Ethically Dubious Conduct
BRENDA FRANKLIN HAS WORKED AT ALLIED TECH for nearly eight years. It’s a large company, but she likes it and enjoys the friendly work environment. When she tacked her list onto the bulletin board outside her office, she didn’t intend to make things less friendly. In fact, she didn’t expect her list to attract much attention at all.
It had all started the week before when she joined a group of coworkers for their weekly lunch get- together, where they always talked about all sorts of things. This time they had gotten into a long political discussion, with several people at the table going on at great length about dishonesty, conflicts of interest, and shady dealings among politicians and corporate leaders. “If this country is going to get on the right track, we need people whose integrity is above reproach,” Harry Benton had said to nods of approval around the table, followed by a further round of com-plaints about corruption and corner- cutting by the powerful.
Brenda hadn’t said much at the time, but she thought she sniffed a whiff of hypocrisy. Later that night, after pondering the group’s discussion, she typed up her list of Ethically Dubious Employee Conduct.” The next day she posted it outside her door.
Harry Benton was the first one to stick his head in the office. “My, my, aren’t we smug?” was all he said before he disappeared. Later that morning, her friend Karen dropped by. “Do you think it’s immoral to take a pad of paper home?” she asked. Brenda said she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think one could just take it for granted that it was okay to take company property. She and Karen chatted more about the list. On and off that week, almost everyone she spoke with alluded to the list or commented on some of its items. They didn’t object to her posting it, although they seemed to think it was a little strange. One day outside the building, however, an employee she knew only by sight asked Brenda sarcastically whether she was planning on turning people in for “moral violations.” Brenda ignored him. Now she was anticipating her group’s weekly lunch. She had little doubt about what the topic of discussion would be, as she again glanced over her list:
Ethically Dubious Employee Conduct
1. Taking office supplies home for your personal use.
2. Using the telephone for personal, long- distance phone calls.
3. Making personal copies on the office machine.
4. Charging the postage on your personal mail to the company.
5. Making nonbusiness trips in a company car.
6. On a company business trip: staying in the most expensive hotel, taking taxis when you could walk, including wine as food on your expense tab, taking your spouse along at company expense.
7. Using your office computer to shop online, trade stocks, view pornography, or e- mail friends on company time.
8. Calling in sick when you need personal time.
9. Taking half the afternoon off when you’re supposedly on business outside the office.
10. Directing company business to vendors who are friends or relatives.
11. Providing preferential service to corporate customers who have taken you out to lunch.
On your paper, please address only two of the four below
1. Review each item on Brenda’s list and assess the conduct in question. Do you find it morally acceptable, morally unacceptable, or somewhere in between? Explain.
2. Someone might argue that some of the things listed as ethically dubious are really employee entitlements. Assess this contention.
3. How would you respond to the argument that if the company doesn’t do anything to stop the conduct on Brenda’s list, then it has only itself to blame? What about the argument that none of the things on the list is wrong unless the company has an explicit rule against it?
4. What obligations do employees have to their employers? Do companies have moral rights that employees can violate? What moral difference, if any, is there between taking something that belongs to an individual and taking something that belongs to a company?