There are a few potential legal issues that are present in this case. If a resident is hurt,
they and/or their family could sue the retirement community. Also, if the money in the budget
for those safety features was embezzled or used illegally, it could be a criminal law case.
Finally, there could be some employment discrimination at work as the woman was overlooked
for a promotion while a case could be argued that the employee that went along with the scam
was rewarded with it.
There are several potential ethical issues that are presented in this case study. The first is
that this is very shady behavior for a director to want to have towards a retirement community
where one bad fall could signal the end of a person’s life, especially for seniors. It is also very
unethical for all the legal reasons above. The fact that he is ignoring the issue rather than
looking into it even if it was all above board is also unethical as he is not doing his job.
The director’s behavior could be summed up in one word: sketchy. He is not acting in a
manner that makes others believe that he has the resident’s best interest at heart. He is at best
only interested in cutting some corners to save money in the budget, and at worse, is defrauding
the retirement community. From the information given, he seems to be a horrible director with
his lack of concern over the retirement community residents.
No, the director is certainly not an ethical role model. If anything he is unethical, even if
he is not purposely defrauding the retirement community as he has no care for the residents of
the community who could be hurt. According to Treviño and Nelson (2010):
In an ethical culture, the mentor emphasizes the importance of integrity and resistance to
pressure to behave unethically. In an unethical culture, the mentor may indoctrinate the
individual into accepted unethical practices, making it difficult for the individual not to
go along. (p. 181).
He is certainly helping to indoctrinate these unethical practices in the co-worker that was
promoted, and he has also not expressed any concerns over the safety issues surrounding the new
pool. Overall, he seems as though he is either really bad at doing his job or interested in seeing
how much money he can get out of it beyond his paycheck and benefits.
According to Secord (2003), “A mission statement is a succinct statement of the mission
or purpose of an endeavor. It gives clear expression to what is to be achieved, in what manner it
will be achieved and why it is worth achieving” (p. 269). The director’s message is not
congruent with the organization’s stated mission. The mission of a retirement community is to
improve the lives of the seniors that live in the community, but his actions are not helping to
improve their life. He is actually making it worse as they do not want to use the dangerous pool
after the accidents, and those that use it have to worry about hurting themselves.
It has created a negative culture all the way around. The residents are probably feeling as
though they do not really matter, and that the only thing management is interested in is cashing
their increased rent checks. They are probably uncomfortable with the current issues occurring.
The staff is also probably feeling uncomfortable. It seems that talking out about issues will hurt
a person’s career while staying silent is rewarded.
References
Secord, H. (2003). Implementing best practices in human resources management. Toronto: CCH
Canadian.
Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2010). Managing business ethics (5th ed.). Hoboken, N.J.:
Wiley.