Last class we learned about the roles that a project manager should be responsible with and the unethical issues we face. We learned this through discussion and the activity of making puppets. In the activity we saw many unethical things that the Professor Cook was doing.
Her acting is along the lines of how my manager treats us. I intern at an accounting firm and work with other interns to help partners assemble tax returns and other projects. The main problem she has is that she has a favorite intern just as Professor Cook did. This intern has caused many problems and has made so many mistakes, but our manager does not do anything but protect the intern. This hurts the rest of the interns because the Partners of the firm view us as a team and the one intern just keeps screwing everything up which gives us a less chance of getting offered a job when we graduate.
This intern was always allowed days off for no reason and it was to a point where she would miss almost one day every two weeks. Some of her mistakes cost the company of probably around $1000. But whenever the manager talks to the other interns, she yells at us and saying that we need to be retrained and need to work harder. The “special” intern however does not get any problems at all. My manager’s main excuse for this is not because she favors her, but she has said that the intern is “new” and that we should give her more time to learn. The only problem with this is that one of the interns was hired around five months after she was, but supposedly the “special” intern is new and the actual most recent hire is not.
My manager also fired one of the other interns because she was not a hard worker, when the fired intern was there for almost three years and worked hard. I do not get how the manager can fire one for not working hard, when there is obviously a worse worker. I believe that the manager is just trying to cover for herself since the “special” intern was the manager’s first hire into our intern team. The manager also does not want to fire her favorite because then the manager would have to admit to the Partners that she made a bad hire. My question is this not unethical? Clearly picking out favorites is not fair to other interns and I think that the Partners should try to fix the Manager’s skewed perspective.
This is undoubtedly a very difficult situation, and one that often arises in the work place. People are afraid of admitting mistakes in fear of being looked down upon. The truth is, mistakes are part of the learning experience. Your manager is acting unethically, and doesn’t understand that her decisions are causing the business to suffer.
I agree with you without a doubt, because what your Manager is doing, is clearly unethical. Favoring one employee over another, is just not right. I believe the most difficult part for your team is that this individual is making you and the rest of the interns look bad in front of the Partners. This is something we often see at school too. When dealing with a team project, usually there is always one person slacking off, which has a negative effect on the whole team and gives a bad impression to the Professor about the team as a whole. Clearly, your case is more serious because it leaves you in doubt for a future job offer with the firm. I hope you are able to resolve this, and I wish you the best of luck.
Yes, this is definitely unethical. I can relate to favorites in the work place. There is a co-worker of mine that is favored by my manager for no reason. My co-worker is constantly talking over people and being unproductive. I don’t think that the problem will be solved until your manager realizes their mistake.
This is unethical for that manager to think they can favor one intern. That manager would need to reevaluate their performance and realize their own fault in hiring a non-hardworking intern. I mean the one thing a person should do is to accept their mistakes and fix it.
I don’t believe the manager is unethical when showing favoritism over another intern but rather just demonstrating poor leadership skills. She is however unethical in firing a former intern due to poor performance unless she took the appropriate measures in following the firms protocol when firing someone. I see this as more of a problem in the firms inability to hire effective managers. Unfortunately, more often than not, executives don’t see how their managers manage the firms human capital on day to day operations. However, it is ultimately the firms responsibility to ensure that they have the most competent and effective people carrying out the tasks of every aspect of the job. As in Justin’s scenario this is clearly not the case and thus has created an unsavory environment for people to work in.
I don’t think favoritism is an unethical issue unless a manager is favoring employees who are under-performing and do not follow proper policies and procedures. Working as a manager, I have discovered that each employee is different when it comes to how they communicate with others and how they respond to given tasks. Sometimes I feel that employees work harder when they feel favored, although that may cross the line of being unethical. In this situation, I would say that the manager’s behavior is definitely unethical, but would need to look at the situation more in detail.
I agree with your comment, I too believe that the manager described above is being unethical and choosing to protect the favorite inter. However, as unfortunate as it may be – situations like the one describe above occur each and every day within many organizations. In my opinion, most humans are wired to form groups and usually show favoritism to those whom fall into their inner circle. In Corporate America I believe this what would be called “The Good Old Boys Network” Once an individual becomes part of the (inner circle/Good Old Boy Network) they become privileged over others and those within the group often tend to take care of each other regardless of what their capabilities may be or lack thereof.
This is indeed is very unethical of the manger. The manger needs to stop and realize what is going on in the office, because if this continues who knows how many more mistakes will come about, causing lots of harm to the company. This will only happen if the manger is willing to realize that there is a problem. It is very difficult for humans to realize their problems it is even more difficult to accept and solve the problem.
I totally agree the manager is acting very unethical. Something like it happened to me, but I was in the director’s favorite team. Everyone in the department worked very hard to help our business, and the manager liked to acknowledge the hard work on meetings; however, he always emphasized how great the operations department was in comparison to the business department. These comments not only created rivalry between the managers of operations and business, but also discouraged the employees in the business department who felt their work was not taken into account. I believe that if the director would have put as much effort in addressing the mistakes or areas in need of improvement in the business department as he did in making remarks about the operations and business departments, the environment at work would have felt different, and in fact the business department could have performed as well as he wanted to. Honestly, I do not think the business department did a bad job, it only happens that the operations manager had known the director for years because she was one of her students. As someone previously posted, the operations manager was part of the “inner circle” or “Good Old Boy Network”
I totally agree with your statement that the manager is unethical. Although to treat everyone as the same is barely impossible since people always have their own preference. As a leader, the manager should try her best to be fairness to everyone. What the manager did is absolutely have negative effects on the company. When the manager favored one intern over another, the intern would be unsatisfied and have less motivation to work hard. If unfairness becomes a culture of a company, its employees will lose their passion of work. This company will not successful if its employees choose not to be loyal to the company.