The ethically conscious manager – making employees redundant
04.06.08
This is the first contribution by Ulf D. Posé:
The number of principles for leadership increase, together with the elegance of the pamphlets they are printed on. However, the actual managerial behavior is not always in harmony with those principles. Principles for leadership behavior are not worth the paper they are printed on if they do not reflect the responsible ethics of a leader’s personality. Let me compare in loose sequence the leadership ethics with the leadership practices of some enterprises. The potential benefit for you is threefold:
1. Ethics can help you to take up new challenges when preparing and executing decisions in a balanced and ethically responsible way.
2. Ethics can help to become critical towards your own behavior with respect to norms and values you have chosen and will have to take the responsibility for.
3. Ethics can help both you and your enterprise towards gaining an identity and thereby sense.
Not everything we take to be reproachable is actually reproachable, just as not everything we take to be ethically correct is ethically correct.
Today, I want to expand on the ethical component of making employees redundant.
“Klaus”, asks Amelie Benrath, “why are you home so early?” Amelie Benrath is concerned about his health. He looks pale and a little overwrought. “What is the matter?” Amelie lays down her work and walks towards her husband. Klaus Benrath makes the impression of being a little absent-minded. “Today I had to let Hermann Wieder go. That really worried me, so I mentally withdrew from work”.
Amelie insists: “But why did you let him go, hasn’t he been working in the company for 20 years?” Klaus Benrath informs his wife that there is a social concept and that Hermann is not among those who have more than two children. Moreover, he is only 41, so he has met enough of the requirements not to be held on to by the company, even though he is one of the best workers in Klaus Benrath’s department.
Amelie Benrath thinks this is unfair. She demands of her husband to put some extra effort into keeping Hermann Wieder. “You have no conscience”, she accuses him. “You are all a gang of managerial criminals”. “What can I do? The affair is finished”, counters Klaus.
“Finished? You must be joking. If such a highly valued employee loses his job and you are at least partly responsible, then this cannot be the end of it”. Amelie was furious. That is something she would not have believed of her Klaus. At the same time, she was correct in detecting a certain helplessness in what he had told her.
What makes sense in this example and what is ethically correct?
Can it be ethically acceptable that the social status is more important than the actual efficiency?
In the aforementioned example, the efficiency of the worker and the social responsibility of the leader are conflicting interests. That means that a weighing of values has to take place. What remains to be found out is which superior value will do justice to both parties concerned. For Klaus Benrath, the highest ethical value might be: “I should be careful about how I treat my employees”. This must be true both for the employees who are good workers and those who are in a socially weak position.
On the one hand, it is certainly a good idea to take into consideration that a father of four past the age of 50 will nowadays have little chance of finding a new job. The social plan was correct insofar as Hermann Wieder, being 41 years old, probably will find it easier to get a new job. On the other hand, Hermann Wieder was the better worker.
With respect to the value ‚I should be careful about how I treat my employees’, the decision who to let go was ethically correct. From the perspective of the weaker worker, it was ok. The same cannot be said for the perspective of the enterprise, because an enterprise does not relish having to do without a good worker. Seen in connection with the value ‚ I should be careful with how I treat my employees’, we have a clash between harm or benefit to the employee and harm or benefit to the company
The ethically oriented balance of decisions
In nearly all cases, there is a clash of values. My own interests do not match the interests of other people. My wife would like to go to the cinema; I would rather eat out. The daughter wants to play, daddy wants to watch TV, or such like. However, the clash of interests is not always about such profane things as these. In our example, there are strong conflicting interests.
The conflict is between the interests of employees and the interest of the enterprise. Not to mention the clash of interests between Hermann Wieder and his fellow worker.
The weighing of interests tries to come to a balanced and ethically correct conclusion.
Let us consider this example under ethical aspects. Firstly, there is
Alternative A:
Let us assume that both of them are made redundant. In this case, none of the three parties concerned have benefited. Both workers and the company have lost.
If we take consideration as value, then this behavior is definitely ethically unacceptable. You should never do anything the effect of which is detrimental to all parties concerned.
Let us look at the second alternative. Let us take
Alternative B:
Let us assume that both workers are kept in the company. We know that this would be beneficial for both employees, because none of them would have to look for a new job. However, that decision might be detrimental for the company. The question is whether the detrimental effect for the company in case of an ongoing employment of both would exceed the benefit for both employees.
If both are kept and the company only has work for one employee, then they cost twice as much as before, because only half of the results of their labour can be used. One of them sits there waiting for things to happen. In the long run, this cannot be a good solution. We might be able to finance this for some time, but in the end, we would have to let both of them go. This is why I believe the benefit for both workers only exceeds the detrimental effect in the short run.
Ethically spoken, this alternative is again bad or unacceptable. I cannot demand from someone to accept a greater evil in order to achieve a little good.
Alternative C:
The worker with his children, his cottage and his advanced age is kept in the firm.
He benefits largely from it. Besides, he is not a poor worker, which means that the company, too, benefits from it. The company probably benefits a little less than the worker.
Thus, we can say that both benefit, which, ethically spoken, is what we accept and desire. You should always do what is good for both parties.
However, this is also definitely true for Hermann Wieder, where the benefit for t he company would be even greater. Which is exactly why there are quite a few people who think making him redundant is not fair.
So we have to consider example four. The two alternatives can be made subject to comparison.
Alternative D:
Hermann Wieder is made redundant, and that is detrimental for him.
He has to look for a new job. The company, too, suffers. We have found out earlier that it would be detrimental to the company to keep both of them. Now we say that the company benefits more if they keep one of them.
If we keep both of them, it cannot at the same time be good and bad for the company. That is logically impossible, isn’t it? Maybe what we want to say is that the company benefits a little less if the other worker is kept.
So it would be economically better for the company to keep Hermann Wieder. Now we have to consider what it means to loose a job. Let us assume either the older worker or than Hermann Wieder is made redundant. Who of them will suffer more? Of course, the older worker suffers more.
This means we only have to ask if the beneficial effect of keeping Hermann Wieder would exceed the detrimental effect of letting the older worker go. Can you answer that question?
If the beneficial effect of an activity exceeds the detrimental effect of an activity, then it is ethically acceptable. It is permissible.
An activity that does less damage than another activity is preferable to an activity that only does more good. That means that we are talking about minimizing the detrimental effect, rather than optimizing the benefit.
Find the answer! Enjoy your own analysis..
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