Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace: Unavoidable Challenges

Ethical issues are completely unavoidable in any workplace that someone would become involved in. “They happen every day, there is always some sort of issue that comes up.” Said Jon Murphy, Vice President of US Sales at Sumitomo Machinery Corp. of America. Ethical issues arise in all areas of the workplace. Whether that be in a production booth in California, or at a corporate office in Virginia. I even experienced quite a few ethical dilemmas at the news station I did an internship at over the summer. Wherever there are employees, or just business happening in general, ethics will have a part to play eventually.

There are three main categories that I have researched and have been witness to over the past few years: honesty, respect, and,

Truth. The first one is honesty. Now this can have any number of different meanings. As a film maker one of the areas that many tend to make their occupation with is something to do with freelancing. The problem that comes with freelancing is dealing with equipment. When you are working for someone else that is lending you equipment, you take on a responsibility for that equipment. It is easy to not take good care of loaner cameras if they are payed for by someone else, but if you intentionally neglect to take care of it, then it that is practically stealing from the company or person to whom the equipment belongs.
The second category of ethical issues is respect. Over the summer I worked for a local news station in Charleston West Virginia called WCHS. I spent quite a lot of time in the video control room with the directors. The main complaint that every single one of them had was that the management at the station did not respect them. They were overworked and understaffed. All the blame seemed to always be put on the director’s shoulders if a problem were to happen during the broadcast.
The final category is truth, and there is a large amount of lies or deceit that can go into filmmaking or live production.

However, this does not always have to be the case. In certain instances in filmmaking, there are title slides or warnings that say, “Based on a true story.” Having this can make a movie more desirable to go see, more people will want to go watch it if they believe it actually happened. For instance, in the 1996 movie Fargo it starts of saying “This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” This, statement made at the beginning of the film is completely untrue. Now, granted it probably got more people talking about it and brought more people into the theatres to watch it, but it is not the truth. This isn’t mercenarily what will be dealt with as a filmmaker or producer every day, but it is a possibility that could possibly be brought

up.
Honesty
I contacted Jon Murphy, the Vice President of US sales at Sumitomo Machinery Corp. of America. I wanted to learn more about workplace ethical issues and the business side of them. He gave me an example of specific times where an ethical issue involving honesty helped save the company a client and possibly make more money in the future. The issue was that they had just gotten an order for a single machine to be delivered to the customer. Somewhere along the way between the order, and the salesman, they were charged for two machines instead of just one. Jon Murphy luckily caught this mistake, but had a decision to make. The customer didn’t know the full prices of the machines, so they could have easily just paid for two and received the one and never known. However, Mr. Murphy decided to contact the salesman and inform him of the mistake, and make sure the problem was fixed. A few weeks later, Jon received a call from the customers personally thanking him for fixing the mistake. They were so happy that they decided to continue business with Sumitomo and Mr. Murphy. This allows for more fixability in the price later on and an established trust that will last a while.
When I first started to do business overseas, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to bring anything to the table. I can’t speak all the languages and I was worried I just wouldn’t be able to help at all. But overseas, it makes a world of difference having an American on your business team. Everyone wants to do business with an American. The American law systems are set up that if something goes wrong, it will be fixed. People put more trust in Americans because they have more confidence in them. (Murphy, 2016)
The most common and serious ethical issue to dealt with honesty that Mr. Murphy brought up was cheating on expense reports. There were cases where employees under his leadership were misusing things like company gas cards, or misusing client expenses. There is a law that if you are spending money on clients, you can only give them what they can use in a single day. This would include things like meals, taxi rides, or concert tickets for that night. If employees start giving clients things like wedding presents with company money, that is when it becomes illegal. Expenses like this are not only found in office buildings of machinery companies. Talking to clients and producers will undoubtedly be a part of any filmmaker’s life. Having this kind of honesty earns respect from others and is beneficial to the Christian life. It can help the testimony you show as a Christian as well. In a world of lying and deceit like the Hollywood film industry, a Christian with good morals and honest workplace ethics will stand out.
It takes your entire life to build up your reputation, and only one minute to completely tear it down. (Murphy, 2016)

Respect
During my internship at Charleston news station WCHS, I talked to a lot of the management and the directors at the news station.

I came into the station at a particularly stressful time for the full-time employees. Two of their main directors were gone for the summer so other directors had to take on more responsibilities which, in part, made their jobs much more stressful. During my time, I saw a majority of the management show disrespect to the directors who would have technical difficulties out of their control happen on air. It came to the point where directors where receiving warnings because of these technical glitches. One day while I was observing in the director’s booth, the show had a particularly noticeable video glitch that happened on air. The director was furious and felt like he was going to get blamed for it, when the producer started to show him disrespect for it, he stood up, started yelling, and walked out of the booth. I had the opportunity to talk to the senior director at the station after this happened and he said that it was only a matter of time before one of the directors when and did something like this. The following weeks, the directors were shown more respect and given lighter workloads. The relationships between management and the workers were far from perfect, but continuing to get better even my last week at the station. The director was never punished but was given time off and a different shift from the management that he had been working

with.
Proper respect is necessary for a work environment like this one. When employees start to feel disrespected, they preform worse when called upon and do not respect you back if you are in a position of management. Respect is something that is craved in the world of filmmaking. There are only a few directors that even non-movie buffs even know the names of because of the amount of respect they have in the industry. As a Christian filmmaker, respect is hard to come by. Christians are most often not taken seriously in the field of filmmaking and television. The shows and movies they tend to produce are usually preachy and disrespectful of the medium. Respect for other filmmakers and the art of filmmaking is absolutely necessary. In a world where respect is your legacy, you have to show others respect before you earn any yourself.