PS390 Unit 8 I/O Ethics Paper Example

The Manager Wanted the Names Behind the Comments: A PS390 Unit 8 Ethics Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS390: Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Unit 8 Ethics Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the call center, the manager, the employees and every detail are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Request

In April, our Charlotte customer service center ran its first employee survey in three years. The invitation, which I wrote and the center manager approved, promised that no one would see individual answers and that results would appear only for groups of eight or more. Sixty-two percent of representatives responded. Several open comments were harsh, describing one supervisor as "humiliating" and the schedule system as "designed to make us quit."

A week after I shared the results, the center manager asked me to sort the comments by team and tell him which supervisor's team had written the worst ones. Then he asked whether the survey platform recorded login names. "I'm not going to punish anyone," he said. "I just need to know who's unhappy so I can fix it."

Whose Interests Are at Stake

Lefkowitz (2017) argues that industrial and organizational psychology has always worked in a tension between serving the organization that pays for its services and protecting the individuals whose lives those services affect. The field's values, he contends, include fairness, respect for persons and concern for employee welfare, not only organizational effectiveness, and practitioners face ethical problems precisely when these values conflict.

That tension was exact here. The manager had a legitimate interest in fixing problems. Representatives had a legitimate interest in the promise they were given. The supervisor named in the comments had an interest in fair treatment. And the center had an interest in future surveys that people would answer honestly.

What the Standards Say

The APA ethics code requires psychologists to protect confidential information obtained in their work, to discuss the limits of confidentiality in advance and to avoid deceiving participants (American Psychological Association, 2017). I am not a licensed psychologist, but our survey was designed on principles drawn from that code, and the invitation's promise was explicit. Revealing teams below the reporting threshold or individual identities would break a commitment made to obtain the data.

A survey's honesty is borrowed against its promise of confidentiality, and breaking the promise once spends it for every future survey.

Why It Matters for Future Surveys

Rogelberg and Stanton (2007) reviewed research on organizational survey nonresponse and noted that employees' trust in how their responses will be used affects whether they respond and how candidly. Concern about being identified is one reason people skip surveys or soften their answers. If representatives learned that comments had been traced, the next survey would likely produce fewer responses and safer answers, exactly when the center most needs honest information.

The Supervisor's Side

The comments also raised a fairness problem for the supervisor they described. Anonymous criticism can reflect real mistreatment, a personal conflict or a single bad week, and it gives the person criticized no chance to respond. If the manager acted on the comments alone, the supervisor would face consequences based on evidence that could not be examined. Lefkowitz's emphasis on respect for persons applies to supervisors as well as representatives. The fair path was to treat the comments as a signal worth investigating through processes that give everyone a hearing, not as a verdict.

The Small Group Problem

Even without names, small groups can expose individuals. One of our evening teams has only five representatives; reporting its results separately would let anyone who knows the team guess who wrote what, especially from distinctive comments about specific shifts. This is why the invitation set a minimum group of eight, and why I combined the evening teams into a single reporting group. Confidentiality is not only about withholding names; it is about not releasing information from which names can be inferred.

Data I Should Not Have Had

The request also made me check what the survey platform stored. It recorded login names by default, a setting I had not changed. Even though I had not looked at them, holding identifying data contradicted the spirit of our promise and created a risk if anyone else gained access. I turned the setting off for future surveys and asked our IT team to delete the stored identifiers from the April survey, documenting the deletion.

Options

I listed the options before deciding. I could refuse outright, which would protect the promise but leave the manager without help. I could comply, which would break the promise and probably damage trust across the floor. Or I could find ways to give the manager what he needed, a way to fix problems, without identifying anyone.

What I Did

I told the manager that I could not share team-level results for groups under eight or anything that could identify individuals, and explained why, including the effect on future surveys. Then I offered three alternatives. First, I summarized the comment themes across the whole center, which already showed that schedule flexibility and one supervisor's conduct were the two biggest concerns. Second, I suggested that he hold open listening sessions, run by HR rather than supervisors, where representatives could raise concerns voluntarily. Third, because several comments described possible mistreatment by a supervisor, I recommended that HR review that supervisor's team through our normal processes, such as reviewing turnover and complaint records, which did not depend on the survey at all.

The manager was frustrated at first but agreed. He later said the listening sessions told him more than names would have. Two sessions in May drew thirty representatives, who described the schedule problems in detail and suggested a shift-swap board that the center adopted in June. The supervisor review, handled separately and fairly, led to coaching and a change in how that team's schedule requests were handled.

Lessons

The case taught me to anticipate these requests before a survey launches. Future invitations will state not only that responses are confidential but also exactly what managers will and will not receive, and the center manager will sign off on those limits in advance, so that the next request of this kind can be answered by pointing to an agreement rather than starting an argument.

Conclusion

A manager's request for the names behind survey comments set the organization's interest in fixing problems against employees' interest in a promise. Lefkowitz's account of I/O values, the APA code's confidentiality standards and Rogelberg and Stanton's work on survey trust all pointed to keeping the promise, and alternatives gave the manager a way to act without breaking it.

References

American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2002, amended effective June 1, 2010, and January 1, 2017). https://www.apa.org/ethics/code

Lefkowitz, J. (2017). Ethics and values in industrial-organizational psychology (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Rogelberg, S. G., & Stanton, J. M. (2007). Understanding and dealing with organizational survey nonresponse. Organizational Research Methods, 10(2), 195-209. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428106294693