Discrimination at the workplace towards the employees because of the difference in social group membership such as ethnicity or race is an unfair behavior. Discrimination goes against the right of equal treatment and thus falls under unethical conduct (Petersen & Dietz, 2008). This unethical conduct can be said to be discrimination targeted at particular employees during considerations for promotion despite superb performance at work. It can also be discrimination against a whole social group, such as creating a hostile environment at work targeting a social group. Unethical behaviors violating the moral standards in the workplace include bribing, fraud, lying to supervisors, peers, forgery of records, and giving false information to customers. Employment discrimination is always overlooked in this list. Employment discrimination is the discrimination against social groups with less economic power in society and with a low status. It also refers to discrimination against individuals from social groups dominant in societal politics and economy, enjoying a high rank. This paper focuses on discrimination at the workplace and the ethical theories related to employee discrimination.
Utilitarianism
The first utilitarianism principle states, "The morally right move is the one maximizing exclusive social gains. The net social gains match social benefits minus social expenses" (Schumann, 2001). Utilitarianism is considered a situation where the end justifies the means in a condition that the benefits outweigh the harm among stakeholders in proportion to alternative methods. Discrimination of employees as a zero-sum game brings about losing and winning as a result of discrimination. For example, failure to promote members of a particular group means supporting members of another group. Despite this, in many cases, employment discrimination looks down on the existence of a performing corporate workforce. This can be due to the exclusion of competent members of the discriminated group from contribution to the organization.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
There could be exceptions, such as if a diverse demographic group in the workplace is judged to producing more significant benefits. Employment discrimination does not seem to produce better “ends” than alternatives such as performance-based practices that help employees from different groups to give their best performance. The utilitarianism, therefore, implies unfair employment discrimination in most cases.
Hedonism
People are concerned with how ethics apply in our daily lives. Everyone would love to see the employees perform their duties to the best standards. Banks (2009) stated that hedonism compares to the cliché, "desire alone is essentially good” (p.333). Banks explained that pleasure is the single thing worth looking for just for its particular sake and stated that desire was moral. Hedonism, thus, reveals that fun is good.
The pursuit of pleasure can lead to discrimination in the workplace. For example, making fun of employees in the workplace belonging to a particular social group would not be good. The calmness of the mind is achieved through philosophical understanding and wisdom.
Pleasure and happiness as a measure of ethics are limited to western philosophy. Hedonistic believe in satisfaction from Aristotle and Socrates to John Stuart Mill and Bentham, among others during contemporary times. All proponents of hedonism claim that it is human nature to be selfish. They further argued that people could act either good or bad, to attain a particular pleasure (Everett 2006, P.36). The satisfaction could overtime or bring pain in the immediate sense and then desire. People do evil because it gives them the joy of pleasure (Lane & Piercy, 2003).
Desire satisfaction theory
The theory states that the overall desire-satisfaction level in their whole life of a particular person is his well-being. It further says that life could go well to the extent of getting what you desire. Something is only suitable for you if it satisfies your desires. This means that the more you attain your wants, the better your life is, and when you fail to, life goes badly due to frustrated desires. If we embrace this theory and consider the welfare of others, we then try to satisfy the cravings for others, whatever they are. This is the same theory that the desires for everyone are equally essential and without one hope more critical than another. The desire theory rejects all welfare's objective approach. This theory contributes to a good life independent of opinions and desires of what is more critical (Shafer-Laudau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, 40). People must enjoy the freedom of choice and control, showing how satisfaction is good in life. There are cases of people with wrong desires that could be discriminatory in a workplace such as sexual harassment. This is brought about by a lack of knowledge on their willingness, illogical determination of their passion, or the desire of mutually unachievable thing. The cravings can be seen as pointless if there existed a universal way to measure excellence in the activity, but there is no welfare scale to measure desire-satisfaction.
An interesting ethical approach to employee discrimination gives the solution to its elimination. If the pressure in the organization can harbor employee discrimination, the pressure should have the ability to eliminate it. Peterson and Krings (2009) highlighted the code of ethics and considering employee discrimination as essential ethics to form antidiscrimination pressure.
The efforts to eliminate employee discrimination, except for the study done by Petersen and Krings (2004), interventions by ethics haven’t been tested. Chui and Dietz (2014) debated that intervening against women discrimination by colleagues is regarded as immoral.
Conclusion
From the different approaches discussed, employment discrimination is mostly considered to be unethical. This contrast to the state of employment discrimination is not a popular topic at the workplace. Employment discrimination existence is usually denied or considered as rare instances. An unusual situation such as an organization pressuring towards identity and the organization’s environment legitimizing unethical conduct raises the chances of employee discrimination. In summary, understanding employee discrimination is not a way of promoting a particular agenda or ideology. Every human has the right to equal treatment, and violating such rights is an ethical issue. The lens of ethics on an academic view on employee discrimination brings to light earlier abandoned antecedents. From a practical perspective, the ethical lens creates interventions or gives a new look to the existing ones.
References
Chui, C. W. S., & Dietz, J. (2014). Observing workplace incivility towards women: The roles of target reactions, actor motives, and actor-target relationships. Sex Roles, 71(1–2), 95–108.doi:10.1007/s11199-014-0367-7
Ely, R.J., & Thomas, D.A. (2001). Cultural diversity at work: The effects of diversity perspectives on workgroup processes and outcomes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46, 229–273.doi:10.2307/2667087
Lane, N., & Piercy, N. F. (2003). The ethics of discrimination: Organizational mindsets and female employment disadvantage. Journal of Business Ethics, 44, 313–325.doi:10.1023/A:1023644602447
Petersen, L.-E., & Dietz, J. (2008). Employment discrimination: Authority figures’ demographic preferences and followers’ affective organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology,93,1287.doi:10.1037/a0012867
Petersen, L.-E., & Krings, F. (2009). Are ethical codes of conduct toothless tigers for dealing with employment discrimination? Journal of Business Ethics, 85, 501–514.doi: 10.1007/s10551-008-9785-1
Schumann, P.L. (2001). Moral principles framework for human resource management ethics. Human Resource Management Review, 11(1), 93–111.doi:10.1016/S1053-4822 (00)00042-5
