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.