In Aristotelian approach to ethics (Mckeon, 1941), the individual is viewed as being fixed in a society and a definitive significance is happiness, and joy is the sole proportion of achievements, both individually and additionally on the whole. (MO06) According to Webster’s Dictionary, ethics is the study of standards and conduct of moral judgment. It is an ethical theory and the system of code of ethics of a specific logician, religion, group or profession. It must be an inborn nature of an individual, regardless of whether in business or society for different reasons. (13_chap) Ethical goals, for example, trustworthiness, truth, reasonableness are measures for how individuals should treat one another.
Moral ideas, for example, rights, obligations and duties build the structure of social relations. Morals and ethics is seen as a key part of administration and management. (NOT)An ethical design of management is essential to attract support and positive involvement of all participants in the success of the company: employees, customers, shareholders, creditors, suppliers and the community in which the firm operates. Management ethics includes more than issues of corruption, theft or deception.
It is concerned with the continuous conflict between the economic performance of the firm as measured by revenue, costs and profits due to the shareholders and the social performance of the firm – which is more difficult to measure and represented by obligations to employees, customers, creditors, and members of society in general. (EHICAL) Management is defined by George B Terry as a process consisting of planning, organising, actuating, and controlling and performed to determine and accomplish the objectives by the use of people and resources. Managers responsible for the day-to-day operations of a firm follow certain rules for survival and success within the company. These rules are used to guide their relationships at work with superiors, subordinates, and peers – as well as those with whom they have contact within or outside the organisation. The corporation, its culture and its bureaucracy determine these rules. These rules can be called descriptive ethics in the sense that they do not offer rules that should be obeyed in business.
These rules are contextual, situational, and moral guidelines that managers derive from their personal set of moral beliefs. Organisational bureaucracy shapes the moral consciousness of managers. Consequently, the world of work can be seen as a realm where everyday morality has no place except to serve the interests of public relations. Management ethics remains only as an ethical code published as part of the top management’s commitment to ethical practices or only for public consumption. (M06) Ethics has to be an inherent quality of an individual, whether in business or society for various reasons.
Human resource management (HRM) is currently going through rapid professionalization. Human Resources professionals encounter business ethics choices. Ethical dilemmas in HRM can be seen as complex issues, involving personal, professional, and organizational considerations. There are many ethical issues that may happen in Human Resource Management.
Namely, job design and restructuring in an organisations, Human Resource planning is to move current manpower position to desired manpower position, recruitments of employees, wages and performance appraisal, dealing with trade unions, training and development of the employees and employers, career planning and development of an individual and an organisation, promotions of the employees, transfer of staffs, absenteeism of the workers and more dilemmas. This article will mainly discuss on the performance appraisal as a major ethical issue in Human Resource Management. Performance appraisals are a great tool for employers to evaluate how their employees have been performing at their company. They can be used for administering wages and salaries, giving performance feedback, and identifying individual employee strengths and weaknesses.
They can also help control the behaviour of the employees by rewards, punishments and threats. Appraisals also help with placing their employees in the right type of job or department. Performance appraisals are useful for the administrative and developmental aspects of a company. The most important administrative uses are pay adjustments, promoting/demoting, and terminations of employees. These changes are usually derived from the appraisal. The most important developmental uses are being able to identify the strengths and weaknesses, offering training opportunities, and outlining of future career plans.
To determine performance appraisals, the management must measure different aspects of the employee’s job. This will vary from job to job, but for the most part, an employee will be measured on these factors: · Quantity of output · Quality of output · Timeliness of output · Presence/attendance on the job · Efficiency of work completed · Effectiveness of work completed Performance managers have been known to skew their results intentionally for many reasons. In a research done by Clinton Longenecker and Dean Ludwig, over 70 % of managers did so for the following reasons: · Belief that accurate ratings would have a damaging effect on the subordinates motivation and performance · The desire to improve an employee’s eligibility for merit raises · The desire to avoid airing the department’s dirty laundry · The wish to avoid creating a negative permanent record · The need to protect good performers whose performance was suffering because of personal problems · The wish to reward employees displaying great effort when results are relatively low · The need to avoid confrontation with certain hard-to-manage employees · The desire to promote a poor or disliked employee up and out of the department (Longenecker, 1990) Although this article is dated some years back, it does provide general reasons why a performance manager or an employee may decided to be unethical or bias upon their reviews. both are human beings, chances of errors are many. Knowingly or otherwise, an injustice is made to candidate.
