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The Important Ethical Issues and the Neglect of Fairness and Justice in Management BY Aziza-Zoo Justice in Management 1. Introduction the Neglect of Fairness and In this constantly changing world, enterprises and organizations are facing numerous ethical problems in developing and managing their companies. Whether the ethical issues can be solved properly may directly have impact on the company operations and employee performances.
If a company lacks ethical perception in the management, employees are likely to perform passively and restlessly, which produce severe dilemmas in company’s management and the employee relations (Martinez-Cannas et al, 2013). And during the process of management education and development, issues of justice and fairness are frequently mentioned in the modern business but regularly ignored in the real situation of business education and managerial operation.
This paper will illustrate some opinions about the view that the ignorance of fairness and justice in education and development in management with Mason’s theory in the first part. And in the second part of the essay, several vital moral issues which affect the labor relations and management in the organizations will be listed and analyzed. 2. The Ignorance of Fairness and Justice in Management Education and Development Management education and development emerged in last century.
Stephen Fox (1997) explains that management education is provided by the university management schools and mainly focusing on the academic and theoretical knowledge of management. And Muffed (1984) offers a definition of management development which is an attempt to improve managerial effectiveness through planned and deliberate learning process. Management education and development contain uses today but some searches find that fairness and justice, which are considered to be the fundamental principals in the business life, are neglected in management education (Friedman 2012).
In accordance with Mascot,/s ‘hierarchy of needs’, it can be argued that the reason of the neglect of issues of fairness and justice in management education and development comes from human needs. In Measles’s theory, the needs of a higher level emerge as the needs of a lower level are increasingly gratified for most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization at the top (Williams and Page, 1989). Fairness and justice are considered to be contained in the top level-?the self-actualization (McLeod, 2007).
So when people cannot achieve their basic human needs, fairness and justice will be put aside and neglected. There are several reasons of the ignorance Of issues of fairness and justice in management education and development. For management education, initially, students are eagerly searching and gaining knowledge from school so that they will be able to find a job with sufficient money to live. In the theory of ‘hierarchy of needs’, the physiological needs belong to the primary level of humans motivation.
If such needs are not satisfied, higher needs or social morals are not recognized by people (http://www. Entomb. Com/MGM/bob/ motivation/mascot/). Therefore, students primarily pay attention to the professional business knowledge to become more competitive to feed themselves instead of noticing the fairness and justice mentioned in classes. That is also why some business institutions do not offer ethics a regular place in compulsory curricula though ethics is fast becoming a part of in management education (Friedman 2012).
Next, in modern education, colleges usually use grading system and academic competition to test the ability of students and give award or penalty to student based on their grades. Hence, student may feel unsure about the results of their school life for the safety of study is under uncertainty, thereby apply any possible way to get qualified scores regardless of the consideration of fairness and justice for it is difficult for students to find a reasonable moral basis without satisfying the safety needs (Ma et al, 2013).
For example, the college deterrence to fail the student in the examination may lead students to cheat on their assignment by popularizing other’s opinions or even committing bribery. Furthermore, when a teacher needs to maintain his authority or dominance to satisfy their social and ego needs, he may simply judge the student from a subjective perception with his personal preference instead of objectively consider the real ability of the student. Hence, issues of fairness and justice are still neglected before people to pursue the higher-level needs.
On the other hand, for management development, because efficiency values more significant than before in business, enterprises are likely to use efficiency as the only to evaluate the performance of employees during training and velveteen process (Hessian and Vandalize, 2011). If an employee fails to fulfill the task set by the company, he may not get bonus, and even worse, he may be dismissed due to the poor performance. In this case, employees’ physical needs and safety needs are threatened by the efficiency criterion.
For the sake of minimum living guarantee and job security, employees will probably ignore issues of equity and justice in work and competition for their basic needs are not satisfied so they will give consideration of other things just like to behave moral in the competition. Meanwhile, according to Mascot, once a person has met lower level needs, he will think about to reach higher-level needs. When building a team, a leader or supervisor usually chooses team members or empowers subordinates on the basis of his personal preference to reach satisfy his social needs and esteem needs.
