Custom «Ethical Dilemmas » Essay Paper Sample

In the first dilemma, I am the newly appointed personnel director for a large beverage distributor. My new job responsibilities include the process of screening all applicants for promotions for interviews with the management. The position that is vacant is on the president's personal staff. The president on his part is categorical of not wanting a female in his personal staff. In the event that the top three shortlisted candidates are female I would reopen the position so as to see if there are any more qualified male applicants. This decision would be based on the need to consider that for the position available, the female candidates would not be fairly appraised by the management in the interviews because of the president's preference/bias. This option is under much deliberation considering the president wishes. This is because he is entitled to have a say about the staff that work as his personal personnel. It is important to note that the person selected will be in close contact with the president. This creates a need that the president should be able to comfortably work with him/her. This is important also for the candidates so that he/she is given the necessary respect she/he deserves once promoted to the named position. The decision also protects the shortlisted candidates from enduring the bias of the president during the interviews and also protecting the company from law suits (Shockley-Zalabak 2006).

However, my option does not solve this dilemma because still after reopening the vacant position, I might still be faced with shortlisted top candidates who are all female. In the event of this, I would have to confront the president on his/her preference for male candidates. My defence would be that the best candidates for the job happen to all be female. As a personnel director, one of my duties would be to ensure that the most qualified candidate gets the opportunity they deserve in the organisation by being promoted for their hard work. However, considering that ensuring the office has synergy is also my responsibility, I would approach the president so as to gain insight on why he/she has a preference for male personal staff. This decision is based on what I should do to ensure that there is no discrimination that is based on gender when it comes to the promotion of staff in the work place. Gender discrimination is the consideration or treatment of a person that is gender-based rather than individual merit. This is usually associated with prejudice. This discrimination is illegal under the Sex Discrimination Act, 2002 and the Equal Opportunities Bill, 2008. As such, the president and the company can be sued through the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. The president should also be advised that in case the victims were to take him to court as they have aright to do, then they would be entitled to the promotion, back pay, compensatory damages, attorney's fees, punitive damage, court fees and more. My advice would be for him to strike a balance and stop being discriminatory against female staff (Shockley-Zalabak 2006, pp 125-130).

The role of the team that I am part of is to interpret the survey with the aim of developing action plans that aim at improving the performance of the mangers. The results supplied are not conclusive with the contact in the survey company not providing satisfactory information. As such, the results cannot support what they are intended to. However, this process was intended to serve the purpose of improving the performance of the managers. As such, I would gather a meeting with my peers and my bosses with the aim of convincing them about mu concerns. This is because I believe that, for the process to be effective then the findings from the survey must not only be conclusive but they must also be truthful. This decision is based on the fact that, in implementing, the process involves meeting each and every manager and interpreting the results after which the action plan for improvements are made. My concern include: the results are erroneous, as such, the meeting with the manager to interpret them would involve an erroneous interpretation which is bound to result in a developing action plans that are defective, the final loser of the process would be the company. This is because the action plans would not be based on facts and would probably impact the performance of the managers negatively; the contact at the company that did the survey did not provide a conclusive reply when confronted with the questionable results. This means that the company might not have followed the correct procedures in carrying out the results, as such, my company has wasted money as well as time and human resources in implementing a fraud process; the corporate headquarters has also been using this results believing they are not correct, this can result in the failure of all the systems in the organisation for implementing action plans based on substandard data (Saiyadain 2009, p.486).