Forms of Workplace Discrimination
Discrimination can be defined as the malpractice of unjust treatment, resulting in unfair prejudicial treatment conducted based on race, ethnicity, and other social factors (1). In this specific study, the topic will discuss a particular form of workplace discrimination taking place as discrimination in hiring. This form of workplace discrimination can be defined as the overall context when discrimination as a candidate or applicant is unfairly treated based on discrimination taking place due to sexual orientation, colour, caste, creed, and other forms of socio-metric factors. Based on a report presented by Statista, it can be evaluated with the increased diversity formulated in the workplace and inclusion practices developed by business organizations have also resulted in the simultaneous increase in racial profiling and discrimination in the workplace culture (2). Despite the presence of legal acts and policies, the application of this form of discrimination is longstanding and can be witnessed in most metropolitan job locations. Discrimination in terms of socio-ethos and discrimination can be noticed in terms of age, where workers or employees in a midlife age are often deprived of gaining new job opportunities (3). To conduct this proposal the usage and application of various academic literature sources and utilization of psychological issues will be focused on discussing this specific subject topic. The main idea or motive behind covering this subject topic will highlight the necessary reformation, good practices, and awareness campaign that can be focused on getting implemented across the globe to help minimize the adversaries this form of discrimination holds in the workplace culture.
The application of discrimination is longitude. Across nations and countries, potential employees must undergo that constant mental trauma and pressure due to the significant amount of workplace discrimination taking place. Based on a report presented by CNN News shows, during the time of the Covid 19 pandemic, Asian employees, mainly Chinese, were targeted and even brutally attacked by colleagues and were harnessed in the workplace (5). Ozturk and Berber (6) state that the collective presence of cultural diversity can serve a better competitive advantage for the organization and enhance corporate reputation. To simplify and connect with this topic scenario, the research will focus on discussing the various reasons that promulgate discrimination in hiring particularly. Further, it will focus on presenting a holistic understanding regarding the cumulative advantage it can bring with the diversification of workplace culture leading to a better inflow of ideas and revamped success criteria for business industries.
Related to the selected topic of discussion, the intended audience is both employers (Human resource department) of the business organizations who conduct this form of malpractice and the employees or the potential candidates who are debarred from gaining optimum exposure related to discrimination in hiring taking place in workplaces. Targeting such an audience base is because most of the hiring procedure is implicated by the HRM department of any business organization. Yusliza et al. (7) state that an HRM department within any business organization needs to adapt and accommodate the global changes taking place, helping in changing the diversity and promoting knowledge and growth for the business industries. Thus, it can be analyzed that the basic targeted area where the initialization of discrimination starts to generate is the HRM section, therefore, implying the conduction of necessary changes and adoption of the necessary strategies regarding avoiding hiring discrimination can lead to the influx of potential candidates that can lead to better business outcome.
Prevalence of Discrimination in Hiring
Therefore, to summarize the entire convocation, it can be addressed that the study would be related to basic workplace ethics that business institutions need to maintain particularly in the section on distinction during hiring. With the supporting evidence from news articles like Yu (8), an article on BBC News shows that an employee named Courtney working in a fashion company suffered from discrimination related to her need to be more appealing in terms of looks and fashion sense to help in maintaining the reputation of the company. The news articles prepared in this assignment will focus on presenting a tailored campaign post consisting of the various fundamental areas that revolve around the spectrum of hiring discrimination, the potential tactics, and the legal reparation that employees can undertake in considering receiving any potential aid (9). The overall aesthetic of the news articles would be completely focusing on addressing the key issues, the different types of hiring discrimination. The main aim of these articles would be to provide an overall social awareness message that can be of potential help for employees facing such forms of unethical issues in workplaces.
The promotion of discrimination in the hiring process is one of the most common phenomena in almost all organizations irrespective of the public or private sectors across the globe. Favoritism, biases, nepotism, and prejudice are some terms that are widely used to define the contemporary hiring process. The discriminating hiring process is a curse of modern society and it is a completely unethical practice as it deprives the eligible candidates of the jobs which are more qualified and appropriate choices for the respective job positions (10). A discriminating hiring system not only deprives the eligible candidates but also affects the organizations as organizations must pay the same cost for the employees who are recruited due to biases or favoritism, which the company is supposed to pay for the most suitable candidates for those positions who would be more productive for the company in comparison to the employees, selected due to favoritism.
