Business Acts and Consequences

Business Ethics

Business ethics are the rules that regulate workers’ behavior in order to ensure the smooth operation of a specific company. While many companies have their own ethics to recruit and decide how workers behave, many people agree on certain common ethics, such as cleanliness, good communication, and relationship building (Fisher, 2013). Aside from corporate ethics, certain companies may have rules that they use to improve ethics. Most academics and scholars, however, believe that laws and business ethics do not go hand in hand. If either an employee or a candidate for a certain post tends to go against the ethics of the given organization, then he or she stands a chance of getting punished, fired, or disqualified.

Maya’s Meet-the-Candidate Dinner

In the case of Maya, having undergone the office meeting successfully, she thought it would be easy to get the position. However, things got a bit hard for her once she was invited for the meet-the-candidate dinner. Though this dinner would somehow work for the interviewers to test the ethics of Maya, it showed something that Maya was not comfortable about. As a matter of law, Maya can be considered to have done wrong by denying the offer of a drink before the dinner. Despite her reasons of wanting to remain focused and sharp, one of the interviewers said that most of the businesses of the firm were conducted using these methods. On the other hand, Maya could be considered to be right in the matter of ethics because she had the intention of remaining focused (Fisher, 2013).

Maya’s Ethics Dilemma

Contrary, it is possible that Maya was wrong in the matter of ethics. Since one of the interviewers clearly indicated that this was quite acceptable within the firm businesses, it would be considered that Maya was disobedient and somehow arrogant for declining the offer of a drink. In addition, Maya was right to not respond to the claims she overheard from the other interviewers who said that she was exotic looking and lovely.

Unethical Behavior during the Interview

Although Maya found the interviewers a bit annoying, their behavior seemed to have remained within the accepted ethics and rules. By asking Maya to take a drink, the interviewer was right in the matter of ethics, since it seems to be acceptable and it is also right in the matter of law, since he or she did not force Maya to take the drink. However, it seemed unethical as well as wrong in the matter of law when one of the interviewers was talking about Maya’s looks in a lustful way (Portillo & Block, 2011). It was bad for the interviewer to have made a comment saying that Maya was exotic looking, especially considering that he was not talking to her directly, but rather to his colleague, and in a way trying to keep it a secret from Maya. This interview also contained mistakes both ethically and in the matter of law because it included questions about Maya’s ethnic background instead of considering her as any other candidate.

Potential Discrimination Lawsuit

The firm would be liable if Maya decided to file a case claiming that she was discriminated. In the lawsuit against the firm and the interviewers, Maya could easily be able to connect the situations where she was told to take a drink and where one of the interviewers said that she was lovely and looked exotic to enhance and bring out the act of discrimination (Portillo & Block, 2011). In addition, the interviewer also showed discrimination when he said that he would like to know from what ethnic background Maya came from. Having overheard all this information, Maya could successfully claim that the recruitment was based on ethnic backgrounds and the looks of a person. Though the interviewers could try to argue that everything they did was related to the interview, it would be hard to prove to the law enforcers how, for instance, the ethnic background and exotic look of Maya related to the same.

References

Fisher, C. (2013). Business ethics and values. London: Pearson.

Portillo, J., & Block, W. (2011). Anti-discrimination laws: Undermining our rights. Journal of Business Ethics, 109(2), 209-217.