The Ethics of Personality Testing - Coursework Example

 The Ethics of Personality Testing In the modern world, there are several ethical concerns which a company may face in terms of recruiting and handling the employees who work for the company. Some of these concerns may have a higher importance levels than others but it becomes difficult to say that one is more important that the other in consideration to the ethics of the issue. Even in business terms, it is not easy to deduce what effect an ethical issue will have on the bottom line of the company as compared to another therefore all have to be treated more or less equally. Of course, depending on the situation of the company, some issues may carry a sense of urgency while others could be put on the back burner but it must be kept in mind that all ethical issues will need to be tackled sooner or later. An ethical issue which comes up as soon as a company decides to hire or to recruit an individual is the personality of that individual. Since management begins with recruitment and hiring, the two central ethical issues for a company undergoing the recruitment process can be understood as the need to follow anti-discrimination rules and to observe equal opportunity laws (Lockwood, 2005). Simply put, all candidates must be viewed and hired based on their strengths and weaknesses as applicants without any undue weight to their race, age, physical abilities or gender except in situations where such requirements become a part of the job (Alleyne, 2005). As reported by Clarke (2005), even though a lot remains to be done in this particular field there are laws to protect companies as well as individuals from discrimination based on these particular issues. Personality testing on the other hand, is one issue which is not clearly defined by the law and is very easy to circumnavigate during the interview process. In terms of psychology, it is understood that certain personality types are better at certain jobs than others and even though personality itself is complex to define, the generally accepted notion of personality has been the collection of behavioral properties as well as the thoughts and ideas of a person. The earlier work in this field was done by Jung which was later expanded by others. While we may say that person X has a cheerful personality, scientists prefer to classify personality in three models including Factorial models, typologies and circumplexes which are connected with how they perform at work (Clarke & Robertson, 2005). This process can be used to profile candidates but modern discussions of ethics in HR also question if such a process would be valid in ethical terms. There is a significant amount of research and information which shows that there is a definite link between personality and certain job roles. Of course much of the evidence presented is based on anecdotes by individuals but scientific research into the field also supports this idea. For example, on an individual level, it has been shown that having a proactive personality can be a positive effect on an individual’s performance and professional career (Erdogan, 2005). As research continues both in terms of organizational behavior and personality studies, we might have to consider alterations to the ethics and laws of human resource management. There is a newly discovered higher order personality trait called Honesty-Humility which impacts the tendency towards antisocial or illegal behavior at work (Lee, et. al. 2005). It is therefore logical to say that further research into personality and personality traits will certainly open more options for performance assessment and personality evaluations even if they are implicit evaluations and not explicit tests. Applying the theory of deontological ethics, psychological testing becomes very important for a company since a company has a duty towards its stakeholders and the primary stakeholders of the company are those who have made investments in the company. Since their investments i.e. the company needs to be protected, all those who work for the company should be given psychological tests in order to ensure that they are a good personality match for the given situation and professional position. In utilitarian ethics, we would need to do what is good and fair for the majority of the people. In this case, the company has clients and might even be making products that impact society at large. Therefore if there is any possibility of improvements coming to either how goods are produced by the company or how the company develops as a better social organ through psychological testing of the employees, then psychological testing should be conducted. However, if the company has a significantly large number of employees and just a few shareholders or clients then the privacy concerns of the employees could be more important than psychological testing. Finally, the company can apply the idea of egoistic ethics i.e. it should do whatever will bring about the best results for the company. In the case of psychological testing, the company would certainly ask for psychological tests for new recruits since it would try and seek out the best possible match for itself without being overly concerned with what the employees think about the company. At the same time, such an approach could be very dangerous in business terms since employees who are shown to be untrustworthy by the company they work for can not be asked for loyalty or for going above and beyond the call of duty. In conclusion, while there is some scientific support for psychological testing and the performance of an individual at a given task, it seems that there is no real consensus amongst companies on psychological testing as well as agreement on whom they test and who they don’t. At the same time, the ethics of the matter are also somewhat grey since depending on the ethical theory that is being applied as well as the position the company is placed in, we may get a different answer for the question of psychological testing. However, I agree with the idea of making the need for or the presence of psychological testing an option for the company since certain positions can certainly benefit from such tests. Word Count: 1,151 Works Cited Alleyne, S. (2005). But Can You Walk the Walk. Journal of Black Enterprise, 36(2) Pg. 100-105. Clarke, R. D. (2005). Workplace Bias Abounds. Journal of Black Enterprise, 36(2) Pg. 38-39. Clarke, S. and Robertson, I. T. (2005). A meta-analytic review of the Big Five personality factors and accident involvement in occupational and non-occupational settings. Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 78(3), Pg. 355-376. Erdogan, B. (2005). Enhancing Career Benefits of Employee’s Proactive Personality. Personnel Psychology, 58(4). Pg. 859-891 Lee, K. et. al. (2005). Personality Correlates of Workplace Anti-Social Behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 54(1), Pg. 81-98. Lockwood, N. R. (2005). Workplace Diversity: Leveraging the Power of Difference for Competitive Advantage. HR Magazine, 50(6) Pg. 1-14. Read More