UNIVERSITY OF

TECHNOLOGY
Business Ethics
Module 5 b

ETHICAL PROBLEMS IN
ORGANIZATIONS

Discrimination

Discrimination practices in employer-employee

relationships include unequal or disparate treatment
of individuals and groups. Unequal or preferential
treatment is based on irrelevant criteria, such as
gender, race, colour, religion, national origin or
disability. Systematic and systemic discrimination is
based on historical or institutionally ingrained unequal
or disparate treatment against minorities, the
disadvantaged and women. Examples of
contemporary and systemic discrimination are found
in practices such as recruitment, screening,
promotion, termination, conditions of employment
and discharge. These practices are attributed to
closed employment and practices resulting from
seniority systems old boy networks.

Unfortunately, there can be quite a gulf between

where corporate policy leaves off and reality begins.
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Discrimination and the Workplace

Discrimination occurs whenever something other than

qualifications affects how an employee is treated. Unequal
treatment, usually unfavourable, can take many forms.

Older workers who suddenly find themselves reporting to

younger ones can be resentful since they feel younger
workers lack experience. Younger employees can be
tempted to ignore advice from older workers, who they feel
are out of touch. The Age Discrimination in Employment
Act of 1967 revised in 1978 prohibits employers from
discriminating against individuals based on their age
(between 40 70) in hiring, promotions, terminations and
other employment practices. In 1987, ADEA again was
amended when the US Congress banned any fixed
retirement age.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Discrimination and the Workplace

Age discrimination also applies to younger people
individuals. Hanigan Consulting Group of New York
surveyed 170 recent graduates, some scheduled to
receive masters and doctoral degrees. The firm found
that some applicants were asked questions that
clearly violated antidiscrimination laws; for example
do you intend to get married and have children?,
What will your boyfriend think of you working long
hours
The basic guideline is if the question is not businessrelated and there is no legitimate business reason for
asking it, then do not ask it.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Discrimination and the Workplace

Comparable Worth and Equal Pay

The Equal Pay Act of 1963, amended in 1972, prohibits

discriminatory payment of wages and overtime pay based
on gender. The reality however is that women still on
average make 76 cents on the dollar for comparable work
compared with men. According to Weiss, the ratio of
womens annual pay to mens for full-time employment
was 83.3 cents on the dollar during the last decade.

Title V11 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes

discrimination on the basis of gender, race, colour, religion,
or national origin in any term privilege of employment
illegal. The law prohibits discrimination in hiring,
classifying, referring, assigning, promoting, training,
retraining, conducting apprenticeships, firing and
dispensing wages and fringe benefits.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Class Discussion Point

What forms of discrimination are
experienced in the workplace in
Jamaica?
Is discrimination illegal in Jamaica?
Remember there is a fine line between
discrimination policies both in law
and on the workplace and in real
life!
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Other Forms of Discrimination

1) Intentional discrimination is conscious and deliberate
discrimination.
2) Unintentional discrimination is discrimination that is not
consciously or deliberately sought, but is brought about by
stereotypes or as an unintended outcome.
3) Individual discrimination is the discrimination of one or a
few individuals acting on their own
4)Institutional discrimination is discrimination that is the
result of the actions of all or many of the people in an
institution and of their routine processes and policies. For
example contemporary or systemic discrimination in
recruiting, hiring etc.see previous slides.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Discrimination, Equal Employment

Opportunity and Affirmative Action
It is difficult to imagine that throughout most
of the 19th century, women in America could
not vote, serve on juries, issue lawsuits in
their own name or initiate legal contracts if
they list their property to their husbands.

