You were recently promoted to a managerial position at an industrial engineering

Question

You were recently promoted to a managerial position at an industrial engineering company. With your new position, you are now responsible for overseeing the company’s production factory, meaning approximately 50 factory workers now report to you. Although you previously worked as an engineer and do not have any experience running a factory, you’re excited to begin in the new position.

At the end of your first day, you’re confused to see your factory workers continuing to work well past the end of their 8-hour shift. You then go to the factory supervisor (who reports to you) to express concern because the factory does not have the budget to pay so many workers overtime. The supervisor smiles at you and explains that the factory meets production goals by making the factory workers work off the clock. The workers are well aware of this expectation and went along with it in order to keep their jobs. You’re shocked to learn this illegal practice had become part of the company culture, but the supervisor explains that the company’s CEO (who is your boss) is well aware of this expectation.

What are you going to do?

These outlined eight steps are recommended to employees that they must go through in order to respond to a situation ethically:

1. Recognize that there is a problem

2. Define the problem as having an ethical dimension

3. Decide that the ethical dimension is significant

4. Take personal responsibility for finding an ethical solution

5. Figure out what abstract ethical rule(s) might apply

6. Decide how the rule(s) could help in finding an ethical solution

7. Prepare to counteract forces that might make it difficult to behave ethically

8. Act

Explanation / Answer

In this case, the problem is that the workers are being exploited by the company in order to achieve the production goals. And since I'm the production factory manager, the well being of the workers is my responsibility. Since the higher management are well aware of the situation and are the actual exploiters, complaining about the situation to higher officials would be of no use. So I feel the best solution is to go the technical plus ethical way. Since I've an engineering background, I have enogh knowledge to improve the production efficiency of the plant. This will be done by improving the process and will help in getting more production in lesser working hours. With the help of this, I can reduce the number of overtime workers to such an extent that they can actually be paid for their overtime work. In the mean time, I would make the labour force aware of their rights as per law which will not only help me make a connect with them but also motivate them to fight for their rights. Beacause of this, I can face some heat from the senior management but the parallel process improvement work wil help me defend myself. In this way, I can stop the management from exploiting the workers and also do good for the company.

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