Ethical Dilemma Analysis: Workplace Discrimination at ANZ Bank

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of an ethical dilemma faced by ANZ Bank, a multinational financial institution. The case revolves around allegations of workplace discrimination and sexual harassment against an employee, highlighting a conflict between the company's stated values of diversity and inclusion and the actions of its management. The report examines the ethical issues, stakeholder perspectives (employees, management, and external agencies), and the application of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) framework to address the situation. It explores the complexities of value conflicts, the challenges faced by the managing director, and the importance of ethical leadership in resolving such dilemmas. The analysis also includes an examination of the GVV framework, which aims to help individuals address and navigate ethical conflicts within an organization. The report concludes by discussing the implications of the case for corporate social responsibility and the need for organizations to prioritize ethical conduct and create a safe and inclusive workplace environment. The report also includes the components of the script process of GVV and the giving voice to values.

Running head: ETHICAL DILEMMA IN BUSINESS
ETHICAL DILEMMA IN BUSINESS
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Scenario development
ANZ bank or the Australian and New Zealand banking group limited is a multinational
company of Australia and is engaged in proving the financial and banking services of the
organization (ANZ, 2019). The organization supports workplace participation and workplace
coordination and therefore carries out other activities in the organization to support the same.
Some of the activities carried out by the organization to ensure proper workplace in the
organization are- workforce with cultural diversity, gender diversity, employee engagement
activities, employee well-being and other similar activities. The company believes that
workplace diversity and participation is important for maintaining proper relationships with the
customers. The company believes in gibing equal opportunities to all the employees of the
organization irrespective of any diversification. The company tries to create an agile workplace
environment by ensuring workforce diversity and participation in the organization and tries to
create a competitive advantages through the same. The company operates on many counties
including- New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Asia pacific an others and therefore supports
workforce diversity in the organization (Ang & Van Dyne, 2015). The organization believes that
human resource is the main resource for achieving the goals of the organization. The company
believes that by having a diverse workforce it can help them in understanding the local needs of
the customers properly. The organization have leaders who are culturally diverse and support the
same in the organization. The company tries to create value for the customers by utilizing the
skills of the diverse workforce (Lambert, 2016). The company tries to support the people and
cultural diversity by giving various facilities such as- equal opportunities to the people,
prohibiting of harassment of any employees and many other forms of protection to the

2ETHICAL DILEMMA IN BUSINESS
employees (Gassman‐Pines, 2015). The company also believes in retaining the diverse
workforce and attract new culturally diverse employees to help the on achieving the objectives of
the business and meet the needs of the people in a better way (Grivastava and Kleiner, 2015).
The main stakeholders of the company include the employees, the customers and other
government agencies. However, the company has recently been facing many issues related to
workplace ethics as many complaints have been filed by the most important stakeholders if the
company-the employees. The employees of the organization and the main stakeholder’s because
they are the ones who help the company to meet the needs of the people through proper
information and through their diverse knowledge and skills.
The main ethical dilemma being faced by the organization related to their workplace is
that of workplace discrimination and the company is going against its own value and beliefs of
retaining and protecting the diverse workforce which is negatively affecting the reputation of the
company in front of its employees (Dhanani, Beus & Joseph, 2018). One of the employee of the
organization who is an African woman is being sexually harassed and also being victimized by
racial discrimination in the organization. The organization facing a value conflict because the
irrespective of the discrimination faced by the employee the organization is taking too much time
to tale nay action against the accused. The company has failed to take any action against the
accused and instead has been embarrassing the employee by asking her intimidating questions
that has made the scenario even worse (Ruggs et al., 2015). Is therefore a value conflict between
the two groups because both view sexual harassment differently. For the female employee a pat
on the back can also be a sexual assault but for the management person it can only be an act that
does not require too much attention. The sales executive who has been accused said that the
allegations against him was baseless and there was no proof for the same (Brouwers et al., 2016).

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The main issues in front of the managing director and other executives is that they are incapable
of understanding the actual scenario and so they asked their lawyer to look after the matter such
that the true facts about the scenario can be known and to find out who was saying the truth
(Gentile, 2015).
The two main stakeholders in this case are the employees and the management. In this
case, the employees protection against any form of discriminations, provision of a workplace
with equally employment opportunities is at stake (Mintz, 2016). On the other hand, the
management are also the stakeholders of the company whose interest is being affected in this
case. The management people have a stake in the company’s reputation and in this case, if the
organization cannot solve the issues of the employees the organizations reputations will be
negatively affected. This is so because the customers and other employees of the organization
will lose their trust ion the company and therefore the company’s productivity and efficiency will
ultimately be affected (Arce & Gentile, 2015). The company therefore needs to solve the issue
such that it can manage the stake if both the stakeholder groups- the employees of the
organization and the management.

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Script
Figure 1: Components of the script process of GVV
Source: (Mintz, 2016)
The main ethical dilemma that is being faced by the ANZ company is that one if its
employees has filed case employees the company because she is saying that she is facing racial
and sexual discrimination at the workplace being an African woman and she has been called a
monkey many times that has been used since many years to show a form of discrimination
(Huang & Paterson, 2017). The high ranking persistently against whom the accusations has been
made said that the employees overreacting and that he has not done any such act (Painter-
Morland & Slegers, 2018). The company is being faced with conflicting values of the two
stakeholders because a person may consider some act as sexually harassing whereas the other
may not and may be considering it casual. The managing director who is the central character is
now being faced with this issue to look into the matter closely and find it all details and therefore

