Management Capabilities

This document discusses the importance of workplace ethics and handling conflicts, specifically focusing on sexual harassment in the modern business environment. It provides recommendations for leadership and improving personal competencies.

Management Capabilities 1
Contemporary Management Capabilities

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Assess the situation..........................................................................................................................4
Recommendations from the perspective of leadership....................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Workplace ethics has become very much crucial in the modern day business. The conflicts
arising at the workplace need to be properly handled so as to ensure that dissatisfaction does
remains in the minds of people (Hunt,Davidson, Fielden&Hoel, 2010). This is also necessary for
bringing positive environment at the workplace. Sexual Harassments have been one of the
critical issues that company is facing in different parts of the world. In spite of the efforts of the
Human resource management in companies, such incident has been reported in the media.
Generally seniors have been accused for harassing their subordinates and they generally do not
report it at the time when it happens rather when the seniors leave these blames. This is also
because subordinates are in fear that they would lose the job at the same time they also fear about
whether they will be able to launch critical compliant against that senior or not. These reports
generally come out of the media reports. In the lower section of this report, the case of sexual
harassment by a CEO of an organisation when he was COO of another company has been
explained. The recommendation about the key personal competencies leadership has been
accessed. The major aim of the report is to give recommendation about the key personal
competencies from the leadership perspective. The scope of the report is for the board members
as it covers the areas where the CEO needs improvement and do not cover how the new CEO
needs to be hired.

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Assess the situation
It has been assessed by the situation that CEO of the company has just been credibly accused of
sexual harassment by two previous subordinates. However, the case of accuse came from them
separately without knowledge of each other. The role of the social media is huge in the context
of spreading the situation to the large audience in a one go. Similarly, the stories of accusations
are obtaining virality on social media platform. This situation hampered the position and
goodwill of the company in the view of outsiders. The original Sex Discrimination Act did not
entail a definition of sexual harassment and this has been improved through case law. There are
two kinds of definition of sexual harassment after the amendments to the Act in 2005: unwanted
conduct on the labels of someone’s sex and unwanted verbal, physical or non-verbal conduct of a
sexual nature (Duffy, 2017). Sexual harassment can have adverse impact on the individual, not
only in the short term but also long term. The situation depicted that accusation on CEO of the
company bring negative point of the view from current customers of the company. This news has
spread out on social media and everyone is now active on that. It would develop bad situation for
the company because this news can put negative effect on the performance of the current
employees, develop disrespectful environment and higher absenteeism.
There are some theories that would be helpful in assessing the situation in an adequate manner.
The discussion about these theories is mentioned below:
Workplace ethic theory
Ethical theories provide component of the decision making foundation for decision making when
ethics are in play as the role of the theory is huge in representing the view points from which
individuals seek guidance as they make decisions. During assessing the situation, it can be stated

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that the involvement of ethics was not bigger as it provided negative outcome in the form of bad
image of the company. According to the virtue theory, it depicts judges a person by evaluating
their character not by their action that can deviate from his normal behaviour. It considers the
reputation, motivation and morale of the person in to account when rating an unusual and
improper behaviour that is considered unethical(DSOF, n.d.).
Sexual harassment policies
A formal sexual harassment policy can cover behavioural guidelines which should discourage
potential harassers and motivate those who experience sexual harassment to report it. According
to this theory, it can be depicted that zero tolerance perspective towards sexual harassment were
not considered at that time and due to low motivation level, two subordinates were not able to
speak up regarding the situation. According to this policy, there are some employees cannot
adopt zero tolerance approach, for illustration, the respondents in the Armed Services feared that
“too cruel an approach would lead to political correctness and people walking too carefully”.
Same goes to the situation of the sexual harassment as CEO might have been harassed his
subordinates and due to fear subordinates did not discuss about that to others. It has been
assessed that both subordinates accused the same that depicts there was a definitely involvement
of CEO in sexual harassment.
Weick’s theory
The theory asserts that human behaviour is formed and directed by expectations which are
supposed by the individuals and by others. Sensemaking theory is involved under Weick’s theory
that refers the relationship between organizational culture and sexual harassment. According to
this theory, the situation is assessed and found that the organizational culture was not effective