In 1873 Supreme Court decision, Bradwell v

Illinois a woman had no legal existence,
separate from her husband, who was
regarded as her head and representative in
the social state
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

Discrimination, Equal Employment

Opportunity and Affirmative Action
It is also difficult to imagine the legal status of
African Americans in the United States in 1857.
In the Dred Scott case, one of the opinions of the
Supreme Court considered blacks as being of an
inferior orderand so far inferior that they had
no rights that the white man was bound to
respect Weiss, Business Ethics p372
In 2008, an African American, was elected as
President of the United States.
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING
Deceptive advertising can take several forms. An
advertisement can misrepresent the nature of the
product by using deceptive mock-ups, using untrue
paid testimonials, inserting the word guarantee,
where nothing is guaranteed, quoting misleading
prices, failing to disclose defects in a product,
misleadingly disparaging a competitors goods, or
simulating well-known brand names. Some deceptive
forms of advertising involve more complex schemes.
For example bait advertisements announce the sale of
good that later prove not to be available or to be
defective. Once consumers are lured into the store
they are pressured to purchase another, more
expensive item.
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING
Deceptive advertising requires the following:
An author who unethically intends to make the
audience believe what he or she knows is false
by means of an intentional act or utterance.
2) Media or intermediaries who communicate the
false message of the advertisement and so are
responsible for the deceptive effects.
3) An audience who is vulnerable to the deception
and who lacks the capacity to recognize the
deceptive nature of the advertisement.
1)

Velasquez p 329

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

PRODUCT SAFETY
Product Safety is the implied or expressed degree of risk
associated with using a product. Because the use of
virtually any product involves some degree of risk,
questions of safety are essentially questions of acceptable
and known levels of risk. That is the product is safe of its
attendants risks are known and judged to be acceptable
or reasonable by the buyer in view of the benefits the
buyer expects to derive from using the product. This
implies that sellers comply with their part of a free
agreement if the sellers provides a product that involves
only those risks they say it involves, and buyers purchase
it with that understanding. The National Commission on
Product Safety, for example, has characterized reasonable
risk in these terms:
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

PRODUCT SAFETY
Risk of bodily harm to users are not reasonable when

consumers understand that risk exist, can appraise their

probability and severity, know how to cope with them, and
voluntarily accept them to get benefits they could not
obtain in less risky ways.
Thus the seller of a product(according to the contractual
theory) has a moral duty to provide a product whose use
involves no greater risks that those the seller expressly
communicate to the buyer, or those the seller implicitly
communicates by the implicit claims made when marketing
the product for a use whose normal risk level is well
known. For eg. If a label on a bottle indicates that the
contents are highly toxic (Danger: Poison) the product
should not include additional risks of inflammability.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

POLLUTION
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
There was a time when corporations used the environment as
a free and unlimited resource. That time is ending, in
terms of public awareness and increasing legislative
control. The magnitude of environmental abuse not only by
industries but also by human activities and nature
processes, has awakened an international awareness of the
need to protect the environment.
The ethical implications and issues resulting from the various
types pollution are far-reaching and significant for key
constituencies from a stakeholders, issues management
approach.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

POLLUTION
Causes of environmental pollution
Some of the most pervasive factors that have contributed to
the depletion of resources and damage to the environment
are as follows:
1) Consumer affluence: Increased wealth has led to
increased spending, consumption and waste
2) Materialistic cultural values: Values have evolved to
emphasize consumption over conservation-a mentality
that believes in bigger is better, me first and a
throwaway ethic.
3) Urbanization
4) Population explosion
5) New and uncontrolled technologies
6) Industrial activities

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

POLLUTION
The ethics of ecology
Advocates of a new environmentalism argue that
when the stakes approach the damage of the
earth itself and the health and survival, the
utilitarian ethic alone is an insufficient logic to
justify continuing negligence and abuse of the
earth. For example Sagoff argues that costbenefit analysis can measure only desires and
not beliefs.

Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison

POLLUTION
The ethics of ecology
There are five (5) arguments from those who advocate
corporate social responsibility from an ecology based
organizational ethic include the following:
1)
2)

3)
4)
5)

Organizations responsibilities go beyond the

production of goods and services at a profit
Those responsibilities involve helping to solve
important social problems, especially those they
have helped create.
Corporations have a broader constituency than
stakeholders alone
Corporations have impacts that go beyond simple
marketplace transactions.
Corporations serve a wider range of human values
than just economics.
Business Ethics- Yanike Harrison