Ethical dilemma in newspaper contract breach and career advancement

Ethical Dilemma

Group A: The situation with the journalist reflects on the ethical implications of a contract. A contract is an agreement, and is legally binding. Under law, there are provisions for how and when a contract may be broken -- a more lucrative offer from a competitor is unlikely to be among these. Morally, a contract is an obligation that should be upheld. But that is, ultimately a rather weak morality in that in the grand scope of right vs. wrong, breaking a contract is relatively irrelevant. Even the aggrieved party will recover just fine; nobody got hurt, nobody got killed; nobody's rights were trampled.

But ethically, this situation is more interesting. This is business, and there are not a lot of ethics in business. The legal wrangling about the contract is an accepted tactic in business -- you use the system to your advantage when you can, and that is what both parties are trying to do here. Only one will actually win, and it is possible that such a victory might be Pyrrhic.

Ultimately, the lack of genuine harm here calls into question whether this is a legitimate ethical dilemma. A contract does create obligation, but contracts are broken all the time. There are plenty of scenarios where the first newspaper would have to consider breaking contract with the columnist to fire her. It would be surprising if a threat to break contract was a negotiating ploy gone awry. Ultimately, the point of the legal system is to provide a venue for the resolution of such grievances. There is no major moral issue here because contracts are never really fixed, and employment is at will. Ethically, it is a suspect move on the part of the journalist, but someone putting their own interests ahead of those of their employer is not exactly a major ethical violation, given that the inverse happens all the time.

The question should be asked -- would Augustine even care about a contract dispute? God has more important things to worry about than contract grievances. This is not a scenario where evil is involved, so really is outside the realm of Augustinian ethical perspective. Aquinas was concerned with principles, and in that breaking a contract for self-gain is likely against his principles. Either man could interpret the action as one of greed, and thus a violation of natural law, but the newspaper is acting in its own interests as well -- this merely raises the question of to what extent seeking self-interest is explicitly greed under God?

Group B: In the first scenario, the worker appears to be within his rights to take this time, even though it causes inconvenience. Again, no genuine harm is coming to anybody here -- no human has the right to live a life free from inconvenience and annoyance. The man does seem to take a certain delight in exercising his rights, but they are his rights. It is indeed the role of management to mitigate any suffering that others might face on account of this man exerting the rights that management gave him as a condition of his employment.

The conflict arises because the co-workers feel that there is an implicit social contract among the workers and this man is violating that. They are within their rights to be annoyed, of course, but such an implicit contract is a figment of their imagination. The man is only obligated to fulfill the terms of his employment -- if he is allowed to take unpaid leave, then he is doing nothing wrong, either morally or ethically.