Chelsea Whitman MGT 305 March 31, 2014 Case Study 1. Does he have an ethical dilemma? A.

Yes, Frank does have an ethical dilemma on his hands because he is required to make a decision about a situation that could be considered unethical. B. The CEO is deciding to lay off employees that have not been properly evaluated because its time for them to retire anyway. The CEO is deciding to take an unethical procedure in order to lay off workers without having their annual evaluation of performance appraisals like all the other employees were able to have. The three employees are not even aware of their performance nor are they aware that their performance appraisal scores are going to determine the companys downsizing when informal evaluations have been done for them over the past six years as they always had when it was first instituted. Frank is stuck in the middle deciding how to downsize in an ethical manner because the CEO trusts him so much. Frank is going to have to make an ethical decision on continuing to downsize in the manner that the CEO, who is finally convinced of having Frank as part of the family business, wants or take a stand to downsize in a manner that is fair to all employees regardless of the amount of time theyve spend with the company and based on accurate annual performance appraisal scores. C. In Chapter 3, an ethical dilemma is defined when one must decide whether to pursue a course of action that, although offering the potential for personal or organizational gain, may be unethical. An unethical behavior at work

included in the book is discrimination where people may be denied a promotion or job because of their race, religion, gender, age, or another reason that is not job-relevant. This unethical behavior can definitely be applied to Franks situation because the CEO is essentially discriminating towards the employees who have been working for the company for so long. He begins rationalizing his behavior by believing it is not illegal to lay off the employees without having accurate performance appraisals, believing his decision is in everyones best interests because he assumed everyone in the company thinks theyre not performing well, and believing his decision will never be noticed as illegal because of the retirement stored away and the severance being offered, so theyd never press employment discrimination charges. Chapter 10 also touches on US Laws Against Employment Discrimination for age. The statement the CEO made about cutting employees who have been with the company almost since the beginning to save jobs for some of the younger employees with young kids and families just starting out could come back to hurt him considering the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 as amended in 1978 and 1986. This Act essentially protects workers against being replaced by younger workers, especially when employees are over the age of 40 or are close to retirement age. 2. Whats the right thing to do? A. The right thing for Frank to do would be to approach the CEO and Executive Committee to make sure each employee has consistent performance appraisals for the last three so that their scores can be accurately ranked and lay offs can be solely based on each individuals performance. B. Based on the situation and the unethical behavior that the CEO is considering, Frank should choose to re-evaluate how right-sizing should be performed to avoid employment discrimination as I mentioned in part

C of question 1. Frank would be deciding to take the ethical approach to make sure employees are not discriminated by age or how long theyve been with the company to insure all have the same level playing field when evaluating and comparing all annual performance appraisals over the last three years. He should ensure that policies are still being followed so that downsizing decisions will be based off of consistent performance appraisals. So, he would have to have department managers for those three employees create up-to-date reliable and valid performance appraisals to be compared fairly to the rest of the company. C. Frank would be taking the justice view of ethical reasoning because he would be treating all employees with impartiality and fairness. In accordance with anti-discrimination laws based on age, Frank would be taking the procedural justice approach of the justice view because he would be standing up for the administration of original policies and rules of basing all lay offs on the annual performance appraisal scores over the last three years. Both the justice view and procedural justice are topics discussed in Chapter 3. According to Chapter 10, once a person is hired and on the job, one of the important functions of HRM is performance management. Performance appraisals must meet the same validity and reliability criteria of employment tests; they must show consistent results and be a good predictor of future job performance. Both those criteria were not met with every employee of this specific company by putting N/A where the evaluation score should have been written and avoiding having formal evaluations done for those longtime employees. The right thing to do comes back to keeping up with performance management appraisals one of four ways/techniques to avoid discrimination-based lawsuits.

3. If he disagrees with the CEO, how does he protect his own career and the interests of his own family? A. In order to protect his career, Frank must create proper documentation to use if the CEO were to take aggressive measures against him for changing the ways of the company in deciding to lay off employees and understand laws that can protect his career. B. Frank is aware of the current situation within the firm and has identified the ethical dilemma the CEO is creating through their downsizing practices. Frank must understand that in his new position he could come under attack not just from the CEO but also the Executive Committee. Being aware of whistleblower laws and properly documenting all materials related to the matter would protect Frank in the situation of retaliatory discharge from either the CEO or Executive Committee. C. As discussed in Chapter 3, whistleblowers are persons who expose organizational misdeeds in order to preserve ethical standards and protect against wasteful, harmful, or illegal acts. If the CEO were to attempt to fire Frank for his ethical actions, Frank would potentially become a whistleblower because he would be exposing the unethical behaviors of the CEO and Executive Committee. He would be potentially protected under state or federal laws in the case of being fired due to his whistleblowing of unethical behavior.