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that allow CEO to get involved in such disgraceful situation (Hunt, Davidson, Fielden & Hoel,
2007).
Recommendations from the perspective of leadership
Analysing the situation, it has been analysed that a leader needs to have team work skills
(Berdahl& Raver, 2011). For building a better team they have trust of the people. It has been
found that current CEO is unable to meet this requirement. It is also recommended that a proper
communication must be appropriate. This will allow employees to report such situations as early
as possible.
The leaders must be able to understand the ethics and must implement the workplace ethics.
They must be able to work under the value defined by the company. They must have a flexible
cognitive mind-set that allows them to understand the things that needs to done and things that
need not to be done while they are working in a team (McDonald,Charlesworth& Graham,
2015). The over-friendly behaviour of the leaders is also to be analysed as it is the major reason
why such incidents occurs. To prevent this company must understand the well-defined standards
of employer liability for sexual harassment. It is recommended that leader must face the charges
against him and provide evidences why it cannot happen (Snyder, Scherer & Fisher, 2012). This
will show his clear intent that he or she is not involved in such activities.
It is also recommended that an internal audit needs to be carried out. Everyone within the
company must be able to speak where they can found if similar incidents has happed in this
company also or not. In this CEO must himself take an initiative where they provide a platform
where such incidents can be reported and he himself be out of this process
(McDonald,Charlesworth& Graham, 2016). This can be done by the skill of Trustworthiness and

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ethics. Following autocratic style of leadership in this situation can be dangerous for the
company (Naveed&Alwani, 2010). The result oriented approach within the company will be
beneficial for coming out of this situation. This is because it will not allow fair processes to
happen. It is also recommended that leader must use his communicational skills to tell everyone
what is the truth as their might be very much negativity within the organisation after they have
listened such situation about their leader. He must be able to use problem solving skills so as to
come out of this situation where he must find different ways in which he can prove himself that
false propaganda has been set against him. Till the time the inquiry is going on he must use his
responsibility taking skill and relieve himself from all the charges. During all this time he must
remain positive and use his skills of spreading positivity so that negative environment at the
workplace does not get developed (Buckner,Hindman, Huelsman& Bergman, 2014).
In this case it is found that current CEO is unable to work on the recommendations. This shows
that he in some or the other way is guilty and hence he must be replaced with new CEO. This is
essential as it might cost the company its image. The change process must start as soon as
possible so as to reduce the impact.
Conclusion
It has been concluded from above discussion that the role of the contemporary management
capabilities is huge in the organization. This paper has made on the critical situation of sexual
harassment in which, it has been found that CEO has been accused by two subordinates. This
news has been spread all around due to social media. The discussion has been made regarding
the scenario by taking consideration of theories. The recommendation part has been made for

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facilitating HR to analyse that the current CEO meets these recommendations, and, if not, the
report will inform the recruitment of the replacement CEO.

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References
Berdahl, J. L., & Raver, J. L. (2011).Sexual harassment. APA handbook of industrial and
organizational psychology, 3, 641-669.
Buckner, G. E., Hindman, H. D., Huelsman, T. J., & Bergman, J. Z. (2014). Managing
workplace sexual harassment: The role of manager training. Employee Responsibilities
and Rights Journal, 26(4), 257-278.
DSOF, (n.d.). Ethical Theories. Retrieved from:
http://www.dsef.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/EthicalTheories.pdf
Duffy, J. (2017). The good writer: Virtue ethics and the teaching of writing. College
English, 79(3), 229-250.
Hunt, C. Davidson, M. Fielden, S. & Hoel, H. (2007). Sexual harassment in the workplace: A
literature review. Retrieved from:
https://research.mbs.ac.uk/equality-diversity/Portals/0/docs/WPS59Sexualharassment.pdf
Hunt, C. M., Davidson, M. J., Fielden, S. L., &Hoel, H. (2010). Reviewing sexual harassment in
the workplace–an intervention model. Personnel Review, 39(5), 655-673.
McDonald, P., Charlesworth, S., & Graham, T. (2015).Developing a framework of effective
prevention and response strategies in workplace sexual harassment. Asia Pacific Journal
of Human Resources, 53(1), 41-58.

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McDonald, P., Charlesworth, S., & Graham, T. (2016). Action or inaction: Bystander
intervention in workplace sexual harassment. The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 27(5), 548-566.
Naveed, A., &Alwani, N. (2010). Sexual harassment at work place: are you safe?. Journal of
Ayub Medical College, 22(3), 222.
Snyder, J. A., Scherer, H. L., & Fisher, B. S. (2012). Social organization and social ties: Their
effects on sexual harassment victimization in the workplace. Work, 42(1), 137-150.