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The Workplace

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Title: Chapter Seven Author: RUBY Last modified by: RUBY Created Date: 1/17/2006 2:43:03 AM Document presentation format: On-screen Show (4:3) Company – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Workplace


1
The Workplace Todays Challenges
2
Overview
  • Privacy and organizational issues over private
    decisions.
  • Moral issues and polygraphs, personality tests,
    employee monitoring, and workplace drug testing.
  • Working conditions, safety, and management style.
  • Job satisfaction and dissatisfaction and the
    prospects for enhancing the quality of work life.

3
Introduction
  • According to the U.S. Supreme Court, privacy is
    the right to be let alone.
  • The Court considers privacy to be one of the most
    comprehensive and valued rights of citizens.
  • What moral issues arise in the workplace
    regarding privacy?
  • What are a companys responsibilities regarding
    employee privacy?

4
Organizational Influence in Private Lives
  • Privacy is widely acknowledged to be a
    fundamental right.
  • Yet corporate behavior and policies often
    threaten privacy, especially in the case of
    employees.
  • This can happen through the release or exchange
    of personal (or privileged) information about
    employees
  • It also occurs when imposing employer values upon
    employees.

5
Organizational Influence in Private Lives
  • The importance of privacy Our concern for
    privacy has three aspects
  • We want to control intimate or personal
    information about ourselves and not permit it to
    be freely available to everyone.
  • We dont want our private selves to be on public
    display.
  • We value being able to make certain personal
    decisions autonomously.

Is this still true considering that many of us
are heavy users of social networking sites
6
Organizational Influence in Private Lives
  • There is no consensus among philosophers or
    lawyers about the following
  • (a) How to define the concept of privacy.
  • (b) How far to extend the right to privacy.
  • (c) How to balance a concern for privacy against
    other moral considerations.
  • The burden is on the organization to establish
    the legitimacy of encroaching on the personal
    sphere of the individual.

7
Organizational Influence in Private Lives
  • Legitimate and illegitimate influence A firm is
    legitimately interested in whatever significantly
    influences work performance.
  • It has a legitimate interest in employee conduct
    off the job only if conduct affects work
    performance.
  • It is difficult to say precisely what constitutes
    a significant influence on job performance.
  • It is also difficult to spell out exactly when
    off-duty conduct truly affects company image.

8
Organizational Influence in Private Lives
  • Issues of privacy interference in the workplace
  • Legitimate and illegitimate influence.
  • Involvement in civic activities.
  • Participation in wellness programs.

9
Obtaining Information
  • Businesses often obtain information about their
    employees through testing and/or monitoring.
  • Informed consent Its presence or absence is the
    main ethical issue in testing and monitoring it
    implies deliberation and free choice.
  • Deliberation Employees must be provided all key
    facts concerning the information gathering
    procedure and understand its consequences.
  • Free choice The decision to participate must be
    voluntary and un-coerced.

10
Obtaining Information
  • Polygraph tests Businesses cite several reasons
    for using the polygraph test
  • It is a fast and economical way to verify
    information provided by job applicants and screen
    candidates for employment.
  • It allows employers to identify dishonest
    employees or job candidates.
  • It eliminates the need for audits and oppressive
    controls, so may increase workers freedom.

11
Obtaining Information
  • Those who defend polygraphs rely on several
    assumptions that are open to question
  • Telling lies triggers an involuntary, distinctive
    response but this is not always the case.
  • Polygraphs are extraordinarily accurate this
    has been disputed.
  • Polygraphs cannot be beaten they may catch the
    guilty but also generate false positives, wrongly
    identifying as liars those who told the truth.

12
Obtaining Information
  • Additional issues to consider in evaluating the
    use of polygraphs in the workplace
  • The information the organization seeks should be
    clearly and significantly related to the job.
  • The grounds must be compelling enough to justify
    violating the individuals privacy and freedom.
  • The data gathering must be evaluated the type
    of information being gathered, who will have
    access to it, and how it will be discarded.

13
Obtaining Information
  • Personality tests One of the most popular, the
    Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is used by
    eighty-nine of the Fortune 100 companies, and is
    taken by more than 2.5 million Americans every
    year.
  • Such tests help businesses both screen candidates
    and match individuals to appropriate jobs.
  • But they involve questionable psychological
    premises (that individuals fit into a small
    number of personality types), may invade privacy,
    and may reinforce conformity.

14
Obtaining Information
  • Monitoring employees on the job This may be
    necessary, but it can be abused and can violate
    privacy.
  • Like testing, it often gathers personal
    information about workers without their informed
    consent.
  • Organizations frequently confuse notification of
    such practices with employee consent, but
    notification does not constitute consent.

15
Obtaining Information
  • Drug testing Became an issue when the National
    Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began
    banning college football players from postseason
    bowl games based on their steroid test results.
  • A study in the Journal of the American Medical
    Association supported drug testing Postal
    workers testing positive in a pre-employment test
    were 50 percent more likely to be fired, injured,
    disciplined, or absent than those testing
    negative.

16
Obtaining Information
  • Additional considerations regarding drug testing
  • Excessive media attention and political posturing
    can lead to extreme or unnecessary measures.
  • Drugs differ, so one must carefully consider
    which drugs one is testing for, and why.
  • Companies must determine how to respond
    appropriately to individuals who fail the test.
  • Any warranted tests must be careful to respect
    the dignity and rights of the persons to be
    tested.

