Uriah Heep and the City of Boca Grande - Essay Example

Who among them was right, is it the City management or is it Uriah? Arguments raised by the two parties will help in determining the case. On his part, Uriah felt that his actions were justified while the City felt that they were justified in their decision to fire the employee. In the arguments that I shall hereby raise, I will look at both sides of the arguments and why they felt they were justified in their actions. Moreover, I will also explore the possibilities in both cases.

As opposed to crimes that are public, torts are private wrongs committed by people or businesses. Unintentional torts, also known as negligence are defined as the situation whereby a person has either failed to do something or has done something that a reasonable person in his or her own right mind would not do and the other person has suffered harm as a result of the foreseeable action or inaction (Cooke, 2007). The action that has either been committed or omitted is what is referred to as negligence.
In the case of Uriah versus the City, Uriah acted in due negligence and breached his duty of care. This was against the ethics of business which requires that an employee should at all times portray a behaviour or character that in no way will dent the image of the company, whether on duty or off duty. Failure by any employee to observe the code of ethics could attract severe consequences, even dismissal. According to Miller (2012), many businesses take their codes of ethics with increased levels of seriousness as they value how their customers judge them in accordance with the image of the employees. With the high levels of competition due to globalization, no business is ready to let anything chance in maintaining their public image and stay ahead of their competition. In essence, the dismissal of Uriah was backed by the ethics of the business. In particular, Uriah would cost the business its image as few customers would like being served by a nightclub dancer. Clubs are associated with all mannerisms of immorality and bad behaviour. Contrary to this, the modern business environment is concerned about image, ethics and morals. Employees such as Uriah thus find themselves in the wrong due to their actions.

Miller & Jentz, (2010) observe that businesses have increasingly shunned away unethical behaviour such as alcoholism, drug abuse among other socially unaccepted behaviour. Some even restrict the areas in which their employees need to reside, the type of social places that they can hang out in and the dress codes. All this is supposed to show their customers that they understand what it means to be ethically responsible. As part of corporate social responsibility, businesses are required to be on the front line in promoting moral behaviourisms in society. They can only survive this by keeping employees who are ethically responsible. It is due to these reasons that the City decided to fire Uriah for being a nightclub dancer.

On his part, Uriah was justified in a number of ways to take part in the nightclub dance as a part-time job. However, his argument would be tricky as he had to put into consideration the damages his actions would have caused the company. Although he had acted in violation of the codes of ethics, business morals require that an employee be awarded a remuneration that would be adequate enough to cater for all his needs. This would have prevented Uriah and other employees from seeking part-time jobs. A good remuneration ensures that the employee can live a decent life without too many struggles. Although there is no law that requires employees to do certain jobs and not others, the definition of ethical behaviour settles the argument.

However, the arguments that he would raise would be affected by his prior knowledge of what his actions would have caused to the business. The contractual terms under which Uriah had been hired would also affect the argument in his case. The employment-at-will doctrine allows the employer or the employee to terminate the contract of service at any given time when they deem it best to do so. In this case, City decided to lay off the employee due to a number of reasons that they felt could not be avoided. This would highly constrain his arguments on the case.

It is assumed that an employee should be guided by his own mind in his actions to ensure that they do not cause any losses to the business. Thus, it is by individual reasoning that Uriah should have considered the effects of his actions on the company’s image. If they would affect the company, he should have refrained from engaging in them. More importantly, he should have considered the code of ethics of his company and the contractual terms in which he was fired upon. If the code of ethics contains the behaviour of an employee even off duty, he was not justified. However, if no clause had this requirement, he was justified.