Business Ethics Timmon's Manufacturing Company Employee Don

Business Ethics Timmon's Manufacturing Company employee Don Carmen was used by DeVito Management Consultants as part of a time study in the painting of a new product. That time study will be used to establish the labor time standard for the next 6 months. Don was aware that he was being used in the time study, so he slowed his pace in order to obtain a labor time standard that would be easy to meet. Don and his coworkers were seemingly benefitted by Don's actions.

By slowing down his time, Don established a slow pace that would be easy for him and his coworkers to meet. Therefore, it would seem that they would make more money for less work. However, by reducing production standards, they Don may have made the company less profitable. If the company is less profitable, it might not be able to continue to pay its staff, which could lead to reductions in hours, wages, or workforce.

Therefore, an action that seems to have benefitted Don and his coworkers may be detrimental to them. Timmon's Manufacturing Company was injured by Don's action. By establishing a slow labor time standard that would be easy to meet, Don set a production standard that did not maximize employee efforts. Lower production means a lower ability to generate profits, which is harmful to the company. Furthermore, Devito Management Consultants was harmed by Don's actions.

They are supposed to be a professional company called in to lend their expertise to their client, Timmon's Manufacturing Company, in order to help maximize profits. By letting Don know that he was being timed, they provided him with the opportunity to, essentially, defraud Timmon's. Therefore, the information that DeVito provided Timmon's would actually harm the business, making it unlikely that they would hire DeVito in the future. (b) Don was not ethical in the way he performed the time study test.

Christopher Carol put together a list of characteristics that are shared by effective employees. This list includes: reliability, positivity, helpfulness, being able to communicate, being altruistic, and being goal-oriented (Carol, 2012). Looking at Don's behavior, it is clear that he failed to meet many of those objectives. He placed his own interests above the interests of his employer. While that may not seem like an unethical scenario outside of the employer-employee relationship, the reality is that he was being paid to be an agent for Timmon's.

By taking Timmon's money, he was agreeing to carry out the tasks needed to perform his job. Intentionally failing to perform his duties in the manner in which he could perform them was failing to meet up to his obligations as an employee. Therefore, his behavior was unethical. (c) DeVito could have taken several different measures in order to obtain valid data for setting the time labor standard. First, it could have observed employees without letting them know that they were part of a standard-setting operation.

Employees would not have been aware why they were being observed, which may actually have provided incentive to perform above average, rather than encouraging employees, like Don, to perform below their ability. They could have observed a number of different employees, so that they could establish an average time, which probably would have.