Discriminating in the hiring process promotes discrimination against the individuals who are eligible because it is unfair or injustice to those individuals as everyone is equal as well as it is immoral or wrong to treat anyone unfairly (11). In this context, discrimination against individuals during the hiring processes based on their age, gender, race, color, religion, ethnicity, or cultural background should not be supported as it is unethical. Discrimination in the hiring process used to violate basic human rights as it holds the minorities and women as inferior (12). Moreover, the worst results of discrimination are that it promotes unjust distributions of the benefits, as well as burdens among the people. Most of all, it leads to inefficient and unproductive utilization of human resources. Hence, discrimination in hiring practices is an ethical issue and it must be discussed as well as evaluated in the light of ethics of virtue as the people who show discriminative behaviours are failed to develop virtuous character and thus violate the concepts of fairness while judging people.
Impact of Discrimination on Workplace Culture
Normative ethics uses virtue ethics as one of its three major approaches. In the beginning, it is recognized as a technique that emphasizes virtues or moral character, as opposed to deontology or consequentialism, which stresses obligations or laws (deontology). Upon two principles all forms of virtue ethics rest: virtue and practical wisdom (13). Virtue can be undertaken as a distinguishing characteristic of a person’s personality. It is a tendency to notice, expect, value, desire, choose, feel, act, as well as react in optimistic attribute ways, which is properly deeply embedded in its possessor, something that, as can be said, goes all the way down, unlike a tea-drinking addiction, to notice, expect, desire, choose, value, feel, act, as well as react in constructive attribute ways (14). To have a virtue is to be a positive thinker with certain complicated thinking. One of the most important aspects of this mindset is the unwavering acceptance of a diverse range of incentives for action. A genuine individual cannot be identified as one who, for example, engages in honest business activities and no longer cheats. A morally decent, outstanding, or admirable personality that acts and feels as he or she should is a virtuous individual. Normally, these are self-evident truths. However, it is also usual to present these truisms concerning unique (putative) examples of virtues.
To understand the ethical concerns related to discrimination in hiring from the perception of ethics of virtue, it is important to put adequate focus on the situations, which will help recognize and formulate the underlying ethical issues and required solutions. The HR Managers, who endorse discrimination in hiring and discriminate against the aspirant candidates as per the factors like age, gender, race, color, religion, ethnicity, or cultural background are allowed as well as support vices and let them win (15). Hence, according to the principles of ethics of virtue, HR Managers cannot be virtuous.
The current situation ought to be discussed in the context of an ethical framework like Ethics of Virtue. This ethical framework is based on the notion that when a person’s character is virtuous, as well as the main focus on virtues, plays an important role in directing actions, that person will be referred to as good or creating treats. The ethics of virtue principles endorsed the notion of acting following virtues like courage, sincerity, fairness, wisdom, and prudence (16). A person can be the main moral agent, and his or her virtuous character is demonstrated by adhering to the listed internal characteristics. Individual dishonesty and ignorance will be the source of such irrational actions as discrimination, as well as the lost opportunity of an honest candidate. The principle of fairness was violated when the unit of time manager failed to specify his concerns to the virtuous person so that he could receive the necessary clarification and plan the necessary actions. Instead, he chose to assess an individual based on age.
The previously mentioned moral issue will be resolved, whereas this focuses on the manager’s approach to judging people. The virtuous person must not make decisions solely based on the first impression. This method is unethical, and it is incapable of providing information about a candidate’s potential. Virtuous leaders do not make decisions based on discussions, evaluations, and appraisals.
Since this approach is fundamental to the principles of Ethics of Virtue, it is required for the virtuous manager to judge people based on their activities and performance. From this perspective, the most important solution is to have an open and honest conversation with the candidate so that he can be evaluated on his performance (17). As a result of their inability to be virtuous and supported by the principles of knowledge and fairness, the ensuing resolution is the avoidance of discriminatory practices as the basic ones to form calls within the operating environments. Discrimination is one of the most serious moral issues associated with working conditions (17). It is necessary to provide people with the opportunity to showcase their virtues to address this issue with examples of Ethics of Virtue. To become virtuous, one must be honest while acting following knowledge and logical principles instead of pragmatism.
