Topic 1
John is an entry-level expert at a startup tech company based in Louisiana. His manager is a tall middle-aged lady who is quite outspoken and friendly with most members of staff. Karen boasts of a black-belt she earned in her early thirties often, claiming that she has escaped without a scratch from virtually any physical altercation she has been involved in since then. Karen makes it a habit of grabbing employees’ hair and rear even as she just walks about the office. John has yet to make a lot of friends himself; except Caleb, the procurement assistant manager. Caleb has shared with John how uncomfortable he feels when Karen touches him even casually in the office. Caleb says he has walked from his desk to avoid her when he sees her approaching. Caleb admits that he is scared of losing his job if he tells Karen that he does not welcome her behavior.
Although John is well versed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission definition of harassment, wherein Caleb’s situation falls, he finds it somewhat difficult to bring up the issue with top management, especially considering that he is new to the company. Workplace harassment refers to behavior that can be interpreted as belittling or exceedingly aggressive pitting one employee against another (Wicks, Freeman, Werhane, & Martin, 2010). Harassment can be traumatic at most and highly discomforting at the very least. Either way, it negatively affects performance at the workplace. Ensuring the workplace is free of harassment, therefore, should be a top priority for managers. The EEOC, the organization tasked with providing guidelines on employment in the US, stipulates that occasional slights, comments, or incidents do not constitute harassment (Wicks, Freeman, Werhane, & Martin, 2010). Only when these actions start to make the work environment hostile and threatening that harassment may be considered. Determining the extent to which specific actions may be regarded as harassment may pose an ethical dilemma for managers. By Karen’s behavior towards Caleb falls within the definition of harassment. However, it may also be a friendly gesture towards her subordinates that Caleb misinterprets because of his different background and experiences.
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Topic 2
Campbell Soup Company is an American company that produces canned soups throughout the world, headquartered in Camden, New Jersey (Applegate, Ladge, & School, 2013). The Chief Audit Executive of the company states that each organization has their unique way of ethics training, depending on their needs and most pressing issues. Campbell Soup’s ethics training program is highly interactive. Staff members, both subordinate and managerial, are usually part of it. Trainers, who are most often managers, create groups of about three or four members and they all play hypothetical scenarios of situations featuring harassment or another ethical dilemma. They use quizzes and games as well. Most issues are solved through simple ‘dos and don’ts’ (Applegate, Ladge, & School, 2013). During the entire session, which lasts about an hour, trainees are allowed to ask questions at any point. Towards the end, willing employees are called upon to give their own experiences with ethics.
One thing that Campbell Soup could change is by creating a different program for managers. Subordinates have different responsibilities, liabilities, and demands. Also, their experiences are diverse. The company’s CAE also says that they have an overview of the areas they would like to cover during training and follow it accordingly (Applegate, Ladge, & School, 2013). They do not have specific goals they would like to achieve. In this respect, the second change would be to ensure they have targets and things they want to achieve at the end of it. Doing so would make the process more efficient because they would have timelines for each objective, rather than just trying to cover all training aspects in a week.
References
Applegate, L. M., Ladge, J. J., & School, H. B. (2013). Campbell Soup Company: Transforming for the 21 st century. Thousand Oaks, NJ: Corwin Publishers.
Wicks, A., Freeman, R., Werhane, P., & Martin, K. (2010). Business ethics: A managerial approach . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