As an example, some supervisors will select the subordinates based on the “obedience” but not “ability’, thereby getting a sense of being respected and dominance. Such subjective decisions to achieve social needs and esteem needs will lead to the phenomenon that issues of fairness and justice are ended people’s consideration. Thus, because the issues of fairness and justice belong to the top level of “hierarchy of needs, so they are easily to be neglected for that people initially would like to satisfy the fundamental needs of life rather than self-actualization. 3.
Important Ethical Issues in Employee relations and Management As ethical issues are becoming a part of required lessons of present business education and development, these issues should be attached more attention. Once the ethical issues in the management have been settled down perfectly, positive impacts will be brought to the company such as the union, creativity, team spirit, and active working behaviors. However, on the contrary, if ethical issues are set aside and ignored, discordant relations between employees and managers will be produced and revealed, thereby causing barrier in running the business.
There are a variety of important ethical issues in employee relations and management. Firstly, inequality should be listed at the top of ethical issues. Gilligan (1993) suggested that all individuals should enjoy the equal opportunity to achievements and results. No matter what the sex and ethnic background the arson is, this person should get the chance or the possibility to be hired and perform himself In a company. But equality is violated in many occasions in management, and some inequality issues will cause deep social conflicts such as racial tensions and right movement.
Take sexism as an example. Although women’s status has been dramatically promoted in recent decades, women do not receive the rights and chances as men. When the recruitment is posted, a particular male sex is pointed in the wanted ad. Particularly, pregnant women always face the threats that they are on the layoff list or the hence of promotion due to their long maternity leave which will leads company not only to pay for her leave but also find someone to take over their tasks.
Thus, women will feel they are treated unequal so that they may lose faith in company, colleagues, society and even lives. Secondly, issue Of disrespect is also a vital factor which sways the relations and management in workplace. It can be suggested that disrespect will produce obstacle in managerial communication, harmonious working climate (Meddlesome, 1998), especially the disrespect from supervisors. Meddlesome (1998) found that if the anger does not respect the employees, employees will under great pressure and behave with low employee morale.
Disrespect shows in many ways like the mock about physical appearance, arbitrarily verbal abuse or punishment about imperfection of the work and performance appraisals of the employee from managers or colleagues. Therefore, employees shall hold negative working attitude which result in indifference and malice act within organization. Thirdly, life security is another critical issue for employee relations and management. Without the guarantee of life safety, it can be suggested that any employees will not fully concentrate on the work, which causes disorders and tragedies in workplace.
The suicide case in Foxing not only produces a panic atmosphere among employees but also provokes workers’ protests (Chant, 2013). Under this circumstance, employees care about nothing but their life security, which does no good to labor management, leading to a complete mess in operation. Finally, mutual trust between employees and companies should be emphasized in operating a company, otherwise employee could resist being supportive to the company and company will lose plenty of effective workers and its reputation. For instance, HP reneged on “a promise to forego layoffs” and many of its employees lost their jobs in 2001 and 2002.
Employees felt disappointed and immediately complained and protested about this action, thus no longer holding belief in HP ( Eyelash et al, 2012). Bad comments from employees led an apparent decline in company’s satisfaction ranking and its reputation. So, mutual trust is one of the key issues of future development for organizations. In a word, despite that it is indeed difficult to understand and cope with behaviors which violate moral common sense, ethical issues are still critically racial in employee relations and management.
It can be assumed that ethical conflicts have a negative impact on performance of employees in workplaces and job satisfaction (Gang, 2010). Employees will experience physical and psychological sufferings from the ethical problems, such as pressure, depression, anxiety, being caught in physical and mental illnesses which might threaten their personal lives. 4. Conclusion By thinking of Mascots theory, issues of fairness and justice are neglected because the fundamental life needs are not reached. As soon as people achieve all the other goals and get to the top level of needs, fairness and justice will be under their consideration.