Discriminatory Hiring Practices…Morally and ethically correct?

I did....my wife managed to hide the fact she smoked for months after our first date, because she's the type of person that the odor of smoke doesn't "stick" to, unlike many others. By the time I found out, I liked her too much to dump her, but if I had known, we wouldn't have even made it to the first date.

 

Yes, it is.

 

Discrimination based upon lifestyle choices is one thing, discriminating over race or sex (neither of which can be controlled obviously) is entirely another.

 

Perhaps a discretionary decision vs. discriminatory…

 

Is affirmative action a poor business practice?

Originally Posted by friendorfoe – ‘In addition, it [affirmative action] is a poor business practice in that an organisation may not always hire or promote the most qualified person to a particular job and the slack will have to be made up by someone else (assuming it is made up at all).’

Originally posted by Bruce – ‘… my city has a section with a huge Mandarin Chinese speaking population … we hired several officers who were fluent in Mandarin because … there was a demonstrated need in that case. Likewise … we hired a “gender-specific” class [female officers] to address that demonstrated need.’


It should be noted that during the 1960s affirmative action in America was a temporary measure to make up for the wide spread discrimination against African Americans and other minorities. Affirmative action was a term that arose from an executive order 10925 by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and it was only in 1965 that it was introduced into the business world by President Lyndon B. Johnson (executive order 11246) as a way to accelerate the movement of minorities into the workforce through quotas (Carroll, Buchholtz, 2009).

In response to your statement regarding affirmative action as being ‘poor business practice’ there are two schools of thought.

In support of your opinion, affirmative action may be seen as ‘poor business practice’ particularly from the point of view that management has a fiduciary duty to owners / shareholders, and a general duty of care toward other stakeholders which entails some regard for how their interests are affected. This assumption is supported by the stakeholders theory which states that management should ‘honour the stakeholders expectations, claims and rights’ (Carroll, Buchholtz, 2009). The notion is also supported by Milton Friedman’ profit max-theory (2005) which postulates that to employ a person in preference to a better qualified candidate in order to contribute to the social objective of reducing poverty is paramount to spending someone else’s money for a ‘general social interest’. An action such as this not only raises the price of products to consumers it also lowers the wages of some employees and ultimately diminishes the returns to the stockholders and if endemic has the potential to negatively impact on a country’s economy (Affirmative Action Initiative in South Africa, n.d.). Unlike the government, managers have not been mandated nor do they have they the experience to spend stockholders revenue on taking care of society’s needs, a sentiment supported by Friedman in his profit max-theory. Having said this, to improve equality in the workplace legislators should rather be advocating for better elementary and secondary education for the disadvantaged and policies to improve family life (Bergmann, 1996).

If affirmative action is seen as ‘a poor business practice’ why then was it that during the presidencies of Reagan and Bush when an attempt was made to abolish the affirmative action requirements imposed on firms that the business community protested and managed to quash it? The reason for this was that businesses believe, and some still do, that affirmative action is a way in which they can improve customer and community relations, gain access to able workers, multicultural markets and act out of social responsibility (Bergmann, 1996 & Beauchamp, 2004). In addition to increased productivity, increased sales and competitiveness businesses also have a better understanding of how to deal with customer complaints which enables them to outperform their competition (Beauchamp, 2004).

Surveys of economic literature relating to affirmative action (1977-1991) in the USA reveal that there has been an improvement of wages and employment among people of colour and white women relative to the effects on white men. Of the number of firms monitored during the surveys there was no strict enforcement of quotas and the effect of affirmative action policies was not at the expense of competitiveness, fairness of employment practice or quality. Contrary to belief organisations were not employing less qualified black or white female workers and were maintaining a high-quality and productive workforce (Simms, 1995 & Beauchamp, 2004).

In support of Bruce’s comments in many multi-cultural societies, there is an ever increasing requirement for racial and gender diversity to accommodate particular professions such as the police force where it is imperative that they gain the trust of parts of the community (Bergmann, 1996).

 

Well, it seems that someone just read a book. But no footnotes? No citation of sources? Should I be looking for APA style here?

 

I suspect that there also discrimination in firing?

Although I used to work for a major US corporation which was in its third year of layoffs due to cutbacks and cancellations in DOD and NASA programs. Only top level employees were left - in that case the layoff decisions were based on social reasoning - who was married, had young kids, who was likely to find another job, was involved with local politics/churches/etc, home owner, nearing retirement, etc. I was laid off because I was single and could relocate to another area of the country (I moved 200 miles).

 

WTF? That's old school crap.

Abner

 

I took a civil service exam many years ago. I studied for months before the exam and I scored the 2nd highest on the exam. The city had to chose someone from the top 3 scores. Well then the "extra" credit was handed out to minorities and women. There were two black women who scored WAY below me, but then got their "extra" credits for both being black (10%) and being women (10%). They each got 20% added to their scores which put their "unearned/undeserving" scores higher then my hard-earned score. That's like me getting a 85% and them getting a 66%+20%. So this city did not hire the best candidate, but were forced to hire sub-par candidates. Not fair to me or my fellow citizens. It also hurts these two women, and society, because they are being taught that you don't need to work hard to succeed, you can just leach off of other people.

These two minority women should have been told "sorry you did not have a high enough score, please work harder and try to improve your skills, education and training then take the test again." What's wrong with telling them that?