Levels Of Personal Moral Development And The Classical Concept Of Management
Laurence Kohlberg’s three levels of personal moral development exist as a way to examine how people’s moral reasoning can change over the course of their lives. He classifies them into three distinct levels. The first one is preconventional, where people follow rules simply because they are put in place. If I were the manager of a local gym, I would use this level as a way of expecting all my employees to obey the basic rules of the gym, such as not using their cell phones while working or training, and I would expect my customers to constantly wipe down the workout machines after use.
The next level is conventional, where it’s not so much about avoiding punishment, but rather following rules based on the expectations of others. My managing philosophy at the gym, in terms of conventional thinking, would be team-oriented and results-driven, which involves expecting my employees to clean up and follow their employee code of conduct in order to boost the business’s reputation through the eyes of other people.
Finally, the third level of moral development is postconventional, where people tend to lead based on their own values and beliefs. Those who make it to this level “follow these internalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with laws and rules”. Referring again to my local gym, I would be a postconventional manager by implementing a utilitarian approach, meaning I would act in a way that would produce the greatest good for the most amount of people. For example, if I noticed an employee doing something he shouldn’t be doing, I would use my moral judgment to discipline him and warn him that if he continues to act that way, there would be more severe consequences to follow, such as a possible firing.
The classical viewpoint of management is the theory that allows businesses to work more efficiently. It is important because it emphasizes the assumption that people are rational and that each worker should focus on a specific task to increase productivity in the workplace. A common example of a company that utilizes classical management is McDonald’s. If someone were to eat at a McDonald’s in New York, Texas, or California, chances are the food that they eat will likely all taste exactly the same, regardless of where it came from. Why? Due to corporate rules and regulations, each Big Mac must contain a certain amount of cheese, a certain type of sauce, and their patties must be cooked at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. The pattern is clearly consistency, which is stressed in this type of management style. If I was a manager of a scientific laboratory that developed women’s health and beauty products, I would implement Frederick Taylor’s four principles of scientific management in order to ensure that every type of beauty product is produced the same efficient way. As the textbook suggests, I would carefully study each task and all of its components, choose the right workers for the right job, give them proper training, and have them put their skills to the test. Another way I would use the classical viewpoint in the lab is by applying Taylor’s differential rate system, which grants higher pay to those who are most efficient. That way, I know more employees will be incentivized to produce as many health and beauty products as optimally as they can.
According to the textbook, external stakeholders are “people or groups in the organization’s external environment that are affected by it. ” The external environment consists of the task environment — which can range from customers to distributors to mass media — as well as the general environment, which includes six forces: demographic, political-legal, economic, sociocultural, technological, and international. One stakeholder in the task environment for the art gallery I manage would be the customer (those who pay to own and use art paintings). In this example, the customer would be the undocumented immigrant or the homeless because they are buying our art. Another task environment stakeholder would include the distributor, which is essentially a wholesaler willing to transport these art products from the originator (the painter, for instance) to our store to help us sell them to customers. A third stakeholder would be the mass media. Assuming what we do as a business reaches local, state, or even national attention, the news and media will play a huge role in how we communicate our goals to the public.
