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CHAPTER 10
Moral Choices Facing Employees
Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter students should be able to:
Understand employees’ legal and moral obligations to the firm and appreciate some of the
difficult choices with which employees are faced.
Identify, avoid, and suggest ways to resolve employment-related conflicts of interest.
Glossary
1. conflict of interest: When someone has an interest that conflicts with the interests of the company
and it's significant enough to have a chance of motivating behavior that conflicts with the interests
of the company.
2. grease payments: Payments similar to bribes but intended to get officials to do their normal job
duties rather than to do something illegal or unethical.
3. insider trading: Buying or selling stock using relevant information that's not available to the
public.
Chapter Summary Points
1. The employment contract creates various obligations to one’s employer. In addition, employees
often feel loyalty to the organization. Conflicts of interest arise when employees have a personal
interest in a transaction substantial enough that it might reasonably be expected to affect their
judgment or lead them to act against the interests of the organization.
2. When employees have financial investments in suppliers, customers, or distributors with whom
the organization does business, conflicts of interest can arise. Company policy usually
determines the permissible limits of such financial interests.
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4. Proprietary data refers to an organization’s information that can't be used by others without
permission. Increasingly, problems arise as employees in high-tech occupations with access to
sensitive information and trade secrets quit and take jobs with competitors. Proprietary-data
issues pose a conflict between two legitimate rights: the right of employers to keep certain
information secret and the right of individuals to work where they choose.
5. A bribe is payment in some form for an act that runs counter to the work contract or the nature of
the work one has been hired to perform. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits
corporations from engaging in bribery overseas. Bribery generally involves injury to individuals,
competitors, or political institutions and damage to the free-market system.
8. Balancing our obligations to employer or organization, to friends and coworkers, and to third
parties outside the organization can create conflicts and divided loyalties. In resolving such
moral conflicts, we must identify the relevant obligations, ideals, and effects and decide where
the emphasis among them should lie.
9. Whistle-blowing refers to an employee’s informing the public about the illegal or immoral
behavior of an employer or organization. Whistle-blowers frequently act out of a sense of
professional responsibility.
Teaching Suggestions
It can be helpful to help the students examine the major arguments, assumptions, examples, and theories
found in the chapters. I will examine some of the arguments and assumptions here.
1. When do employees have a duty to be loyal to their employer? Much of this chapter assumes that
employees have a duty to be loyal to their employers. Consider the following:
a. Employees can have a “conflict of interest” to make work decisions for personal gain rather than
the employer's interest. For example, employees can often decide which companies their employer will do
business with, and they might own sock in one of those companies. The stock gives the employee an
incentive to encourage business with that company whether it would be best for their employer or not.
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If employees owe no loyalty to the employer, then conflicts of interest aren't morally relevant. However,
using an employer for personal gain without the employer's consent seems wrong. When on the job it
seems reasonable to assume that the contractual relationship between employee and employer implies that
the employee should make decisions in the interest of the employer.
Is it immoral for employees to exploit a conflicts of interest?
b. Employees can leave one job to join a competitor.
2. When should employees blow the whistle? David Bowie argues that blowing the whistle is only
justified when certain criteria are met. I agree that his criteria are relevant to whether or not
whistle-blowing is morally justified, but it's not clear that they must always be met. I will examine his
criteria below.
a. It is done from an appropriate moral motive.
Sometimes people are motivated to be whistle-blowers out of revenge or some other immoral reason.
Nonetheless, it's not clear that such a motive would necessarily negate the justification of whistle-blowing
b. The whistle-blower, except in special circumstances, has exhausted all internal channels for dissent
before going public.
Whistle-blowing can unjustly harm a company when (a) management isn't notified or aware of
wrongdoing or (b) there's a chance that no wrongdoing occurred in the first place. Sometimes workers
c. The whistle-blower has compelling evidence that wrongful actions have been ordered or have
occurred.
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If it's impossible to prove that the company did something wrong, then the odds of whistle-blowing doing
any good is decreased. Nonetheless, whistle-blowing might prompt an investigation that reveals evidence
that would otherwise remain unknown.
d. The whistle-blower has acted after careful analysis of the danger: How serious is the moral
violation? How immediate is the problem? Can the whistle-blower point to specific misconduct?
e. The whistle-blowing has some likelihood of success.
In many ways (c) and (d) are based on this condition. Whistle-blowing can harm oneself and the targeted
company, so whistle-blowing is generally not worth it unless some good can come out of it. The word
Questions for Discussion
At this point there are at least four general questions you may pose to your students about the ideas
covered in Chapter 10:
1. It seems reasonable and unproblematic to say that we may be loyal to other human beings because they
are persons with wants, desires, and a rich mental and moral life. But what about corporations? Is it
possible to be loyal to a corporation? Are we loyal to the corporation or to the people within? Should
people be encouraged to, or discouraged from, feeling loyalty to companies?
4. Is it possible for self-interest to conflict with the interests of society? If so, how ought such conflicts
be resolved?
Additional Resources for Exploring Chapter Content
Further Reading
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Other Resources
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