9.

0 Moral Choices & Job

Discrimination
 Obligations to the Firm

 Loyalty to the firm: The employment contract

governs employer-employee relationships and
provides a framework for respective obligations of
employer and employee.
 The notion of company loyalty is commonplace,
considered a coherent and legitimate concept.
 Loyalty requires reciprocity, and workers
commonly believe that it is up to the company to
earn and retain their loyalty.
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 Obligations to the Firm

 Conflicts of interest arise when employees have a

personal connection to a transaction – one
substantial enough that it might affect their
judgment or lead them to act against the interests
of the organization.
 They are morally worrisome even if the person
doesn’t act to the detriment of the employer.
 Employees should promptly extricate themselves
from such conflicts or avoid them from the start.

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 Obligations to the Firm

 Financial investments: Conflicts of interest may

exist when employees have financial investments
in suppliers, customers, or distributors with whom
their organizations do business.
 There is no simple answer as to how much of a
financial investment it takes to create a conflict of
interest.
 Company policy usually determines the
permissible limits of such financial interests.

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• An employee knows that
a coworker occasionally
sips whiskey on the job.
• Should she inform the
boss?

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• A dishwasher knows
that the restaurant’s Discuss
chef typically REHEAT
3- or 4-days-old food
and serves it as fresh.
• When he informs the
manager, he is told to
forget it.
• What should the
dishwasher do?

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 Self-Interest and Moral Obligation
 Concern with self-interest when loyalty and duty
conflicts is understandable and even warranted.
 What weight should self-interest be given in
resolving cases of conflicting obligations?
Some theorists believe that prudential
considerations outweigh moral ones.
Others say that nothing can outweigh morality
but morality itself does not require us to make
large sacrifices to right small wrongs.

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 Self-Interest and Moral Obligation

 Two points about the relationship between

prudential and moral considerations:
(1) Exaggerating the costs to ourselves allows us to
rationalize away the damage we are doing to
others.
(2) We have a collective interest in protecting the
welfare of society by encouraging people to act in
non-self-interested ways.

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Chapter 10
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 Self-Interest and Moral Obligation

 The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) legally protects

those who report possible securities fraud.
 The act makes it unlawful for companies to
“discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass, or
in any other manner discriminate against” them.
 Companies need to develop explicit, proactive
whistle-blower policies.
 In the long run, companies benefit from openness
and a receptive attitude to moral questioning.

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Discuss
• A consulting
engineer discovers a
defect in a structure
that is about to be
sold.
• If the owner will not
disclose the defect
to the potential
buyer, should the
engineer do so?
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