The Responsibility Project Ethics
The Responsibility Project
Hot Seat
ETH/316
Deborah Stevens
June 25, 2014
The Responsibility Project
Hot Seat http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/films/hot-seat How many times in the workplace have we passed the buck? No one wants to admit it but more times that often many of us have passed the blame or given the responsibility of something that we should have done to someone else. This paper will discuss the importance of the issues of the Hot Seat film. How the role of external social pressures influence organizational ethics. How the issues are relevant to organizational and personal decisions. The relationship between legal and ethical issues as shown in the film will be addressed. Lastly, I will describe how ethical principles can be used to address organizational issues. The issue in the Hot Seat film was “passing the buck”. Passing the buck is defined as a person who avoids responsibility by shifting it to another. In the film there is a broken chair that keeps getting switched out from one person to another, instead of simply fixing the chair. The chair is literally going from one person to another and each individual knows that the chair is going around. The employees will not leave his or her desk in fear of having their chair swapped out for the broken chair. In the end one person takes his perfectly working chair and swaps it for the broken chair; taking it to his desk and rigging it to work properly. This issue is important because we all have a tendency to pass the buck, to blame others for what goes wrong in our lives or avoid responsibility by shifting the responsibility. We can no longer pass the buck. Adulthood assumes maturity and the capability to take on accountability for ourselves. By delaying the responsibility of adulthood and succeeding accountability for one’s own behavior, our culture prolongs immaturity (“Ethics Daily”, 2012). The roles of external social pressures
Hot Seat
ETH/316
Deborah Stevens
June 25, 2014
The Responsibility Project
Hot Seat http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/films/hot-seat How many times in the workplace have we passed the buck? No one wants to admit it but more times that often many of us have passed the blame or given the responsibility of something that we should have done to someone else. This paper will discuss the importance of the issues of the Hot Seat film. How the role of external social pressures influence organizational ethics. How the issues are relevant to organizational and personal decisions. The relationship between legal and ethical issues as shown in the film will be addressed. Lastly, I will describe how ethical principles can be used to address organizational issues. The issue in the Hot Seat film was “passing the buck”. Passing the buck is defined as a person who avoids responsibility by shifting it to another. In the film there is a broken chair that keeps getting switched out from one person to another, instead of simply fixing the chair. The chair is literally going from one person to another and each individual knows that the chair is going around. The employees will not leave his or her desk in fear of having their chair swapped out for the broken chair. In the end one person takes his perfectly working chair and swaps it for the broken chair; taking it to his desk and rigging it to work properly. This issue is important because we all have a tendency to pass the buck, to blame others for what goes wrong in our lives or avoid responsibility by shifting the responsibility. We can no longer pass the buck. Adulthood assumes maturity and the capability to take on accountability for ourselves. By delaying the responsibility of adulthood and succeeding accountability for one’s own behavior, our culture prolongs immaturity (“Ethics Daily”, 2012). The roles of external social pressures
References: Ethics Daily. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=14659 Small Business Chronicles. (2014). Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-external-social-pressure-influence-business-ethics-43961.html http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/films/hot-seat The Free Dictionary. (2014). Retrieved from http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pass+the+buck