Management and Leadership

1) Ethics should be an integral part of the workplace. Explain why ethics in the work place is important and how ethics is involved in the case study. (Chapter 1)

--Answer below:

Ethics is very important in the workplace. Ethics helps to ensure fairness in the workplace. Ethics are a personal code of conduct that employees, from the top of ladder to the bottom, should adhere to. Without ethics in the workplace there is a chance for exploitation of workers and/or customers of the company. Although the government sets regulations and laws that businesses need to follow, ethics is in place to cover the areas that government cannot.

There are various ethics that take place in businesses. Ethics is based on the notions of honor and trust and involves "obedience to the unenforceable." (pg. 15) Employees are expected to not give out any information to a competitor that may hurt a previous employer. In factories, merchandise that is manufactured should be produced with as little risk to the environment as possible. In laboratories, there have been inroads made into not testing on animals for research purposes.

In the case study there is an ethical lapse because the machinery used to sterilize the gloves was not calibrated properly and the employee in charge falsified documents. This could be a problem for Baker-Allison because the state agency could take action against them. This could result in the company paying a fine and losing credibility and its reputation with its vendors. Judy is concerned because there is pressure to keep sales up on this product due to lagging sales on other products. If the company has to pay a huge fine or loses sales because of this situation their bottom line will be affected. Judy is also concerned with workers being laid off. This department's sales were the main reason that over half of the companies employees were not laid off last month.

Judy's decision is an important one because it is rooted in another employee's lapse of ethics. If she chooses to do nothing and look away she will, in fact, be guilty of an ethical lapse. It can be really tempting to do nothing and sweep things under the rug. The fact that Judy is contemplating what to do shows that she cares about the company she works for and for the employees and vendors that may be affected.