Synopsis
The current study is aimed at discussing the ethical issues concerning Valarie Young, an immigrant employee at the Chicago based fragrance firm, Wilson. The main objectives of this paper are to discuss and analyze the issues Valerie is facing at her current job that influence her decisions to follow the corporate ethics and act for the benefit of the company, or stick to the moral ethics, as well as personal interests and save her working position and good relationships with other employees of the company. The paper will also discuss the unethical issues committed by her boss, Lionel Waters. Organizational culture issues that have created Valerie’s dilemma will be analyzed.
Introduction
Valerie is an immigrant employee who works for the US-based fragrance firm. She is working under a temporary visa. As this employee carries on her activities, she encounters an ethical issue evidenced by invoices written by her bosses’ consultancy firm to the organization’s competitors. The manager is violating company protocol by receiving kickbacks from the organization’s stakeholders.
The manager’s receiving money from the organization’s supplier of fragrances is a clear manifestation of unethical behavior. The reception of the kickbacks is done through the manager’s consultancy firm. Valerie’s dilemma is that reporting the incidence she might end up losing her job. Her loss of a job would probably mean her deportation, as the kind of visa she has does not allow her to stay in the country for more than thirty days after having failed to secure employment (Dench, 2006)
Facts on Valarie’s ethical dilemma
Upon making her finding, Valarie decided to disclose the information to her boyfriend, as he was a neutral person to the company issues. She disclosed company secrets to an outside party. The boyfriend’s advice was to keep all the information to herself at least until she had secured her master’s degree which the company had promised to reimburse her tuition fee. Her silence was also to ensure that she did not lose her job or other chances of securing employment. This particular decision to wait until she would have benefited from the company in way of schooling and job security illustrates the self-serving and utilitarian principles.
She displayed distributive justice, as another reason for her silence was to save the other team member’s stake in the company. Distributive justice entails the concern for other members of the organization and the strife to safeguard their interests in the organization. The manager displays a case for might-equals- right principle as he siphons funds from the company suppliers in addition to using the organization’s funds extravagantly and awarding himself outrageous leaves of up to 20 weeks out of the 52 weeks in a year (Dench, 2006).
My decisions faced with a similar dilemma
Upon finding the sensitive information, I would intend to gather enough information that I would later pass it to management anonymously. To remain anonymous, I would drop the information at one of the top management’s desk making sure that the information has to be availed. With this decision, I would still have my job and schooling in place. It would also safeguard the other interests in the company. It would also ensure that the manager would not take advantage of the company through his fraudulent activities.
Work dilemma facing Valarie
The stressors begin upon the discovery of the manager’s invoices in the copy machine. These work stressors are career development, job security, interpersonal relationships, and job ambiguity. It must have been Valarie’s concern as to her role to disclose such sensitive information to top management. Was it in her job description to make such disclosure? The stressor at this point was job ambiguity. The second stressor facing Valarie was career development. She had the opportunity to acquire a master’s degree with the help of the company. If she reported the manger’s unethical situation, it would have probably cost her career advancement chance.
Suggesting that she did report these issues and the manager was kicked out, his name in the industry would leverage him to have an opportunity to revenge her betrayal. Her job was at risk thus the third stressor was job security. The fourth stressor facing Valarie was an interpersonal relationship with her team member who had grown fond of each other due to their small number. Her team had been downsized to ten thus their relationship amongst each other had only strengthened. Reporting the issue would risk the jobs of her team members (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007).
Lionel waters
The manager, Waters, is a clear manifestation of unethical individuals within an organization. He disregards company policy where he chooses to develop financial relations with the company suppliers. The manager also has complete disregard for his juniors. He is rarely involved in fragrance development, skips meetings, and grants himself unnecessary work leaves. He is also seen to be extravagant in using the company’s funds: using funds to hire a day is stable in addition to funding numerous but unnecessary fragrance launching events. The manager is involved in the hiring of friends in complete disregard of merit.
The manager contravened company protocol in house promotions to take up the jobs. The manager was not professional in his activities in the company. He did not attend meetings and gave conflicting excuses to his employees and his confides. Other than the fact that he was having kickbacks with his employees, the company was seen as only dealing with the two supplies. It could be explained that he had an interest in the suppliers and not intended to forfeit this unethical privilege of getting funds from the supplies.
Discussion of organizational culture versus the dilemmas displayed in the case study
Organizational culture is defined as a collective behavior and attitude held by persons working for a particular organization. Generally, the components of organizational culture are organizational values, norms, visions, work language, symbols, beliefs, habits, and systems. Edgar Schein defines culture as a pattern of fundamental assumptions of an invented or developed group of persons aimed at coping with external problems. From the definitions provided by various theorists, organizational culture is both natural and taught. Taught in the sense that it can simply be stipulated in the company’s constitution or it can be taught in forums.
It is natural or automatic from the simple fact that when people come together, they share thoughts and attitudes. Culture can be categorized into one that produces positive energy or one that produces negative energy (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007). Wilson’s negative culture produced resentment and negative energy. The manager’s unethical activities and disrespect for his employees bred an individualistic culture. One of the organization’s leaders and sources of direction had a chronic hunger for money. He lacked both managerial and leadership skills. He was also a bad team member, as he did not focus his efforts on achieving team goals.
Conclusion
Thus, according to the information provided earlier in this article, we can conclude that the scene which Valarie faces places her in a compromising situation. The scenes that we have described earlier raise the questions of the employee’s integrity and morality. Many employees like Valarie have a stake in the company for which they work. As an immigrant employee, Valarie had an interest in career development and job security.
One of the most significant consequences of her decision is that she could also lose her citizenship in addition to friends that she had got working for this company as she had been working in a small group. And thus, several issues can be questioned when talking about ethics. Is ethics a personal issue? Is ethics an organization issue? How Valarie dealt with the information heavily depended on her moral and ethical grounding.
Provided placed in other working conditions and facing different consequences, she might make another decision. However, as the organization in which she was placed manifested an acute disregard of ethics, she decided to follow the common ethics and be unethical as well as the rest of the employees working for the company. She kept silent on information that would have revived the organization that was now recording losses due to water’s transactions. Based on this case study, ethics is an organizational issue. Thus, we can come to a logical conclusion that ethics cannot prevail if society’s framework does not protect those who are morally conscious.
References
Dench, S. (2006). How personal ethics get? Journal of management development, 5(12), 21-49.
Huczynski, A. A., & Buchanan, D. A. (2007). Organizational behavior. Harlow: Pearson education centre.