Personal Values and Business Ethics
1) Being with the company for eight years now, Mr. Wiley is considerably well-aware of the policies as well as the punishment for breaking these policies. Nonetheless, Mr. Wiley chose to protect the best interests of the customers and the store even if this means losing his job.
2) Mr. Wiley approached the teenagers in an educated, responsible and diplomatic manner. As he is responsible for all the affairs inside and the immediate surroundings of that store, it would only be natural for him to took notice of the shoplifting/stealing and eventually stop the incident to pursue.
3) Considerably, the teenagers were the ones who started the fight, inflicting harm on Mr. Wiley. As Mr. Wiley fought back, he was able to capture one of the three teenagers. This meant that the violation of the policy started from this point onward particularly when he detained the teenager.
4) As the company does not want to get involve with any type of offenses and discriminatory act, Mr. Wiley could be held liable of violating a corporate policy. On the other end of the spectrum, Mr. Wiley has his own reasons of doing such especially that the safety and security of the whole store and the customers is at stake.
Basically, Mr. Wiley’s actions can be considered as a direct violation of the policy. Whether his actions justify the violation of the policy and then conforming to the resultant consequence is now the issue. When good versus evil, it would natural for any man to choose the good, and that is what Mr. Wiley did. However, Mr. Wiley failed to protect the interests of the company that provides him with his job for eight years. Unarguably, this is a ground to terminate Mr. Wiley. By virtue of spiritual value, however, Mr. Wiley only showed utmost respect for himself, for his workplace, for the elderly customer and even for the teenagers. For one, Mr. Wiley cannot stand to witness a wrongdoing without doing anything to stop such though this means loses on his end.
If we are going to look at this from an ethical values perspective, the policy to which Mr. Wiley violated mirrors the corporate value of 7-11. No one can argue with the values or policies per se set by the management. But with a good reason, employees including Mr. Wiley are often confronted by the challenge of whose or what values shall be trusted specifically on adverse situations like that of the robbery situation inside the store. While in the context of work, the values of the company are becoming the values of the employees, the employees themselves have deeply-held values. For instance, for Mr. Wiley, stealing is a crime that is punishable by law and that no one shall tolerate in any way. Having said this, although the company may hold Mr. Wiley liable of the incident, for Mr. Wiley, what he did was only right.
Considering moral value in the argument, if and only if Mr. Wiley chose not to do anything to stop the incident, going against his will to stop such could lead to guilt feelings. The situation that Mr. Wiley is in could be considered as the damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation that no matter what Mr. Wiley chose to do, it will cause trouble. It is instinctive thereby for Mr. Wiley to do what he has to do in a situation like that, and he did it even when he knows he might get hurt. Mr. Wiley only made his own choice based to the best of his own knowledge. If he decided to obey by the policy, he might think that he is violating his own values.
By virtue of utilitarianism theory of ethics, Mr. Wiley should be retained and be given an opportunity to showcase further his values in the workplace. I say this because even though Mr. Wiley had violated a corporate policy, he protected the credibility of the organisation as a whole operationally and profitably; profitably because the moment he did not tolerate the stealing/shoplifting in the store could mean protecting the best interest of the store that can manifest itself in the balance sheet. Now, as the HR Director, there are two opportunities that the situation yielded to: 1) aligning the punishment with that of the violation(s) and that termination should not be considered as the key punishment especially that the employees could have reasons in resorting to different actions and 2) rethinking the policies implemented inside the stores and how it can truly protect the employees also and not just the stores and the customers.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment