Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Scribd
Upload
3 views

Lecture Week 9

The document discusses workplace responsibilities and rights, focusing on professional conflicts of interest and their management. It outlines common types of conflicts, principles for resolution, and the moral implications of such conflicts, including examples of acceptable conflicts in specific contexts. Additionally, it addresses occupational crimes related to gifts, bribes, kickbacks, and insider information.

Uploaded by

zaliaameera25
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
3 views

Lecture Week 9

The document discusses workplace responsibilities and rights, focusing on professional conflicts of interest and their management. It outlines common types of conflicts, principles for resolution, and the moral implications of such conflicts, including examples of acceptable conflicts in specific contexts. Additionally, it addresses occupational crimes related to gifts, bribes, kickbacks, and insider information.

Uploaded by

zaliaameera25
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 11

Workplace Responsibilities

and Rights
AP Ir Dr Lim Soh Fong
sflim@unimas.my
Conflicts
• Definition: Professional conflicts of interest are situations
where professionals have an interest that, if pursued,
might keep them from meeting their obligations to their
employers or clients.
• Common conflicts
– Conflicts over schedules
– Conflicts over which project priorities
– Conflicts over personnel resources
– Conflicts over technical issues
– Conflicts over administrative procedures
– Conflicts over costs
– Personality conflicts (most difficult to solve)
• Managing conflict by force can be self-defeating, abuse
of authority. Managing people by demanding
unquestioning obedience is ineffective in maintaining
long-term productive relationships among professionals.
Principles for Conflict Resolution:

• Four widely applicable principles for conflict


resolution:
1. People: separate people from the problem.
Sometimes people are the problem, as with
personality clashes. Both personal aspect and the
problem are separated in order to be able to better
deal with both.
2. Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
3. Options: Generate a variety of possibilities before
deciding what to do.
4. Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some
objective standard.
Conflicts of Interest
• Personal conflict of interest are situations commonly
encountered when serving in a competitor’s company or
making substantial investments in a competitor’s company etc
• Conflicts of interest arises when two conditions are met:
– The professional is in a relationship or role that requires exercising good
judgment on behalf of the interests of an employer or client
– The professional has some additional or side interest that could threaten
good judgment in serving the interests of the employer or client.
• “Conflict of interest” and “conflicting interests” are not
synonyms. A student, for example, may have interests in
excelling on four final exams. She knows, however, that there
is time to study adequately for only three of them, and so she
must choose which interest not to pursue. In this case
“conflicting interests” means a person has two or more desires
that cannot all be satisfied given the circumstances. But there
is no suggestion that it is morally wrong or problematic to try
pursuing them all.
Joseph Margolis, “Conflict of Interest and Conflicting Interests,” in Ethical Theory and Business, ed. T. Beauchamp and N. Bowie (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979), 361
Moral Status of Conflicts of
Interest
• Because of the great variety of possible outside
interests, conflicts of interest can arise in
innumerable ways, and with many degrees of
subtlety.
• We will sample only a few of the more common
situations involving
(1) gifts, bribes, and kickbacks,
(2) interests in other companies, and
(3) insider information.
Occupational Crimes - Gift, Bribes &
Kickback
• Gifts – not bribes as long as they are small gratuities offered in
normal conduct of business.
• Bribe – a substantial amount of money or goods offered beyond a
stated business contract with the aim of winning an advantage in
gaining or keeping the contract and where the advantage is unfair
or unethical.
• Kickback – pre-arranged payments made by contractors to
companies or their representatives in exchange for contracts
actually granted.
• Extortion – when kickback is suggested by the granting party to the
party bidding on the contract, the latter often defends its
participation in such an arrangement as having been subjected to
extortion.
• Bribes are illegal or immoral because they are substantial enough to
threaten fairness in competitive situations.
• A rule of thumb – “If the offer or acceptance of a particular gift
could have embarrassing consequences for your company if made
public, then do not accept the gift.”
Occupational Crimes –
Interest In Other Companies
• Have an interest in a competitor’s or subcontractor’s
business.
• Partial ownership or substantial shareholdings in
competitor’s business.
• One’s spouse working for subcontractor constitute
conflict of interest if one’s job involves granting contracts
to that subcontractor.
• Moonlighting – working in one’s spare time for another
company. Moonlighting creates conflict of interest in
special circumstances such as working for competitors,
suppliers or customers or leaves one exhausted and
harm job performance.
Occupational Crimes – Insider
Information
• Using “inside” information to gain advantage or
set up a business opportunity for oneself, one’s
family or one’s friends.
• For example, engineers might tell their friends
about the impending announcement of a
revolutionary invention, which they have been
perfecting, or of their corporation’s plans for a
merger that will greatly improve the worth of
another company’s stock.
The Moral debate
• What is wrong with employees having conflicts of interest?
• Most of the answer is obvious from our definition: Employee
conflicts of interest occur when employees have interests
that if pursued could keep them from meeting their
obligations to serve the interests of the employer or client
for whom they work. Such conflicts of interest should be
avoided because they threaten to prevent one from fully
meeting those obligations.
• More needs to be said, however. Why should mere threats
of possible harm always be condemned? Suppose that
substantial good might sometimes result from pursuing a
conflict of interest?
• In fact, it is not always unethical to pursue conflicts of
interest. In practice, some conflicts are thought to be
unavoidable, or even acceptable.
Example
• One example of acceptable conflict of interest is that
the government allows employees of aircraft
manufacturers, such as Boeing or McDonnell
Douglas, to serve as government inspectors for the
Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). The FAA is charged
with regulating airplane manufacturers and making
objective safety and quality inspections of the
airplanes they build. Naturally the dual roles
government inspector and employee of the
manufacturer being inspected could bias judgments.
Yet with careful screening of inspectors, the
likelihood of such bias is said to be outweighed by
the practical necessities of airplane inspection.

You might also like