Ethical Issues in Management

Ethical Issues in Management

Performance evaluations or evals as military personnel referred to them in the US Navy are used to evaluate personnel’s work performance and in the Navy rate each person against their peers. As a part of the executive department I was responsible for keeping the evaluations in proper formatting and looking professional. Evaluations are essential in the work force so that you can inform the personnel how they are doing with in the organization, whether it is well or poor. Evaluations have social issues as well as the management having an ethical responsibility on how their personnel are evaluated. My time in the executive department while in the Navy I have seen many ethical and unethical evaluations come across my desk and there was nothing I could do about the what I saw.

For some managers it may be hard for them to be honest when it comes to telling their employees that they are not doing a great job, so they may lie and give their employee a better evaluation than they have earned (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). Managers that give better evaluation than are deserved may be doing giving them because they want to be liked and not hated. By giving good evaluation to personnel that did not earn them may make those who did upset at the manager that made that decision. For those manager to decide to give an evaluation that is not deserved whether it was a good or bad evaluation is not an ethically responsible decision, for the organization because bad employees may get promoted and good employees may get held back.

I served four years in the US Navy on a Submarine; I was a Yeoman, which is a person that handles all clerical work for the ship. Part of my duties was to work on the personnel’s performance evaluations, so I saw the inner workings on how personnel where evaluated against their peers. I was amazed on how the management made their decision on which personnel got the excellent evaluation. Some of the personnel that get the...