Question

Ethical Dilemma

Juanita Maxwell devotes a great deal of time and energy to know her employees. She always pays attention to what they say when she asks them how they’re doing, and she often remembers incidental facts like their pet’s names and favorite days of the week. Juanita has found that these kinds of details help her match her employees to projects that bring out their best skill sets and internal motivations. For example, she knows that her office manager, Marcy, is a true morning person, so Juanita often schedules their meetings as early as possible to maximize their effectiveness.

Juanita recently acquired a new employee, Sandra, on the sales team, and she has not been an easy person for her to read. When Sandra first started off at Trumbell and Son, she was a very quiet person and often bordered on being an introverted individual. Juanita had initially perceived that it was difficult to read some of Sandra’s behavior because she was a new employee at the company. Juanita later perceived that she could only understand the behavior of many of her other office workers because they have been her colleagues for over five years. However, when everyone was at the company picnic a month later, Sandra had matched the level of laughter and outgoingness of employees like Willy, who is the most senior salesperson of the company. She also engaged in games and exhibited spirited competitiveness.

But when Sandra was back in the office on Monday, she kept her eyes down and avoided small talk in the office break room. Although she wasn’t impolite to Juanita, the vivacious person who had appeared at the picnic seemed to be gone.

This led Juanita to assume that Sandra was a naturally shy person, and that assumption lasted only until the first 8 A.M. staff meeting where she wanted to discuss Trumbell’s new product line. As voices began to rise with suggestions and questions, Sandra didn’t hesitate to add hers to the fray. Juanita was surprised at Sandra’s sudden assertive nature as she had barely mumbled out “Good evening” when Juanita had waved good bye to her only two days ago.

This ebb and flow of energy and assertiveness continued for three months, when Juanita had tried her best to discern which “Sandra” is the “real” one. Was she a dynamic go-getter who just didn’t like mornings or a complete introvert? Sandra has done an excellent job so far, but Juanita feels uncomfortable to have an employee whose personality seems so inconsistent. Juanita wonders if Sandra really is a good fit for Trumbell and Son.

Questions

1. Using consequential, rule-based, and character theories, evaluate Juanita’s options.
2. What should Juanita do? Why?

Answer 1

The options are as below:

1. The behavior of a person is first based on the concept of consequences. In this case, Sandra's behavior is not "tossed away" and Sandra's senior advice is also outstanding. On the basis of that, therefore, Juanita only has the right to retain Sandra.

2.She should forecast her staff's actions on the basis of Juanita's rules. Because Sandra could not expect the same thing after 3 month, in fact, she will not work with Juanita in the long run, despite the comfort zone, in different situations. her conduct is contradictory. Therefore, Juanita must exclude Sandra from her company on the basis of that argument.

3.Based on Charater Theories, the following five things plays an important role in evaluating employee.

• Skill Variety
• Priortise of tasks (task identity & its significance)
• Autonomy
• Feedback from reporting manager

In our scenario, Out of 5,

• skill variety - Sandra proved during the picnic
• task identity, its significance, feedback from reporting manager - Sandra is good at work & it was acknowledged by her manager.

So Sandra performed well as an employee, but not to her employer's persuasion. And my feeling is that Juanita can have an interaction with Sandra to help her understand her actions more easily. There is no reason to terminate a good employee from an enterprise.