Plato and Aristotle are often regarded as the founding fathers related to advantage ethics in the West, whereas Mencius and Confucius are regarded as founding fathers in the Eastern regions. Aristotle offers several specific observations regarding phronesis that have sparked a lot of scholarly controversies, but the related progressive theory is best appreciated by pondering what the virtuous morally mature person possesses those good children, including delightful teens, do not. Both the good adults as well as the good kids have clear intentions, but the kid is far more likely to make a mistake because he is unaware of what he needs to know to accomplish his goals (18). A virtuous person is not infallible, and he or she may, on rare occasions, be unsuccessful in accomplishing what he or she is required to do due to a lack of information, but only when the lack of knowledge is no longer accountable. Teenagers, as well as adolescents, for example, frequently injure others they desire to benefit, either since they do not realize how to secure the benefit or because their grasp of what is truly useful and harmful is limited and frequently incorrect. Small children’s ignorance is rarely, if ever, culpable. Adults, on the other hand, are responsible if they make mistakes by being careless, insensitive, irresponsible, impetuous, myopic, and believing that what suits them will satisfy anyone rather than taking a more objective view (19). They are also responsible if their perception of what is truly beneficial and detrimental is incorrect. Knowing how to effectively achieve actual advantages is an element of sensible wisdom; those with realistic wisdom will no longer make the error of concealing the harsh fact from the personality who truly desires to recognize it in the hope of benefiting him.
Does the structural similarity of direct and indirect discrimination indicate that there is no fundamental difference between the two? This would have far-reaching consequences. For instance, direct and indirect discrimination should no longer be presumed to be morally wrong for different reasons. Discrimination complaints consume up a lot of public discourse space. Approximately everyone agrees that positive forms of differentiated therapy are unjust and discriminatory. One of the most important conceptual issues concerning discrimination in determining viable discrimination. Presumably, discrimination and organizations are intimately linked in the sense that it is hard to discriminate truly against a character because of her uniqueness (20). Discrimination in hiring can also be direct as well as indirect discrimination. For instance, the hiring manager may directly refuse the selection of an aspirant candidate based on his racial or cultural identity and direct discrimination. However, sometimes substantial pressure was on the hiring manager to recruit a certain person, and then he or she had to discriminate against other candidates.
Addressing Hiring Discrimination: A Tailored Campaign
The incidences of discrimination in the hiring process are an ethical issue of the respective organizations as well as the society where the organizations exist, and it can be effectively analyzed and established by the ethical theory given by Emanuel Kant, which is popularly known as Kantianism. Kant’s moral philosophy, which is often referred to as deontology, supports deciding whether an act is right or wrong. According to Kantianism, an act is assumed to be right when performed ethically or for the moral law. The intention for doing an act must be ethical to consider that specific act ethically right (21). Consequences, irrespective of intended consequence or otherwise, are not relevant for determining an ethical value of an action. Here, what matters most is whether the act is influenced by duty or respect for the ethics or moral law. The ethical theories by Emanuel Kant are mainly organized around the conceptual idea of a categorical imperative that is a universally accepted ethical principle. According to this principle, one ought to always respect the humanity of others and only act as per rules that are universally applicable rules and applicable to all. According to Emanuel Kant, human beings have dignity, according to Kant, since they are ends in themselves, with an inner worth that supersedes market value. A thing’s value can be replaced with another equivalent, but dignity cannot (21).
Furthermore, since they are human beings, every human being has dignity, regardless of their background and each human being deserves fair and equal treatment so that they live a dignified life. In this context, discrimination in hiring breaches the core or central features of Emanuel Kant’s moral theory. Discrimination is always considered wrong ethically as per the Kantian point of view. When an HR Manager promotes or endorses discrimination during the hiring process based on age, gender, race, color, religion, ethnicity, or cultural background then the manager certainly knows that what he or she is doing ethically wrong and not doing right things, so whatever the consequences of their unethical action, the action never be considered as ethically right but always wrong.
It may be problematic for a company to hire a male or a female depending on the gender. Almost every business seems to be stuck in a never-ending cycle of hiring new employees and making decisions. In addition to relevant experience, education qualifications, or simply a wonderful personality, hiring managers may also be looking for someone with those qualifications. Managers must know the ethical repercussions of employing the right person because ethics are at the core of their responsibilities (22). Hiring managers mainly in the HRM department of an organization have the difficult task of finding people who can meet the group’s needs while adhering to all regulations and internal employment procedures established by a business organization. A supervisor must be aware of the moral duties involved with recruiting practices in addition to the legal framework concerned in employment practice (23). The hiring manager must understand that an ethical worker is vital to the firm’s success if a firm is only as good as its workers. Some compromised individuals intentionally conduct themselves in an immoral manner, and their actions can be devastating to an organization’s reputation. All recruiters should be responsible for acting as moral gatekeepers for their companies in order to prevent, or at the very least, minimize unethical behaviour (24). Companies that follow an internal moral trend should also seek moral hiring strategies and guiding concepts to support managers in fostering moral workers.
