Question

You are the new VP for HR of a company that has not been performing well, and everyone including youself, has a mandate to deliver results. The pressure has never been greater. Shareholders are angry after three years of a tough market that has left their company stock losing value every day. Many shareholders disparately need stock performance to pay for their retirement. Working for you is a 52-year-old manager with two kids in college. In previous evaluations, executives told him he was doing fine, when he clearly was not, and his performance is still far below par. At the same time, the executives awarded him impressive annual pay raises.

If you are to show others in the company that you are willing to make tough decisions, you feel you must fire this individual. The question is, who is going to suffer --the firm and ultimately, the shareholders, who retirements are in jeopardy --or a nice guy who's been lied to for 20 years?

3.9 What would you do and why.

3.10 What factor(s) in this ethical dilemma might influence a person to make a less-than-ethical decision?

Answer 1

The answer to Q 3.9)

I would terminate the services of the individual who is not performing by providing a month’s salary.

The reason for terminating the service of the individual who does not perform is the loss of the company. If the employee consistently does not perform well or does not make efforts to improve performance, then the employee should be terminated. The employees are paid to render the services and contribute to the growth of the organization, so it is an employee’s moral responsibility to justify the compensation he/ she receives from the organization to serve.

The reason for providing a month’s salary is to help the employee to manage daily chores for a month.

The answer to Q 3.10)

In the present scenario, the ethical dilemma is whether to terminate the services of the employee or not. There are various factors that influence a person to make less-than-ethical decisions.

1. The intensity of the issue: If the issue impacts the individual, and groups of the people in workplace to a greater extent, the ethical issue should be resolved as soon as possible with utmost ethical consideration. If the intensity of the issue is not strong, the individuals tend to make less-than-ethical decisions. In this situation, other individuals will also be affected and will improve to secure their jobs.
2. Individual factors: Due to the differences in age, cultural background, education, and experience, individuals make ethical or less-than-ethical decisions. For instance, as the individuals of the performance team made unethical decisions by evaluating non-performers as performer.
3. Organizational factors: If the individual is ethical, but the organization’s values do not reflect ethics in the culture, employees tend to make less-than-ethical decisions. For instance, in Enron, the management did not motivate the employees to behave ethically, rather the management fired the employees who asked questions about the wrong practices.
4. Opportunity: If an employee finds the opportunity to grow by making an unethical decision, the employee tends to make less-than-ethical decisions. For instance, in Enron, the executives found that by supporting the wrong accounting practices in the organization, they can secure their job and get promoted for the higher level, they made unethical decisions.