Summary The Political Organization

The political view of the organization is a more recently developed view of the organization than the rational analysis. This is the view of the organization as a system of competing power coalitions and formal and informal lines of influence and communication that radiate from these coalitions; main ethical issue is related to the moral constraints on the use of power in the organization. In the political model of the organization individuals are grouping together to form coalitions that then compete with each other for resources, benefits and influences. In this, goals are not given by rightful authority, but are bargained for among more or less powerful coalitions. The fundamental organization reality is not formal authority or contractual relationships, but power, the ability of the individuals to modify in undesired ways. The central ethical issues regarding this model will focus not on the contractual obligation of the employers and employees, but on the moral constraints to which the use of power within organization must be subjected. It is pointed out that power of modern corporate management is similar to that of a government. Governments are defined as; a centralized decision making body of officials who have the power and recognized authority to enforce their decisions on subordinates; these officials make decision that determine the public distribution of social resources, benefits, and burdens among their subordinates, and they have a monopoly on the power to which their subordinates are subject. These same features also characterized the managerial hierarchies that run organizations: the top managers of a corporation constitute a centralized decision making body that has considerable power; these manager wield power and legally recognized authority over their employeesa power that is based on their ability to fire, demote, or promote employees and an authority that is based on law of agency that stands ready to recognize and enforce managerial decisions; the decisions of managers determine the distribution of income, status, and freedom among the corporations constituencies; and through the law of agency and contract, through their access to government agencies, and through the economic leverage they posses, mangers of large corporations effectively share in the monopoly on power that political government possess. The power of government is it should respect the civil rights of the citizens, so the power of managers must respect the moral rights of the employees. The moral rights of the employee would be similar to the civil rights of citizens: the right to privacy, the right to consent, the right to freedom of speech. The major objection to this similarity argument for employee rights is that there are a number of important differences between the power of corporate managers and the power of government officials, and these differences undercut the arguments that the power of manager should be limited by employee rights comparable to the civil rights limits the power of government. First, the power of government officials is based on consent, whereas the power of corporate mangers is based on ownership. The power of managers rest on ownership of the firm,

they have the right to impose whatever conditions they choose to impose on employees, who freely and knowingly contracted to work on their firms premises. Second, the power of corporate managers, unlike that of most government officials, is effectively limited by unions: most of the blue-collar and some white-collar workers belong to a union that provides them with a degree of countervailing power that limits the power of management. Third, whereas a citizen can escape the power of a particular government only at great cost (by changing citizenship), an employee can escape the owner of a particular management with considerable ease (by changing jobs). There is a number of independent arguments that have been advanced to show that employees have certain particular rights that manager should respect. In this the right to privacy, the right to freedom of conscience and many others are include. The right to privacy is defined as the right people have to determine what, to whom, and how much information about themselves shall be disclose to others. Technology makes the privacy issue more common. Computerized methods of obtaining, storing, retrieving, collating, and communicating information need privacy. There are two types of privacy: psychological privacy, which is privacy regarding ones inner thoughts, plans, beliefs, values, feelings, and wants; and physical privacy, which is privacy with respect to ones physical or personal functions that are culturally recognized as private. Each of us has a significant interest in privacy, which justifies protecting privacy by surrounding it with the protection of a right. Rights must be balanced against the rights and needs of others. To balance these rights to privacy three elements must be considered when collecting information that may threaten the employees right to privacy: relevance, consent, and methods. The employer must limit the inquiry into the employees affair to those areas that are directly relevant the issue at hand. Employees must be given the opportunity to give or withhold their consent before the private aspects of their lives are investigated. Every person, as Kant argued, has the moral right to be treated only as they have consented to be treated. The employer must distinguish between methods of investigation that are both ordinary and reasonable, as well as methods that are neither. Ordinary methods include the supervisory activities that are normally used to oversee employees work. Extraordinary methods include devices like hidden microphones, secret cameras, wiretaps, lie detector tests, personality inventory test, and spies. Such extraordinary methods are unreasonable and unjustified unless the circumstances are extraordinary. Extraordinary methods of investigation might be justified if a firm is suffering heavy losses from employee theft that ordinary supervisor has failed to stop. Employees sometimes discover that the corporation they work for is doing something that the employee believes is seriously and morally wrong. Responsible employees who find that their company is injuring society in some way will normally feel they have a moral obligation to get the company to stop its harmful activities and consequently, will bring the matter to the attention of their supervisors. If the internal management refuse to do anything about the matter than the employee has a choice to take the matter to a governmental agency outside the firm or, worse, to disclose the companys activities to the public, the company has a legal right to punish the

employee by firing. Authors argued that this is in effect a violation of an individuals right to freedom of conscience, because the individual is forced to cooperate with an activity that violate the individuals personal moral beliefs. The right to freedom of conscience derives from the interest that individual have in being able to adhere to their religious or moral convictions. The right to freedom of conscience protects this interest by requiring that individuals are not being forced to cooperate in activities that they conscientiously believe are wrong.