- Discrimination generally means preference on the grounds of sex, race, skin color, age or religious outlook. - In everyday speech, it has come to mean morally unjustified treatment of people on arbitrary or irrelevant grounds. - Therefore to call something ‘Discrimination” is to condemn it. - But when the question of justification arises, we will call it ‘Preferential Treatment’.
The following actions will prevent/reduce whistle blowing: 1. Giving direct access to higher levels of management by announcing ‘open door’ policies with guarantee that there won’t be retaliation. Instead such employees should be rewarded for fostering ethical behavior in the company. 2. This gives greater freedom and promotes open communication within the organization. 3. Creation of an Ethics Review Committee with freedom to investigate complaints and make independent recommendations to top management. 4. Top priority should be given to promote ethical conduct in the organization by top management. 5. Engineers should be allowed to discuss in confidence, their moral concerns with the ethics committee of their professional societies. 6. When there are differences on ethical issues between engineers and management, ethics committee members of the professional societies should be allowed to enter into these discussions. 7. Changes and updations in law must be explored by engineers, organizations, professional societies and government organizations on a continuous basis.
External Whistle blowing: The act of passing on information outside the organization. Internal Whistle blowing: The act of passing on information to someone within the organization but outside the approved channels. Either type is likely to be considered as disloyalty, but the second one is often seen as less serious than the latter. From corporations’ point of view both are serious because it leads to distrust, disharmony, and inability of the employees to work together. Open Whistle blowing: Individuals openly revealing their identity as they convey the information. Anonymous Whistle blowing: Individual conveying the information conceals his/her identity.
Whistle blowing is an act of conveying information about a significant moral problem by a present or former employee, outside approved channels (or against strong pressure) to someone, in a position to take action on the problem. The features of Whistle blowing are: • Act of Disclosure: Intentionally conveying information outside approved organizational channels when the person is under pressure not to do so from higher- ups. • Topic: The information is believed to concern a significant moral problem for the organization. • Agent: The person disclosing the information is an employee or former employee. • Recipient: The information is conveyed to a person or organization who can act on it.
1. Rights Ethics: - The most basic human right, which needs no justification, as per A.I.Meldon, is to pursue one’s legitimate (those that do not violate others’ rights) interests. - The right to pursue legitimate interests gives a person right to pursue professional moral obligations. - This may be viewed as a human right of conscience directly derived from the basic human right. 2. Duty Ethics: - I have a right to something only because others have duties or obligations to allow me (And not interfere) to do so. - If we derive the meaning of ‘others’ as employers, then the basic professional right is justified by reference to others’ duties to support or not interfere with the work related exercise of conscience by professionals. 3. Utilitarianism:…