Consequences of Discriminating Hiring Process
Choosing the proper person for any empty position should no longer be taken lightly. Managers are responsible for shaping an agency’s moral climate, which can lead to the firm’s ultimate success by establishing relationships, forging reputations, and expanding its overall success, all of which are based on the managerial acknowledgement of their ethical responsibilities (25). Furthermore, previous scholars have suggested that hiring managers have the power to choose one candidate over others, but they also have an ethical obligation to do so responsibly.
By failing to select the best candidates and not being ethical in their hiring decisions, a manager increases the likelihood of letting bad apples into the company. The bad apples are morally deficient people predisposed to act unethically and will do so if given the opportunity. Every company is sensitive to the flaws of employees who engage in unethical or unethical activities. Ethical hiring standards and managerial protections may no longer be sufficient to prevent underperforming employees from obtaining employment. However, a manager whose actions are inconsistent with moral duties can reduce the risk of selecting someone who will negatively impact the firm.
Discrimination is a critical HR issue
Workplace discrimination happens when a potential employee or an individual present within a group is treated with unfairest equality, and judged based on the gender, caste, color and creed of the individual. The following protected characteristics are: race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religious views, and national origin. The workplace is characterized by workplace discrimination between coworkers, job candidates, and employees as well as between employers and their employees. Irrespective of whether a discriminatory act is done intentionally or not, discrimination is illegal.
Discrimination in hiring occurs when a potential employee is unfairly treated or treated unequally because of their protected status based on their group membership. It is an illegal employment practice when an employer denies hiring on that basis. Employers may also be held accountable if they hire someone through a recruitment agency that applies illegal, discriminatory tactics. Discrimination happens when an organization selects a candidate for any reason other than their qualifications and experience, and it occurs in terms of recruitment when an organization selects an applicant for any reason other than their qualifications and experience.
Discrimination in the workplace, in any form, is undesirable and unlawful, and yet promotion discrimination is particularly harmful since it damages your career aspirations, income potential, and reputation. Being passed over for a promotion based only on gender, age, colour, national origin, religious affiliation, or disability is an example of promotion discrimination. Discrimination in promotion is also known as wrongful failure to promote, and it occurs when employees are passed over for promotion for the wrong reasons or in violation of federal or state law. Employees who are dissatisfied with their employers may seek compensation by suing them. Maintain consistency in job descriptions for related positions. By interviewing all interested employees, an employer can level the playing field. Make certain they realize why they are not qualified if they are not. Conducting a promotion interview the same way a company would a new hiring interview is important to avoid promotion discrimination.
It is the unlawful prohibition implied on a job application or a potential candidate due to differences possessed in terms of different races and other potential qualities.
Religious discrimination
Employers or leaders who provides unjust treatment to employees, just because of differences in the religious viewpoints are breaching a simple ethical standards as well as violating the legal standards.
It is prohibited to treat a job applicant or employee unjustly due to their disability or physical condition, or other similar qualities.
The company should not discriminate against an aspirant candidate due to her pregnancy. Pregnancy must be treated similarly to a temporary illness or even another non-permanent ailment by employers.
Employers are prohibited from indicating age preference in job descriptions, internship programs, or even other company documents, such as promotion criteria, or underage discrimination rules.
Sex and gender discrimination
The company should not discriminate against an aspirant candidates due to their sex and gender as it is unethical and illegal HR practice.
LGBTQ+ discrimination
The national governments of many countries like the US have passed a bill in favor of LGBTQ and the employers cannot refuse employment to a person who belongs to the LGBTQ group
This leads to disengagement and reduces wellbeing
Discrimination in the workplace often causes disengagement among the employees and reduces their well-being, consequently affecting their performance and productivity.
Pervasive effect on victims of discrimination
Discrimination causes unhappiness and dissatisfaction among the employees. The employees become concerned and feel distressed. Consequently, the employees are suffered mentally as well as physically.
Discrimination in the organization raises discontentment among the employees, and they think to protest against the organization regarding this matter, they seek help from the union. Consequently, unionization used to be promoted in the organization.
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