Question: Recently, an article entitled "Employees Coming to Terms with Moral Issues on the Job" appeared in a big-city newspaper. It posed the following situations: You are asked to work on a project you find morally wrong. Important tasks are left undone because a coworker spends more time planning a social event than working on a proposal. Your company is knowingly selling defective merchandise to customers. Unfortunately, many employees currently are struggling with such issues. The moral dilemmas that arise when employees find their own ethical values incompatible with the work they do every day are causing a lot of stress in the workplace, and furthermore, these dilemmas are not being discussed. There exists an ethics gap. You already may have faced a similar situation in your workplace.

Assignment

1. In small groups with your classmates, discuss your answers to the following questions:

a. If you were faced with any of the preceding situations, what would you do?

b. Would you complete work you found morally unacceptable, or would you leave it undone and say nothing?

c. If you spoke up, what would happen to you or your career? What would be the risk?

d. What are your options?

e. If you were a manager rather than a lower-level employee, would you feel differently and take a different approach to the issue? Why?

2. In a written report, summarize what you learned from this discussion.