17
Working Conditions
  • Health and safety The number of occupational
    hazards is awesome and generally unrecognized.
  • U.S. Census Bureau indicates that about five
    thousand workers are killed on the job each year.
  • The director of the Occupational Safety and
    Health Administration (OSHA) says thirty-two
    workers are killed on the job each day, more than
    doubling the Census figure.

18
Working Conditions
  • Census Bureau statistics reveal that the rate of
    industrial injury has been declining since 1960.
  • But the absolute number of workers disabled at
    work every year is ever increasing about 3.7
    million men and women.
  • Job-related injuries and illnesses cost the
    nation 65 billion a year 171 billion when
    indirect costs such as lost wages are included.

19
Working Conditions
  • Employers clearly have a moral obligation not to
    expose workers to needless risks or to
    negligently or recklessly endanger their lives or
    health.
  • Employers, however, are not morally responsible
    for all workplace accidents caused by coworkers
    negligence or failure to exercise due care.
  • In some circumstances or in certain occupations,
    an injured worker can reasonably be said to have
    voluntarily assumed the risk.

20
Working Conditions
  • Problems with voluntary assumption of risk It
    presupposes informed consent, which requires the
    worker to have been fully informed of the danger
    and to have freely chosen to assume it.
  • Employees have a moral right to refuse dangerous
    work (upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court).
  • Employers, in turn, have a moral obligation not
    to expose workers to needless risk.

21
Working Conditions
  • What causes accidents? Accidents dont just
    happen, but often result from poor job practices
    and environments that fail to prioritize safety.
  • OSHA With the 1970 Occupational Safety and
    Health Act, regulation of working conditions
    passed from the states to the federal government.
  • The thrust of the act was to ensure safe and
    healthy working conditions and impose a duty on
    employers to provide those conditions.

22
Working Conditions
  • New health challenges The scope of occupational
    hazard is greater than many people think.
  • The numbers harmed by work-related injuries and
    illness may be generally underestimated.
  • These include musculoskeletal disorders, shift
    work, fatigue, and stress.
  • OSHAs enforcement of existing regulations has
    too often been lax.

23
Working Conditions
  • Management styles Nothing affects environment
    more than management style and quality.
  • In The Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas McGregor
    described two management styles
  • Theory X managers believe that workers dislike
    work and try to avoid.
  • Theory Y managers assume that employees basically
    like work and view it as something natural and
    potentially enjoyable.

24
Working Conditions
  • Theory X managers coerce and bully workers into
    conformity with organizational objectives.
  • Theory Y managers believe that workers are
    motivated by pride and self-fulfillment as well
    as money and job security, not dodging
    responsibility but accepting it and even seeking
    it out.
  • Other management styles include Theory Z
    managers, who hold Japanese-style respect for
    workers.

25
Working Conditions
  • One management style eschews a traditionally
    masculine approach (hierarchical, aggressive,
    winner-take-all) in favor of one more congenial
    to women (personal, empathetic, and
    collaborative).
  • Managers who operate with rigid assumptions about
    human nature, or who devote themselves to
    infighting and political maneuvering, may damage
    employees interests and lose their respect.

26
Working Conditions
  • Day care and maternity leave Women still bear
    the primary responsibility for child rearing.
  • So their increased participation in the paid
    workforce has led to a growing demand for
    maternity-leave policies and child-care services.
  • In its research of 168 countries, a Harvard
    School of Public Heath study found that more than
    160 guarantee paid maternity leave, whereas the
    U.S. mandates only unpaid leave (except in
    California and Washington).

27
Working Conditions
  • Business and child care Some argue that offering
    child care as a fringe benefit, and dealing
    flexibly with employees family needs, can prove
    advantageous for most employers.
  • Such policies can be cost-effective in the
    narrower sense decreasing absenteeism, boosting
    morale and loyalty, enhancing productivity, and
    attracting new recruits.

28
Working Conditions
  • Three moral concerns
  • Women have a right to compete on equal terrain
    with men, and paid leave can reinforce that
    right.
  • Development of potential capacities is a moral
    ideal, and perhaps a human right, so women should
    not be forced to choose between childbearing and
    pursuing careers.
  • The work world often reproduces the traditional
    male-female division of labor within the family.

29
Redesigning Work
  • Dissatisfaction on the job The Work in America
    report (1970) identified three chief sources of
    worker dissatisfaction
  • Industrys preoccupation with quantity, not
    quality rigid rules and regulations and the
    monotonous repetition of small, fragmented tasks.
  • Lack of opportunities to be ones own boss.

30
Redesigning Work
  • Other sources of dissatisfaction Studies since
    the 1970s have cited workers feelings of
    powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, and
    self-estrangement or depersonalization.
  • Factors affecting job satisfaction Employees at
    all occupational levels value interesting work,
    enough support and information to accomplish the
    job, enough authority to carry out the work, good
    pay, the opportunity to develop special skills,
    job security, and a chance to see results of
    their work.

31
Redesigning Work
  • Importance of job satisfaction The design of
    work materially affects the total well-being of
    workers.
  • Example Studies show that job satisfaction is
    the strongest predictor of longevity.
  • Therefore, work content and job satisfaction are
    paramount moral concerns.
  • Satisfied workers are also more productive.
  • Business has an economic reason as well as a
    moral obligation to improve work quality.

32
Redesigning Work
  • Quality of work life For some firms, this means
    providing workers with less supervision and more
    autonomy.
  • For others, it means providing work opportunities
    to develop and refine skills.
  • For still others, it means providing for greater
    participation in the conception, design, and
    execution of their work that is, with greater
    responsibility and a deeper sense of achievement.
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