5ETHICAL DILEMMA IN BUSINESS
take correct actions such that either of the stakeholders feel that their interest in the organization
is negatively being affected (Edelman, Luca & Svirsky, 2017). It is the first case in ANZ bank
where some employee has been victimized through workplace discrimination and therefore the
managing director is finding it difficult to any action since he has never been faced with any such
cases before. It is important for him to look into the case and take decision properly as any
wrong decision will have an impact on either the mangers or the employees and the customers.
The employee of the ANZ company has filed a complaint because according to her she
has been facing sexual and racial discrimination since 2016 when she was working for the post
of salesperson in the foreign exchange sales of the company. She has accused the high-ranking
management employee for passing various comments to her and other female employees that
was sexually derogatory. Besides these she was compared to a monkey and said that her skills
was similar to that if a monkey and this term has always been used to represent racial
discrimination (Goering & Wienk 2018). In fact according to Ms. Oyo, when she reported the
top management that the racial and sexual harassment she was facing in her workplace, the top
management had terminated her. This led her to file a lawsuit against the company for the
carrying out wrong practices. According to her, she has been continuously victimized by the
organization through various means and after the lawsuit by her she had been subjected to ill
behavior by many top officials of the company and other forms of discrimination. On the other
hand the lawyer employed by the accused top ranking official proved that the allegations made
against the accused person was without any base and that she overreacted in the scenario by
comparing a similar incident from her life when she was a freshman. According to the lawyer
while taking with Ms. Oyo, she overreacted in all the situations and instead of actually taking
about the facts of the incident, she spoke about the trauma that she went through which made the

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discussion even more difficult. According to the lawyer, Ms. Oyo continuously deviated from the
incident and in fact the lawyer said that for instance if she was asked about the splinter in her
finger se have answers such as the treatment and the trauma she went through and did not talk
about the actual facts of the incident. However, it was found that the lawyer asked many
intimidating questions which was irrelevant and therefore he also deviated from the actual
scenario and was engaged in protecting his client.
There are various is situations in the organization due to which the employees cannot
perform their operation’s properly. The GVV or the giving voice to value technique is used to
help these individuals whereas victimized and are not being able to perform their activities
properly to- identify, clarify, communicate and act on the values that are being affected by the
organization and that is at conflict. This technique of GVV is not used to give any judgmental
statements to the people in the organization about what is right and wrong. This technique helps
a person in arising the issue in front of the organization that is being faced by them, what they
need to do or say in order to make their point heard by the organization and how the existing
system van be changed when necessary (LaMontagne, 2016). The employee Me Oyo has been
able to raise her voice after the incident of racial discrimination and sexual harassment took
place in the organization while she was working as a sales person although she was terminated
from her job for raising her voice and reporting the matter to the management. Even after the
legislation process stated, she was continuously harassed by lawyer of the organization. The
lawyer used various strategies to demean and to embarrass the victim in front of all by asking
various intimidating questions. However, she was supported to raise her voice by the
organizations CEO, Shayne Elliot, whereby he said that the lawyers approach was wrong and is
not acceptable to the company (Deng et al., 2016). He said that the company was unaware of the

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layers strategy to defend the accused and he apologized for the same and agreed to solve the
same. GVV framework is related to the organizational leaders such as well the organization
leaders can help the people to raise their voices and be heard. The leaders apology letter helped
the employee in raising her voice.
Figure 2: Giving voice to values
Source: (Arce & Gentile, 2015)
GVV framework helps in achieving improving the individual’s voice to values by using
the say what, when and how. Many times an individual is scared to raise their voice because if
various reasons in such a situation, this technique can help the organization to solve any forms of
values conflict (Cote & Latham, 2016). This technique helps the leaders of the organization to
build the awareness of the individuals by developing their knowledge related to the same issues.
The management needs to provide proper training and prepare the employees for proper ethical
actions and to raise their voice against any form of actions that are against their values. By

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applying the technique of whom to ask, when and how, the management can help to meet the
expectations of all the stakeholders without harming the interest of any of the groups. For
instance, in this case of ANZ bank where there is conflicting values between the employees and
the management official, the organization can use the technique of asking proper questions from
which stakeholders, when to ask them and how (Moen, 2017). This way the company can get
better details of the case and both the stakeholder’s will feel that they have been heard. The
employees will feel that the management is taking initiative to understand their problems way
half of the problem will be solved and the top management official will also feel that no action
will be taken against him if he can prove his point. The CEO can ask question relevant and
related to the incident from the employee and in a proper way such that she does not feel
embarrassed by the questions. The management can also ask questions to the management
official about the incident and about what proof dies he have to avoid the accusations against him
and similarly the company needs to ask these questions at proper time and place.
The reasons and rationalization in an organization refers to all those barriers that comes
in the way of achieving the individual and organizational objectives. These usually come from
the other employees in an organization when an individual tries to point out any unethical act in
the organization for carrying out the actions. It is sometimes to difficult to raise voice over these
reasons and rationalizations due to various reasons such as being a minority and other reasons.
The reasons and rationalizations used in case of the ANZ bank was that the management tried to
suppress her voice through various practices such as still continuing the discrimination against
her such that he would withdraw the lawsuit. In order to overcome these, the organization should
try to increase the sense of responsibility of the individuals that is of the employees can take up
the responsibility of their acts then such reasoning and rationalization can be overcome. For

9ETHICAL DILEMMA IN BUSINESS
instance in case of the ANZ company, the reason and rationalizations were overcome through
persistent acts of the employee. In order to overcome the rationalization’s such as- everyone is
doing the same and therefore it is considered as a standard practice of the organization, or
because many times the organizations fails to give importance to these activities because of does
not hurt anyone. Many times the management does not take up the responsibility of the act such
as in case of the ANZ bank, the CEO said that he did not know of the lawyer’s strategy to protect
the accused official and therefore considered that it was not his responsibility to look into the
matter. To overcome this, the employee filed a suit against it.

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