This is an ethical dilemma. There is much literature concerning the performance appraisal process, which indicates that managers are less committed to accuracy and honesty and will oftentimes use the process for political purposes (Banner ; Cooke, 1984; Longenecker, Sims, ; Gioia, 1987). Many political behaviors have been shown to be related to more favorable performance appraisals (Ferris ; King, 1992; Wayne ; Ferris, 1990). In addition, there is much work on perceptions of justice and appraisal, ethical issues of electronic performance monitoring of subordinates, the privacy of information in the workplace, and so forth. The bottom line is that appraisal is a process where ethical issues may be most important, and it is a process within which ethical behavior may be severely tested. Because of its largely subjective and socially constructed nature, performance is basically a political act and is fraught with many of the problems that go along with the impression management process.
Thus, the ethical manner in which employees deal with one another, with supervisors and subordinates, with customers and suppliers, with regulators and agencies, with the legal structure, with societal norms, with performance effort and direction, and so forth, can be developed in considerable detail and supported by reinforcement. Specific problems that might emerge from an accountability perspective concern such ethical concepts as dealing with multiple sets of expectations, conforming with peer group expectations, dealing with various aligning versus misaligning expectations, conforming to inappropriate expectations, and dealing with cultural norms that do not support expectations. This provides a linkage with the political perspective on performance appraisals and ethics. (p11) Problems with performance appraisal: 1.
Leniency Error: Typically some raters have a tendency to avoid conflict with their employees and project themselves as ‘good managers’. In an effort to avoid conflict, the rater has the tendency to be overly generous in judgement. They assign higher rating to an employee’s performance than warranted by his actual level of performance. 2. Strictness Error: Strictness error refers to the tendency of raters to be overly harsh while judging performance of employees.
This may be a case where the standards of performance may be too high or unrealistic or the manager’s personality characteristics or experience may be the cause. Such strictness results in lower rating of all employees under the raterand cause frustration and anger in good performers. Leniency or severity on the part of a rater defeats the very purpose of performance appraisal. Holding raters accountable for the accuracy of their ratings, especially when ratings are for administrative purposes, may be an effective strategy for reducing leniency error. (AmiB. et al.
2005) 2. Spill over Effect: A spillover effect takes place when past performance appraisal ratings unjustifiably influence current ratings. Past ratings, good or bad, result in similar rating for current appraisal although demonstrative behavior does not deserve the ratings, good or bad. 4. Bias Effect: This effect to allow individual differences such as sex, race, and age to affect the appraisal ratings employee receive. The interpersonal affect, a like-dislike relationship between a supervisor and his/her subordinate, has traditionally been conceptualized as a source of bias in performance appraisals.
However, some researchers have argued that the interpersonal affect may not be a bias, especially where it develops as a result of past performance. 5. Halo Effect: In halo effect, the appraiser / manager draws on one specific characteristics/accomplishment to excessively influence performance review or applies favourable ratings to all job duties based on impressive performance in one area. For example, if an employee is accurate in work but lacks initiative This error takes place when one aspect of an individual’s performance affects the appraisal of his entire performance. In an organisation halo error occurs when an employee who works late constantly might be rated high on productivity and quality of output as well as on motivation.
6. Horn Effect: Highly critical bosses have tendency to compare performance of their subordinates with negative attitude. 6. Rater Effect: High or low ratings are given to certain individuals or groups based on rater’s attitude towards the ratee not on actual performance or output. This includes stereotyping, favouritism and hostility. Recent performance appraisal research has highlighted the important role played by contextual and individual factors in shaping rating behavior such as personality factors or beliefs, systematically affect rating behavior.
