporation/businesses, companies have certain values, ethics and standards that they believe in and operate by in order to conduct their daily business routines.  Running a successful business takes a special group of trust worthy employees that are willing to obey their company’s codes of conduct. Once hired by a corporation, their employees are bound to the company’s rules and regulations in order for their organizations to run smoothly while operating a successful business. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, dilemmas are situations or problems where a person has to make a difficult choice. Ethical dilemmas are problems where a person has to choose between a moral and an immoral act (Terry Mann, 2014). However, there are times when a person does not display the values of their corporation and the lines become very blurred for numerous reasons. Therefore, the objective goal of this paper is to observe the ethical dilemmas that have taken place in a work setting and try to find the best ethical resolution to the many situations. To answer this question, firstly, I will discuss different examples of ethical dilemma that occurred in the work environment. Secondly, I will describe an ethical dilemma that I once faced with at a previous job of mine and explain the actions I decided to take. Thirdly, the essay will look at the possible resolutions of the examples I shared along with my personal dilemma I faced. Lastly, I will use the theory of utilitarianism, one of four ethical theories to analyze and assess if the resolutions were ethical.

Many people spend most of their weekdays working a job that operate hours between nine and five either in an office building, traveling non-stop or working on a project at a job site. With the huge amount of hours spent working, there is no surprise that an employee becomes overwhelmed with situations and faces several ethical dilemmas regularly at work. An employer’s job is to perform the values and cultures of the company’s standards in order to help their company succeeds, however, personal temptations of taking the easy way out may come in between. Pressure from management, personal ambitions and discrimination, conducting personal business on company time, taking credit of others’ work and harassment behaviors are some examples of ethical dilemmas that can cause major issues inside of a work place/environment. As we may know, every company’s culture is different; some company’s may value results or performance from their employees and others may stress profits. In this case, management of these company cultures tends to breach the ethics values that may cause an ethical dilemma amongst the employees.