A New Work Ethic Summary

A New Work Ethic?

James Sheehy’s, A New Work Ethic? reports the diverse attitudes from our new generation of college graduates and their response to work environments. Our generation hasn’t been taught the true meaning of hard work, dedication, and success. Success however is defined differently based on diverse attitudes. One may assume a college graduate working for a corporation has been taught ethically through college and through previous job experiences. Unethical business practices can be exposed to an individual. One may get what they want no matter what the consequences are. An individual may not believe in hard work, dedication, and the ethical way to reach success. This raises a concern on work ethics in future businesses in

From a utilitarianism perspective, whatever decision one chooses, they are to look beyond their self-interest. They are to consider their interests of others affected by their actions in a work environment. Unlike deontology ethics, utilitarianism sets the ethical standards that one must act upon on. According to Sheehy’s case, our new generation today does not obey the ethical standards that are required for them to do so. People did not devote themselves to their jobs, many workers were interested pursuing higher social statuses, and many of the workers practiced theft. “Self interest and personal advantage, specifically in an economic sense, may not be all that motivate people, but they do seem to motivate most people much of the time.” (Smith, 158) In Capitalism, if one can benefit from an organization from getting what they want, then they should have it however they want. In this case, workers were benefitting from organizations such as job promotions when they hardly worked for it or did not earn it at all, stealing money from cash drawers, and acting unresponsive to

It can be based on wage unfairness, social norm, etc… “Employee compensation is likely to shape the kind of social norms developed in the workplace by influencing the work group’s perceived fairness of treatment by management (Akerlof, 1982, Fischer and Huddart, 2008. For example: One may feel they are getting paid less than what they deserve. People are becoming less interested on their work and more interested obtaining their personal needs based on their standard of living. If I applied deontological ethics, I would expect employers demanding workers not to steal. I would expect the consequence to be employers holding accountable for those who violate their moral duties. If I apply utilitarianism based ethics, I would expect the outcome to be for employees to assign the values to the benefits and the harm it can cause. The consequence might be for employees to compare their values that might result from their