The effects of these context and raterfactors are reflected in ratings accuracy, ratings discrimination among raters/dimensions, and rating elevation. ( Aharon Tziner et. al 2005) According to the findings of a study attitudes and beliefs account for substantial variance in rater’s likelihood of giving high or low ratings, willingness to discriminate good from poor performers, and willingness to discriminate among various aspects of job performance when completing actual performance ratings. (Aharon Tziner et al. 2001) 7.
Status Effect: The employees working at higher level jobs are overrated whereas employees working at lower level jobs underrated. 8. Latest behaviour: Sometimes, the appraisal is influenced by the most recent behaviour, ignoring the common behaviour of an individual during the entire period. 9. Shifting Standards: Performance appraisal should be based on uniform and fair standards. If the standards are changed then employees might get confused and organisation might not be able to promote right candidate.
For e.g. last year quality was the criteria for appraisal but boss decides to judge them this year on the basis of quantity. 10. First impression: Raters may form an overall impression of a candidate based on some specific qualities or behaviour in first meeting and carry it forward. At the time of appraisal rater rates a candidate with same impression. 11.
Poor appraisal forms: The appraisal process might also be influenced by certain factors relating to appraisal forms such as vague and unclear rating scale, irrelevant performance dimension, long and complex contents in the form etc. 12. Situational factors: Theory and research suggest that both person and situation influence observed performance. System or situational factors can either enhance or constrain performance.
If raters do not compensate for the influence of situational factors, ratings will be contaminated with situational influences and will fail to validly reflect the true level of performance (I.M. Jawahar, 2005). 13. Political Purposes: There is evidence that performance ratings are often manipulated for political purposes. The study examined the effects of employees’ perceptions of political motives in performance appraisal on their job satisfaction and intention to quit results indicated that when employees perceived performance ratings to be manipulated because of raters’personal bias and intent to punish subordinates they expressed reduced job satisfaction that, in turn, led to greater intentions to quit their jobs. Manipulations of ratings for motivational purposes, however, had no effect on job satisfaction and turnover intention.
(June M.L. Poon, 2004) (http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/5904/12/12_chapter%203.pdf) Approaches to analysis of the issues Never ending conflicts between economic performance, profits and revenues on one side and the social performance of the firm on the other side is one of the most often discussed questions in management ethics. Economic analysis We can solve ethical problems by means of microeconomic theory. It relies on impersonal market forces.
When deciding between profits and social issues, microeconomics theory prefers profits. Reduction of workforce maybe unpleasant, but fired workers can find another job. According to this theory, the maximization of profits leads to well-being of society. (Hosmer,1987). It is utterly unpleasant for workers to lose their jobs when the performance appraisal was done in dishonest method.
Yet, there is a labour market, and these workers will be employed again, provided they are willing to adjust their wage demands to market conditions. This is totally unfair for the employees. Legal analysis We can solve ethical problems by means of legal analysis. This theory suggests using of law in every ethical dilemma. Reduction of workforce may be unpleasant, thus we can pass a law to solve this problem.
If you follow the law, you should be treated as justly as possible. However, the law should represents the needs of the whole society or employees and these laws passed by political processes have often to be modified by judicial court. With the right laws, the performance appraisal can be done honestly with any obstruction from the manager’s side. Ethical analysis We can solve ethical problems by means of ethical analysis using normative philosophy with the rule “The greatest good for the greatest number”.
This means maximal concentration on society and a little concentration on company profits. It is based on rational thought process. This method stresses the fact that managers should act according to single principle of behavior. It is a useful method of moral reasoning, but there are no priorities and there are no degrees.
We can compute the greatest good for the greatest number and decide on that basis when performance of appraisal. All these method of analysis have been proposed to resolve ethical issues in management. Hosmer says that when you are faced with dilemma of economic performance, social or ethical behavior, the best method is to use all three method of analysis. Thus, if our decision brings an adequate economic return, is in accordance with law and benefits large number of people, than it is correct. Prevention Some ethical dimensions of performance evaluation are: the evaluator must be perceived by those evaluated as fair and credible; information obtained by the evaluators in the evaluation should be used strictly for purposes of the assessment being made and should involve a degree of privacy; the evaluation should be based on a number of methods and it should come from several sources; the evaluator will have to respect the dignity of those evaluated; the evaluating persons should not be in a conflict of interest when performing their duty.
