Work Place Ethical Dilemma and Its Solutions

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Explain the ethical dilemma from the chosen movie

From the conversation with her dad, as shown in the video clip, we get to know that her pay for this job was low and was not her dream career (journalist). Andrea seeks this challenging job only as her stepping stone to achieve her journalist dream.

Miranda dropped a call, suddenly, during her off-hours and request Andrea to find a flight from Miami to New York as her current flight has been cancelled. Her excessive demand has seriously affected her private life. Due to hurricane, no aircraft can take off, but Andrea still try her best to get her back so that she could attend her twin daughter’s recital. Andrea was put up with Miranda’s humiliating treatment when she failed the given task.

According to the movie scenes, ethical dilemma occurs when Andrea need to choose what to do when Miranda put the blame on her. Should Andrea confront Miranda about the hurricane? What if Miranda knew about the weather but still treat unethically on her?

Solution

Standards of Professional Code of Ethics of an assistant’s (ANA) profession are responsible for administrative tasks in support of an organization. Code of Ethic for Administrative Professionals (1998) demonstrates the assistant should accept the obligation to engage self- discipline and accepts the responsibility in his or her works. Duties such as generate documents, create slide presentations, create spread sheets, manage databases, maintain websites, representative of company are included in an assistant’s job task. So, being a professional assistant, keep an eye of detail and manage well personal matters of his or her boss also required in assistant profession.

According to Deontological theory, people act from duty and not worrying the consequences of the action. Andrea, the assistant, should believe that the principles of Code of Ethics for Administrative Professionals which adopted by the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) in July 1980 and amended in August 1998, in applying her decision making. Code of Ethics for Administrative Professionals states that the administrative professional shall strive to avoid conflicts of interest with the immediate employer whenever possible, but if such conflicts cannot be avoided or resolved, the administrative professional shall fully disclose to the immediate employer and all interested parties the relevant reasons and circumstances. In this case, Andrea should confront Miranda about the hurricane which is the cause that she was unable to get her a flight. In Deontological theory, if Andrea confront Miranda, consequences of action not determine she is right or wrong.

Besides, the Code of Ethics for Administrative Professionals also state that he or she shall refuse to cooperate with or condone by silence the actions of co-workers or employers who misuse their positions for personal, nonprofessional advantage in which Miranda was asking Andrea to get her a flight from Miami to New York just to attend her twins daughter recital at school.

Moreover, in Laws and Policy insight, if Andrea confronts Miranda, she can solve the ethical dilemma by referring to the Employment and Labour Law. Andrea was doing her boss demand out of her working time which exceeds the Labour Law. Company policy may specify a set of working hours and work schedule. For example, employee handbook will state the working hours as 40 hours to 45 hours per week. In Labour Law, a worker could only works eight to ten hours per day, if exceed the time, boss should pay her for the over-time salary. But the pay for Andrea’s job is bad and she still have to do the task that given by Miranda after her working time, which she is having dinner when received the phone call from Miranda. In addition, Andrea scared she will face the consequences of losing her job because she cannot fulfil the given task, so that is the reason why she doing her best to find the flight ticket to avoid being fired by her boss, Miranda.

Furthermore, in morality perception, Miranda’s behaviour acts unethically to Andrea by verbally abusive, being rude and disrespectful to her. No one should puts up with the ruthless and merciless, eccentric and humiliating requests from the employer. So, Andrea should earn the courage to confront Miranda by telling her about the hurricane and seek for justice.

In the other hand, what we acknowledge from Andrea’s personal value, she dreams to become a journalist and faces the opportunity as a temporary professional challenge. She wants to do something correct for the boss so she could be recommended and be promoted to join the fashion show in Paris which she will be able to know more people from publishing industry. She sees this as only a stepping stone to another journalism position, her dream career.

According to Teleological theory, ethical egoism states that one performs an action only if the consequence promotes one’s self interest because one should help own self first before one can help others. The consequence from helping others is that one directly benefits from it and there is nothing wrong about that. Besides, pragmatic egoism states that decision is driven by the pursuit of personal success as its goal and promotes the use of whatever that is necessary to achieve it. Values expresses the worth of something that most important to a person. In personal values side, nowadays, if ethical dilemma occurred, the worth to keep his or her job is the main value for them.

In this situation, Andrea might choose not to confront with the boss as she wants Miranda to feel that she was accountable and dependable as well as willingly to take the responsibility on her job and could keep herself control in vary kind of situations. If she able to fulfill Miranda's demand and get a good feedback in the job, is the recognition to her to step further and continue in her profession. She also has a chance to get a recent or future reward such as promotion, salary raised and other benefits as well as the recognition of her profession.

But back to the principle of Code of Ethic for Administrative Professionals, the assistant should have report exactly the employer as to avoid conflict of interest to the employer or damages to the company. In moral values as well, we have to be trustworthy to our client and employer to avoid conflict. So, if Andrea had explained to Miranda about the hurricane at the first place, things might change. In vise versa, if Miranda knows about the weather and still demand her to get her a flight ticket, then it must be dealing with her personal reason such as her personal values in which she wants to show her love, care

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