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Case Study: A New Work Ethic

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Case 4.4: “A New Work Ethic” Student: Maria Leiva Instructor: Prof. Chuck Brooks Date: January 29, 2012 Introduction This assignment discusses the case of James Sheehy, who worked undercover in a restaurant and discovered the attitude of the younger generations towards work ethics, especially under the customer service area, which they lacked, and also how they perceived employee theft. The following questions are to help us analyze and maybe even understand where business in America is heading, especially with a capitalist society. 1. Describe how typical the attitudes that Sheehy reports appear to be in work environments you have experienced. The attitude described by James Sheehy unfortunately is not …show more content…

However our reality shows a decline in the commitment people have towards their jobs for many reasons, the one I believe is the most important is the focus on the Short Term, explained by Shaw (2010, p.154), which tends to make workers “unimaginative, inflexible, and ultimately uncompetitive,” thinking of ways on how to make big amounts of money in short time without much effort, by investing, by inventing, by becoming an artist, a sport star, etc. unrealistically thinking they can succeed without much effort. Customer service as we know it, might be changing in a near future, we are getting more used to a self-service mentality and that’s why many young people don’t think is a priority to show devotion on that area. 4. Explain the reasoning behind employee theft. Employee theft is explained by a mix of circumstances that employees experience within our capitalist society. People have profit motive, some employees believe they enjoy certain advantages of working for a specific company, let’s say an employee thinks he or she is entitled to take home office supplies that cost the company a lot of money, only because he knows is within the company’s budget and they feel they aren’t compensated well enough so they can supplement their salaries by stealing. Also most employees that steal do it because they believe they can get away with it, or they have seen other employees doing it without having any consequences, therefore it’s a spread feeling among co-workers

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