Business Ethics - Discrimination in the Workplace - Essay Example

? Business Ethics Maintaining a journal throughout the semester portrayed a number of issues related to personal and business ethics. Various issues came into recognition through paper, the media such as TV, various encounters at work, in the market area, as well as in other areas in the society. This paper looks at discrimination in the workplace as an ethical issue in business. Business ethics involve many issues that affect people differently in the society. Issues in Business Ethics range from finances, production, sales, to the human resource department of an organization (Duff, 2013). These issues not only affect an individual but also affect the organization and the society at large. Various issues related business ethics have been witnessed throughout the semester but job discrimination stands out as the most serious issues according to the journal entry considerations. Job discrimination leads to many problems that go beyond affecting an organization is various ways to causing a serious psychological effect to the discriminated employee. Job or employee discrimination involves unequal treatment of two individual having the same qualifications for a particular job or task. It could involve preferring one employee for an available post to others because of distinct characteristics. These distinctive traits may be skin colour, origin, religion, gender, race, nationality, or any other distinctive traits among individuals. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission witnessed a number of cases concerning employee discrimination at the workplace. This business issue led a number of employers to face charges against such ethical issues in their businesses and organizations. Workplace discrimination is seen as morally wrong and is moreover expensive for businesses and employers. Some of the consequences that businesses face due to employee discrimination are low working morale, high turnover, and legal action among other effects. This happens irrespective of the form of discrimination exercised in the workplace of any organization (Becker 1971). Discrimination in occupation and employment may take various forms. The discrimination can also take place in various work settings but the impacts of such discrimination actions are seemingly similar. Discrimination entails different treatment of individuals due to certain characteristic, which mainly include colour, sex, and race. This discrimination results business issues such as impairment of opportunity and treatment equality (Anonymous Employee 2013). Discrimination therefore reinforces employment inequalities in the workplace. Employment discrimination is an ethical issue, which brings restrictions on the freedom of people in developing their various capabilities, choosing, as well as pursuing their professional aspirations (Floten 2004). There is hardly any regard for employee abilities when deciding who to choose for a particular job specification, or when promoting individuals based on various requirements by an organization. In such a case, it would be difficult for a business to initiate a good working environment where skills and competencies can be developed adequately (Schulz 2005). The same ethical issue would create an environment whereby rewards to work are completely denied but instead, workers go through many cases of humiliations, job frustrations, as well as a feeling of powerlessness towards achievement of certain goals. This aspect comes from the fact that some employees feel that they are discriminated or some of the workers are favoured more than others are (Murphy & Enderle 1995). The problem of job discrimination still persists in many countries despite the various programs that have been initiated to curb the ethical issue and the effects of the problem. The problem becomes even worse as people of different origins, skin colour, and race interact in the work environment of all world economies. Discrimination in employment is mainly seen in cases whereby people of common attributes especially based on gender and race dominate some jobs. In the western countries, white males dominate most of the top jobs, with black females having the least chance of getting some of the top jobs in the job market (Bendick, Jackson, & Reinoso 1997). The most considered traits seem to be gender whereby a male employee would be most preferred to other employees who in this case would be females. Given that the White males have the two most desirable traits, they end up getting the best chance of securing the best jobs in the job market irrespective of their qualifications (Lew 2013). The black males would then stand the second chance in this case especially due to the abilities perceived in men over women. Black females would have the least opportunities in getting top jobs since they are characterized by being black and females. This practice has become a serious enemy when it comes to the best decision in the human resource departments of many organizations (Murphy & Enderle 1995). In a general case of employment discrimination, women and minorities are given the least consideration during hiring and promotions. Nothing significant is considered other than job qualification and the type of person an organization would be looking for. The minorities are also despised in job hiring because of their tender age. Age is a factor considered important in many organizations because employers assume that elder people are rich in wisdom and intensive working experience. Women and minorities therefore have fewer chances whenever it comes to job offerings and job specifications (Floten 2004). There are most likely to get few job offers as well as the least desired jobs than their competitors respectively. The horrible sense in job discrimination is that employee preferences are not done in with respect to individual merits but rather based on prejudice (Human Rights Campaign 2013). In many countries like the United States, discriminating in the work place is never ethical and could be punishable by the law. It is strictly forbidden to discriminate people in the workplace based on their ethnicity, cultural orientation, or racial orientation. The discrimination is strictly forbidden under the federal and state laws and such laws cover all sectors of the economy including the employment sector. Reports from the media sources show that more than half of Americans believe that some aspects of discrimination characterise all workplaces in the United States. The same case has been strengthened by a research, which was carried out by the US National Conference for Community and Justice (Bendick, Jackson, & Reinoso 1997). The research indicated that about 70 per cent of all American citizens agree with the fact that racism is an issue existing in the workplace. Those conducted believed that racism is a form of discrimination, which results to ill feeling at work, which in turn contribute to low productivity among workers. They also see that the problem has the power to affect the entire employment sector in the country if no increased efforts to curb the ethical discrimination problem in the workplace and generally in employment (Bendick, Jackson, & Reinoso 1997). Discrimination in the workplace could be initiated by an individual, a group of workers, against and individual or another group, or it could be initiated by the organization’s policies. Some policies for an organization may discriminate against people of a certain race or ethnicity. The policies of an organization could also contribute to the problem of some people receiving unequal treatment because of his or her ethnicity or race. (Bendick, Jackson, & Reinoso 1997) The policies of a business organization could also initiate working strategies