Ethical dilemmas in leadership and organizational change management

Leadership Discussions First Half

Conflicting Obligations

Identify at least two ethical dilemmas that occur when you are in a position of leadership. What makes the dilemmas ethical? Would you expect each person to react to the dilemma in the same way?

People have different ways of reacting to dilemmas. In my position as a leader, I have encountered a situation where I had to choose tow rights. In this case, I was entangled in a dilemma because I value both student achievement and teacher autonomy when I pursue to enact policies that lower expectations. This was a heightened conflict because all school heads are public officials obligated to various people with competing interests and values. My position comes with dilemmas such as deciding whether to report teachers with questionable grading decisions. This dilemma is ethical because it puts pressure on the need to make ethical decisions. Further, in my response, I must take the least resistant path in implementing official policies, which reflects the ethical norms (Marquis & Huston, 2011).

Describe a time when you have had a conflicting obligation at your place of work. Outline the steps you used to reach your final decision. Identify any legal or ethical issues that may have had an impact in making your final decision. Provide rationale for the choice you made.

Some years ago, I dealt with workers suffering from mental challenges. Under anti-discriminatory law and OHS law, I faced conflicting obligations. This was demonstrated by the decisions made in U.S. employment relations authority. In my case, the company had employed an employee with a bipolar disorder to guard a chemical production factory. I had to sack the employee because the employee did not disclose the illness when he was being hired. I learned about his illness when he provided me with his medical certificates. Under the U.S. employment Act, the employer had to disclose his illness to establish whether he was fit for the job. According to the U.S. employment Act, withholding critical medical conditions from the employer, is a breach of the Act (Marquis & Huston, 2011).

Magnet Status vs. Accountable Care Organizations

ANCC (American Nurses Credentialing Center) provide the Magnet Status Ward closely linked with the American Nurses Association to hospitals that gratify a set of measures modeled to assess the quality and strength of their nursing. Some nurses are passionate about the new program and think that it supports the significant practices that are outlined above. Nevertheless, it is also important to note that others specifically nursing unions have been very vital (Mind Tools, 2012).

Shared Governance

The system of shared governance enables all participants to contribute towards decision-making. It states that all decisions are made based on the contributions made by employees, managers, governing boards, stakeholders, investors and other players. The main advantage of sharing governance is the recognition of the requirements and contributions of all employees in an organization. This system precipitates a sense of equal partnership, empowerment, and stakes in implementation of decisions. This system guides all financial and physical resources towards a reasonable progress and improvement. However, the program has drawn a number of flaws; shared governance requires extensive consultations, which interferes with job continuation. Stakeholders are avoiding the term, shared governance because it refers to a degree of collaboration, which never exists. Shared governance is the best in nursing because it offers nurses with a means of communicating work and concerns toward a solution expected to be beneficial to everyone. It gives all nurses a voice (Hess, 2004).

Strategic Planning

The following is a SWOT analysis about a healthcare firm dealing with products of high value to a small market niche:

Strengths:

The services are of top class

Processes are extremely effective

They have adopted advanced technology

They generate high sales percentage for exports

Reputable reputation of the company because of the highly experienced teams

Weaknesses

Instead of emphasizing on marketing, the company has emphasized on technology

Customers have been slow in upgrading

Their products are very complicated, which needs massive efforts of customization

The products are innovative and markets must be educated

Threats

Fast technological changes

The cutbacks of the government spending

Competition from new market entrants

Increased risk and safety awareness in the industry of healthcare products and services

Opportunities

Increasing need of healthcare because of the ageing population

Increasing the profile of environmental issues

The rapid increment of healthcare costs

Increase risk and safety awareness in the industry of healthcare

Leadership Attributes

Interview a person in a nursing leadership position at your facility. Find out what strategies and decision-making techniques are used by this person.

Unlike principle-based decision-making strategy that relies on personal principles and beliefs, the medical expert that I interviewed used the strategy of harnessing bias at the work place. This strategy has been effective for this leader, unlike previous principle-based decision making. This leader emphasizes on balancing bias rather than tuning out bias. This strategy has been effective because it gives people the freedom to voice their opinions. Based on these opinions, the leader was able to give appropriate insights and give full consideration of the opinions and ideas (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Principles of Delegation

Discuss the relationship of critical thinking to delegation. How does clinical reasoning and judgment fit in?

Any leaders to be effective in delegating his duties, he must critically reason, think and make a reasonable judgment. The leader must make a judgment about each employee and delegate duties accordingly. Numerous factors contribute to staffing crisis such as vacancies. Managers must rise above these situations by employing skills of critical thinking. Making a decision on what is right or wrong requires managers to make critical judgment (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Discuss your opinion of the result from the article: "...expected unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP) to report significant findings and have higher level knowledge, including assessment and prioritizing skills"? What impact does this have?

In my opinion, higher-level knowledge and reporting significant findings enables nurses to operate in an autonomous manner in helping to develop solutions to many health problems. This prompt more opportunity to be created for nurses with the expansion of programs that are committed to delivering cost-effective and high quality healthcare for populations. Nurses are encouraged to gain empowerment; this enables them to implements the best healthcare decisions and gain independence in all sectors of Medicare. It is rewarding, to see that nursing can navigate in healthcare provision (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Describe what you would do If you are the nurse manager and you recognize that care omission is a serious problem on your unit.

To address this situation, I would anticipate the possible consequences associated with care omission, which will be affected. As a nurse manager, I would embark on preventive measures such as emphasizing to my subordinates that if they followed accepted industry standards, the world would become a better place.

Topic 2: Staffing Solutions

Volunteer overtime

Volunteer overtime is associated with the paradigm of free help or minimal costs of labor. It is effective and cheap to use unpaid workers. Through volunteers, existing workers are able to focus on new initiatives and projects. However, using volunteers wastes time because they require adequate amount of resources and training for them to deliver (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Cross training

Cross training results in all round employees who are more enduring and flexible. Nevertheless, it requires that employees engage in more exercises in order to perform. This means that employees spend more time on meaningless and less important exercises (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Closed-unit staffing

This form of staffing allows all workers to be well prepared and experienced in their respective care units. However, the main disadvantage associated with closed-unit training is that it requires these nurses to sit down on the contracted labor in key care units. This reduces accountability and ownership in critical areas of care units (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Motivate the Nurses

Motivation is a kin to leading and directing. To motivate my employees, I would begin by guiding them. This implies that I will encourage them to take more interests and initiatives in their duties. This involves encouraging them to get work done willingly. As a manager, I would motivate my subordinates by satisfying their diverse needs so that they can be happy, satisfied and shift from the prevailing tension. This would create a favorable working environment because they will be taking more initiatives and interest in performing their jobs. Through this technique, I would get my employees to be attracted to their jobs thus improving performance (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).

Managing Conflict

Devise a workable plan that will accomplish the goals of each party. How will this plan be implemented?

Each party will accomplish his/her duty by restructuring the functional units of the organization. This is because both parties understand their tasks and know where they stand. Through functional organizational structure, the top management will be obligated to make all decisions. This structure will give the nurses a narrow vision thus; nurses are likely to focus on their functions, performance and results (Bittner & Gravlin, 2009).