Sexual Harassment in a Workplace Organization Essay

Personal incident that I witnessed at work was a case of sexual harassment on the part of one employee towards another. The behavior was ethically questionable at best and the incident was in line with ethical issues regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. This paper will describe the incident, define the ethical issues inherent in the incident, and discuss the ethical principles associated with the behavior.



I was working in a library when I witnessed a male employee sexually harass a female employee in the library's stacks. He was commenting on her choice of a top and telling her lewdly that he could see part of her anatomy through the top. He was not doing this in a sensitive manner but rather in a suggestive manner and even in a hostile way that I found to be aggressive. It was obvious that he was hurting the feelings of the girl and making her feel bad by his comments. She even told him to stop and he persisted, continuing his remarks about her body. After a while, she did not seem to know how to respond, as repeated requests for him to stop made no impression on him and he continued his harassment of her. So she ignored him, and when the male employee walked away, I told the female employee that I would support her if she wanted to report the incident as sexual harassment, as I witnessed it and heard the exchange. My co-worker thanked me and said she did not know what she would do, whether she would report it or not. I did not feel comfortable with the situation as it was and reported to my manager my own feelings on the matter, as I was unsure of what I should do -- whether it was my co-worker's place to report the incident or whether I had a responsibility to report it as I had witnessed it. My manager, for her part, was also unsure of what policy to follow and seemed to indicate that she did not want to have to deal with any such situation at all unless the worker who was harassed actually came forward and made a statement. While I could understand this position, it did not feel completely ethical to me.



Having become aware of ethical principles in this class, I now know why my manager's position did not feel completely ethical. From the perspective of stakeholder theory, I had a right and responsibility to report what I saw as sexual harassment, even though I was not the party harassed. Because I was a worker in the organization, I was impacted at least indirectly by the harassment and could see how such behavior, if tolerated, could lead to a decline in morale and a feeling of hostility and instability in the workplace. As a worker there, I could report the incident based…