Running head: Assignment # 2 Employment-At-Will Doctrine

Employment-At-Will Doctrine
Assignment #2
LEGO 500 Law, Ethics and Corporate Governance
Strayer University Online
Casey Harris-Armstrong
Professor Muhammad

What is Chief Operating Officer (COO)? A Chief Operating Officer (COO) is the corporate executive who oversees ongoing business operations within the company. The COO reports to the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and is usually second-in-command within the company. Alternative titles for the COO include Chief Operations Officer, Operations Director and Director of Operations. Within a company you have varies positions and the operating of those positions dictate the level of respect for the individuals and the guidelines that should be followed.
The At will doctrine for Georgia, shows employers dodged a huge bullet in February due to the Georgia supreme court refusing to create a public policy that exception to the “employment at-will doctrine. According to Eckhardt, created an exception to the at-will doctrine for certain whistleblowers. Ideally, the plaintiffs complained that the centers’ practice of transporting macaque monkeys was a substantial public health risk as the monkeys are infected with highly contagious and virulent herpes B virus, assertion, the plaintiffs argued that, despite the fact that they were at will employees help the public that their terminations violated the public policy in this state to encourage to support the employees to report an unsafe procedure.
Scenarios are given and three of them have been presented to the newly Chief operating officer as such. The first issue was given to the COO as it relates to a post on facebook by an employee bad mouthing the company’s most important customer. Ideally, this is a huge problem to walk into, but the authority has been granted to make the best decision for the company as precise as possible. This situation is dealing with privacy and an unethical situation, that should not be shown from someone that is associated with company. The employee has broken all levels of rules and regulations due to an emotional stance. According to the journal of academic research economics, the employee acted out of personalistic ethics, which is define as the behavior of persons who behave without any pressure form outside, but their own consciences. In other words, the employee didn’t think out what the outcome would entail, he acted out of emotions and didn’t really think about what it would result in at that moment. This would have been resulted in a dismissal from the company and an apology would be rendered to the actually customer that was disrespected.
Another situation that has came up for our newly elected COO, one of the employees has been using the work phone (Blackberry) for his personal business. Well, in the Path Goal Theory simply states that assuming management is responsible for putting goals, clearing procedures to be followed and establishing reward system in which will be practiced when expected performance reached (Greene, 1979; House 1979) Path Goal Theory also emphasizes that employees should be motivated about realizing behaviors to help reach the goals and meet expectations.
With all this being said, there should have been an understanding between two parties to let them know what the rules stated. Of course this is a situation of work conflict and before we should fire someone, there should be an understanding of why this took place. Someone will not just jeopardize there job, if they knew this was something that is not tolerated. Granted, yes, this is a huge disciplinary action, but a meeting will have to be take place before firing someone as a result.
One of the employees has been asked to do mandatory Jury duty, which is a must and can not be ignored. The boss of the individual was told she could not request leave of absence and she refused to sign off on her leave with out pay. The individual would be put down on paper as an absent without permission. According to the Georgia requirements for Jury duty, Jury duty is an essential component of our judicial system and most employers go above and beyond the law when accommodating employees that have been called.
If your employee is summoned for jury duty, this information will help keep you in compliance with state and federal law. Under state law, employers who have not obtained a waiver and who fail to pay an employee serving on a jury may be liable for treble damages and attorneys’ fees. If a juror sues the employer under these circumstances, extreme financial hardship is not permitted as a defense (CBIA Human Resources, 2014).
Under the law this can not allow the employer to release or not pay the employee if they have been called to jury duty. The Employee at-will doctrine will allow the protection of the employee if this was to go to court. The Supreme Court has created the exception to this in protecting the sanctity of the Georgia’s at-will doctrine.
In Conclusion, Human rights thus relate to the individual and put limits on what a state can do to that person. They are independent of the state, so even in a democratic state there cannot be a vote to take away anyone's human rights. Some rights are absolute, such as the right not to be held in slavery. Some are qualified, such as the right to liberty, which permits detention if certain procedures are followed.
Others, mostly social, economic and cultural, require a state to 'strive' to achieve them. The right to healthcare is well-established, encompassing not only the delivery of basic clinical services but also an environment that allows good health to flourish. A right can entail a negative duty, such as not torturing the person, or a positive duty such as providing legal representation during a trial. Only states, not individuals, are subject to international human rights law.

Reference Page

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Solomon, R.C., & Hanson, K.R. (1983). Above the bottom line: An introduction to business ethics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Toor, S.R., & Ofori, G. (2009). Ethical leadership: Examining the relationships with full range leadership model, employee outcomes, and organizational culture. Journal of Business Ethics, 90, 533–547.

Yukl, G. (2002). Leadership in organizations. NJ: Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle
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