where employees of specific characteristics are grouped separately. An organization could have limited opportunities for a certain group with respect to gender, race, or ethnicity. The organization could have policies that encourage hiring and promoting male workers or white workers, which would be an ethical issue according to the existing laws. From an economic point of view such as the neoclassical economics, discrimination in the labour market involve the treatment of two individuals, who are equally qualified differently with respect to their race, age, gender, and disability among other individual traits. From this perspective, discrimination is harmful because of its significant effects on economic outcomes especially of workers who are equally productive (Becker 1971). The standard approach of identifying discrimination in employment is the isolation of difference exhibited by group productivity with respect to education and work experience. The outcomes show differences in job placement and earnings but these differences are mainly attributed to emp0loyment discriminatory treatment rather than employee qualification. The non-neoclassical argument and view is that discrimination is the key initiator of labour market inequalities. In the United States, it is seen in terms of disparities in gender and racial earnings (Ingram & Parks 2012). The feminists in this case of discrimination as a business issue describe discrimination in employment and in the labour market in particular as an interaction of social, political, cultural, and economic forces in a multi-dimensional way that result in different economic outcomes. The outcomes are in terms of pay scale, employment opportunities, and employee status. This aspect implies that discrimination as an ethical issue in business involve both quantifiable and unquantifiable consequences. Other than racial discrimination, gender discrimination is a prominent issue in the work place and is particularly attributed to gender norms, which are embedded within the labour markets (Becker 1971). These norms in turn shape employers’ preferences alongside the preferences of workers. Inequalities related to productivity can hardly be separated from employment discrimination. Labour market inequalities have however declined greatly especially after the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. While solutions related to racial discrimination show a positive advancement, discrimination on the basis of gender seem to be more pronounced and has no positive effect after the enactment of the Act. Discrimination in general is persistent in capitalist economies (Becker 1971). The US economy has changed to be characterized by gender earning gaps as well as the concentration of women and men in different occupations and industries. Although such cases may not bring out evidence of the ethical issue, empirical studies exist, and they seek to identify whether earning differentials result from differences in worker qualifications or results from individual preferences on the basis of discriminative traits. In many cases, work qualifications do not tally with the earning difference exhibited among workers (Becker 1971). Since qualifications may not adequately provide a reason why some people would be favoured in the workplace or why some people have larger earnings, the earning gaps, which are hardly explained by workers’ qualifications, are therefore attributed to employment discrimination ( Harvard Business Review 2010). Discrimination results to economic losses in many cases since an employee who is favoured more than other would earn more salary than the benefits he or she could actually yield to the respective organization. Still on statistical evidence of discrimination in employment as a business ethic issue, homogeneous groups could be gathered to establish such evidence. In this case, employees with similar qualification, and working in the same business organization or within the same industry are found to earn differently (Schulz 2005). In some studies such as a study carried out in the Law School of Michigan University, in the United States, the results indicated similar or slight gap in gender earnings. The gap was later found to have widened greatly after about 15 years after the initial study. Initially, when the survey was conducted on fresh graduates, both men and women earned almost the same earnings but in a period of fifteen years, the women were earning only sixty percent of what the men earned (Bendick, Jackson, & Reinoso 1997). Men in this case seemed to be favoured in the industry to women. This case attributes a gender-based discrimination, which has remained a critical ethical issue in the United States. Many cases of gender discrimination seem inevitable, which could be due to the assumption that men perform better at work or they create a better organizational image than women do. The same issue would even be seen when men with lesser academic qualifications than women would earn either the same pay or more pays than their women counterparts. A lot has been done to monitor cases of discrimination in the workplace as a business issue, and as an issue that could cost the entire economy through the resulting labour market inequalities. Studies are frequently being carried out to establish experiment-based evidence on employment discrimination of any form (Murphy & Enderle 1995). The common studies are audit or the matched pairs' studies, which are done to examine cases of hiring discrimination. The studies are mainly based on employment outcomes for groups of workers with distinctive traits such as colour or gender. From audit studies on the same case, white men show higher score than black men and the same thing happens when the same study is carried on white women and black women respectively (Heathfield 2013). Employment discrimination has been faced from the side of discrimination laws, in which case, the US and State Laws restrict and prohibit workplace discrimination under the Title VII of the federal’s Civil Rights Act. The United States strongly supports equal opportunities in employment through the US Equal Rights Opportunity Commission. The commission takes charge in seeing that the rules and regulations, which govern the act are enforced adequately ( Harvard Business Review 2010). Employers need to award equalized opportunities to their employees irrespective of the discriminative traits including gender, age, and race as the major factors that contribute to employee discrimination at the workplace (Floten 2004). This would not only make the employers avoid legal actions or charges, but would ensure that employees are compensated with respect to their productivity. Again, employees would have the right motivation to work towards the achievement of great goals and objectives. As they strive to achieve their personal goals such as salary increments and promotions, they would enhance the productivity and the image of the business organization. Bibliography Harvard Business Review. 2010, February 23. Raising Ethical Issues at Work. Retrieved August 11, 2013, from http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca20100223_354669.htm Anonymous Employee. 2013. Unethical Behavior. Retrieved July 16, 2013, from Anonymousemployee.com: http://www.anonymousemployee.com/csssite/sidelinks/unethical_behavior.php Becker, G. S. 1971. The Economics of Discrimination, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bendick, M. J., Jackson, C. W., & Reinoso, V. A. 1997. Measuring Employment Discrimination through Controlled Experiments: African-Americans and Post-Industrial Labor Markets. The Review of Black Political Econ , 77-100. Brookins, M. (2013). Ways to Prevent Unethical Behavior in the Workplace. 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