Man Going Around Miami University Of Kentucky Ari
DISCUSSION 1
Our subject this week reverses last week in that we want to examine things that the employees owe to the employer. For generations, an employee would work for one employer and that was it, any additional jobs held was seen as being either disloyal or disrespectful to the employer and could cost you the regular position you had. With the changing times over the past few year, many people have taken on second, third and even fourth or fifth jobs to be able to make ends meet.
Employers have hired people for the lowest salary and benefits they could provide which in turn sparked the need for getting part-time work. There are those who still see “moonlighting” or holding an additional job as an offense to the actual employer. Some organizations don’t care as long as the other work doesn’t conflict with the job you were hired to do for them. For example, Mark is the manager of the local Staples office supply store but has a child in college and making tuition payments is a struggle. Mike gets offered a part-time job to work the fuel station window at a supermarket for just above minimum wage but he’s been promised to receive a lot of hours. He accepts the position and one night while he’s working his superior shows up to pay for gas and discovers Mike working there. The supervisor may find it funny or they could be upset that Mike has taken on another job. Again, in this era; it’s not unusual for employees to hold multiple positions. I have a friend who works customer service for the state of Kentucky’s Revenue cabinet and conducts a church choir and plays piano for the church on the weekends to bring in extra money. I am sure her primary employers knows and since it’s just a weekend job while state offices are closed, it’s no major issue
DISCUSSION QUESTION: Barry has a position with high level security clearance because of the sensitive nature of his company’s work. Barry works for a food processing company and has access to recipes of many restaurants main menu items. He’s offered an opportunity to teach part-time at a culinary school. Should he accept the offer orcould/would this job lead to a potential conflict of interest? Why? Why not?
DISCUSSION2
Boatwright’s article addresses that Aristotle sees the exchange of goods for profit as being unethical. Think of it this way. A farmer grows corn, the intent is for the corn to be eaten. Aristotle would view the selling of the corn as an unnatural activity as corn was meant to be consumed and not sold. The article’s author, Ricard Solomon offers that Aristotle was wrong in regarding the role of profit noting how Athenian society profited off of slavery. The intent of many business corporations today is to make and maintain a profit. Solomon recognizes the profit motive or abstract greed. What we want to consider here is whether or not the pursuit of profit is unethical based on Aristotle’s philosophy or is it a moral and natural progress as things are created and pursued?
I’ve mentioned in my classes about how after Florida suffered its last major hurricane, a news report showed a man going around Miami afterwards selling bolted water. He had purchased a case before the natural disaster but after, he sold bottles @ $99 each. Aristotle would definitely have view this as an unethical practice as water wasn’t created to be sold. Under the capitalist business philosophy there is the issue of supply and demand. The man knew people needed water to survive and he had some however, it was going to coat you $99 to get a bottle. The discussion this week was Aristotle right in his view of profit or was the man in Miami simply conducting business as the capitalist market prefers?
DISCUSSION3
Retention and motivation are our topics this week. What makes a person want to stay at an organization or leave? The motivation to do one’s job varies with the position and the person. NFL Hall of Famer Randy Moss was playing for the New England Patriots one Sunday when a broadcaster noticed that Mr. Moss wasn’t always running his pass routes. The broadcaster asked after the game why? Randy’s response was, “Because I didn’t feel like it!” One of the issues with the workplace is that we can bring people into an organization but there’s no guarantee they will do their job as expected. A manager may have to try to micro-manage their workforce in order to be sure functions are carried out.
Getting good employees is always going to be an uncertainty. The recruitment effort can emphasize diversity, experience, education or other concepts but until the person has to perform, you really don’t know what you have. Turnover is a major issue and with w robust economy such as we have now, people are apt to job hop if they aren’t satisfied where they’re at. The organization and its management may offer more pay, better benefits or other incentives but remember, an incentive is only worthwhile as long as the person (s) it’s being applied to values it I used to work for Ashford University online. Each spring they would encourage the faculty to come to the Rockford, IL area to attend graduation and give us $300 towards our expenses. The area is north of Chicago with no major airport to fly into so, it would have taken me to fly from Louisville to Chicago, rent a car, drive 80 miles to Ashford’s main campus to attend the commencement. I never went as $300 wasn’t enough money to interest in me to make the trip.
The text discusses motivation from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Hertzberg’s Two-Factor Theory to McGregor’s management beliefs. All in all each attempts to provide some psychological basis to identify the mentality it takes to make a person or a group of persons happy.
DISCUSSION QUESTION: The text discusses, the “carrot and the stick” concept were a person has an incentive placed in front of them in order to get them to perform as you want them to. The carrot-and-stick approach means you can get someone to do something by prodding or by offering some incentive to motivate them to do the work. Why does this approach work? Why does it fail?
DISCUSSION4
Mr. Basu provided a discussion on the idea of “conspicuous consumption”. The idea being that whether or not you can afford something; you bought it anyway to show others that you had some measure of status. The idea he is trying to promote is that if we change the way people behave in common society, then other aspects of society should change as well.
The concept of rational thinking is important to understand as it comes to organizational behavior. Given the Corona situation we’re currently facing, there will be those who will conduct significant research before deciding to take an action. Others will pick up information from Social Media, the network news and other places they believe they can trust. After we come out of this virus situation, interactive thinking will change. Societies will generally choose common norms (i.e. a street/highway speed limit, what is adult content, etc.). Since we’re more of a global society today, we are going to have to take a serious look at the things we all are willing to agree to. Businesses have laid off, fired workers resulting from the virus situation. When things get back to normal, should the organization restore those jobs? DISCUSSION- One of the recent political discussions relative to helping U.S. citizens has been whether or not to forgive student loans for college students? Those loans were paid for from taxpayer collections so, is it right in order to fight/offset the depressed economy as a result of Corona that the government should spend additional taxpayer money to forgive this debt? In short Max ha paid federal taxes since the 1950s and part of those payments have gone to student loans since the program started. Max has no children in college and now the government wants to take his tax money again to pay off someone else’s debts including those of big business. He’s opposed…Is he right explain why or why not…in detail!