Nivel de conocimiento que tiene el docente en el ámbito de la gestión del

161 determining how he will carry it out.

• Feedback: the degree to which a worker, in carrying out the work activities required by the job, gets information about the effectiveness of his efforts.

In short, the solution to job dissatisfaction is perceivable enlargement of the narrowly specialised jobs that give rise to dissatisfaction: broadening the job “horizontally” by giving the employee a wider variety of tasks and deepening the job “vertically” by allowing the employee more perceivable control over these tasks. For example, jobs can be horizontally enlarged by replacing single workers performing single repetitive tasks with teams of three or four who are jointly responsible for the complete assembly of a certain number of machines. Such team jobs can be vertically enlarged by delegating to the team the responsibility of determining their own work assignments, work breaks, and inspection procedures.

162 employees is fully comparable to the power government officials have over their citizens. Consequently, if there are moral limits to the power government officials may legitimately exercise over citizens, then there are similar moral limits that should constrain the power of managers. In particular, just as the power of government should respect the civil rights of citizens, so the power of managers must respect the moral rights of employees. What are these employee rights? The moral rights of employees would be similar to the civil rights of citizens: the right to privacy, the right to consent, the right to freedom of speech, and so on.

The major objection to this view of employee rights is that there are a number of important differences between the power of corporate managers and the power of government officials, and these differences undercut the argument that the power of managers should be limited by employee rights comparable to the civil rights that limit the power of government.

First, the power of government officials (in theory at least) is based on consent, whereas the power of corporate managers is (in theory again) based on ownership. Government officials rule because they have been elected or because they have been appointed by someone who has been elected; corporate managers rule (if that is the right word) because they own the firm for which workers freely choose to work or because they have been appointed by the owners of the firm. Consequently, because the power of government rests on the consent of the governed, that power can legitimately be limited when the governed choose to limit it.

However, because the power of managers rests on ownership of the firm, they have the right to impose whatever conditions they choose to impose on employees, who freely and knowingly contracted to work on their firm's premises.

Second, the power of corporate managers, unlike that of most government officials, is effectively limited by unions: Most blue-collar and some white-collar workers belong to a union that provides them with a degree of countervailing power that limits the power of manage-ment. Accordingly, moral rights need not be invoked to protect the interests of employees.

Third a citizen can escape the power of a particular government only at great cost (by changing citizenship), an employee can escape the owner of a particular management with considerable ease (by changing jobs).

Because of the relatively high costs of changing citizenship, citizens need civil rights that can insulate them from the inescapable power of government. They do not need similar employee rights to protect them from the power of a corporation whose influence is easily escaped.

163 Advocates of employee rights have responded to these three objections in a number of ways: First, they claim, corporate assets are no longer controlled by private owners; they are now held by a dispersed and almost powerless group of stockholders. This kind of dispersed ownership implies that managers no longer function as agents of the firm’s owners and, consequently, that their power no longer rests on property rights. Second, although some workers are unionised, many are not, and these non unionised workers have moral rights that managers do not always respect. Third, changing jobs is sometimes as difficult and traumatic as changing citizenship, especially for the employee who has acquired specialised skills that can be used only within a specific organisation.

There is, then, a continuing controversy over the adequacy of the general argument that, because managements are like governments, the same civil rights that protect citizens must also protect employees.

Regardless of whether this general argument is accepted, a number of independent arguments have been advanced to show that employees have certain particular rights that managers should respect.

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

Outline the employee’s obligation to the firm

4.0 CONCLUSION

An organisation is the co-ordination of the activities of a number of people for the achievement of some common explicit purpose or goal, through a division of labour and function and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility.

5.0 SUMMARY

As employees have certain duties to the organisation, employers/organisations also hold certain duties to the employees; some are expressed while some are implied, all these must be balanced against ethics.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

1. Outline the responsibilities of the firm to its employees

2. Is the paying of wages a priviledge or a tight of the employees?

Explain your answer.

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7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

De George, Richard T. (1999). Business Ethics. Prentice Hall.

Manuel G. Velasquez. Business Ethics Concepts and Cases.

Kenneth A. Kim & John R. Nofsinger. Corporate Governance.

De George, Richard T. (1999). Business Ethics. Prentice Hall.

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UNIT 3 CORPORATIONS AND CORPORATE