Business Ethics For Hospitality In Voluntourism

Organizations Facing Ethical Dilemma When using Volunteers

Discuss about the Business Ethics for Hospitality for Voluntourism.

Voluntourism means volunteering one’s time, capability and energy with an organization, problem or cause to help make a difference in troubled communities around the world as a part of your vacation package. In last few years, voluntourism has become a new way of travelling which is slowly becoming extremely popular around the world (Germann, 2015). However, with growing popularity, the concept has also faced several criticisms. One of such criticism is ethical concerns in voluntourism that have been raised over the past quarter century. This issue mostly includes problems related to power dynamics involved, sensible collision of the work and the encouragement of the impact of the perspectives of those involved. On the other hand, both the organizations that are utilizing volunteers and participants working as volunteers face different types of ethical dilemmas (McLennan, 2014). This essay will focus on those ethical dilemmas faced by the organizations and the volunteers, in terms of voluntourism.

Ethics is the method by which values and principles are altered into action. Ethical values deliver the resolution maker with a means of shaping what is right versus what is wrong. The field of volunteer management, just like other professional fields, has formed a number of its own codes of ethical performance. For example, in the United States of America, the Association for Volunteer Administration (2006) has advised some core ethical values for the people who are responsible for directing and motivating volunteers. In Canada, the British Columbia Hospice Palliative Care Association (2007) has established a standard for ethical attitude of volunteers in hospice programs. All of these ethical principles are providing admirable and proper standards of actions (Stone & Olson, 2016). Therefore, ethical dilemma for the organizations utilizing volunteers does not occur while stating ethical principles, but occur while practically applying them.

For organizations that are using volunteers, ethical dilemmas can arise in a variety of ways such as,

• Dissimilar ethical values that are held by several parties who are involved in the same condition
• Conflicts exist among the ethical values held by each volunteer
• Grey areas of explanation subsist within ethical principles

Some examples of such difficulties are hereby mentioned below.

Relationship between client and volunteers: Boundary issue faced by the organizations in volunteer programs arises from the good relationship that a volunteer establishes with the clients. When these relationships work well, then volunteers offer to do more for the client than in stated in the assignment description of the volunteer. This can include personal services such as shopping, repair works and cleaning services (Trau, 2015). In this situation, the ethical dilemma for the organization or volunteer service manager is to decide whether the volunteer program has the right to intrude in personal activities of the volunteer or not. The questions arises “does the volunteer program have the right or obligation to say the volunteer that such activities are not permitted?” On the other hand, if the volunteer is told to carry out only those responsibilities stated in the assignment description, then client might feel offended.

Ethical Dilemma of Participants as Volunteers

Relationship between staff and volunteers: Another ethical dilemma that the organizations face is whether they stay loyal with the paid employees or to the volunteers. Besides, another ethical issue arises while setting up working time limit for the volunteers. Volunteers mostly undertake a number of different roles (Nelson, 2017). They also offer their services over a number of days that allows them to become more skilled and flexible. Therefore, organizations will like to have them working for the projects as much as possible. Here the question arises “how many hours are too many for a volunteer?” An organization might want to use its volunteers for 6 hours a day. However, the same volunteers might want to work for 4 hours only.

Disagreement with the volunteer: It I obvious that volunteers will become more experienced with time and will start to develop more options about how clients must be treated. Therefore, they might decide to resolve the issues of the clients based on their own experience and by neglecting the guidance of the organization (Rodell et al., 2016). They will even provide suggestions for alternative arrangements to fulfill a particular duty.

The investigation of ethical dilemmas around the participation of volunteers in organizations includes both Consequentialist and Dentological perspectives. Consequentialism mostly focuses on the results on an individual’s actions where Dentology finds out whether the actions are right or wrong. An organization will always think about the consequences of the actions taken by the volunteers (Forbes & Zampelli, 2014). However, volunteers will be more concerned about whether an action taken was the right thing to do in the circumstances. In this context, some major ethical issues faced by the volunteers are hereby mentioned below.

• Volunteers feel confused about their roles and boundaries as the actions they should take in a situation might not be supported by their organizations.
• They work in the space between the patient and the organization. Therefore, they are expected to balance the demands of both the parties which are a difficult thing to do (Song et al., 2015). In some situations they are forced to select either the requirement of the patient or the rules of the organization.
• Volunteers most the times face ethical dilemmas while deciding whether their loyalty is with the patient or with the organization they are working with.
• Volunteers always have better information about a patient and his family situation than the organization. Therefore, they understand what actions must be taken. Sometimes those actions go beyond the rules and regulations of the company (Stukas et al., 2016). In this situation, the volunteers face ethical dilemmas as they cannot decide whether they should take actions as per their experience or as per rules and regulations of the organization.
• Most of the volunteers face ethical issues if their capabilities and experiences are not recognized or valued by the organization.
• They also face ethical problems if their personal ethics, beliefs and values are not respected by the other staff members.

Volunteers in voluntourism also face some other ethical dilemmas which are hereby mentioned below.

Privacy of patient information: In voluntourism, each volunteer program has its own rules and regulations related to confidentiality of client information. Volunteers most of the times follow these rules and regulations. However, in the case of small communities where external personal relationships are all-pervasive, following these rules is very difficult (Schwarz, 2016). Volunteers who are given the responsibility to assist personal clients will be asked by their friends and neighbors (also the friends and neighbors of the patient) about the condition of the patient. In this situation, the volunteers face ethical dilemma as they want to follow organizational assessment of fortification of the privacy of the patients and want to fulfill the societal value of sharing information about members of the community.

Conclusion

Loyalty to the client versus the volunteer program: High level of volunteer motivation can facilitate strange behavior and attitude by the volunteers. This strange behavior moistly related to loyalty towards the patient versus the organization or volunteer program (Smith, 2015). In volunteer programs, policies are always mentioned to guide a volunteer through his activities. While providing his assistance, a volunteer, most of the times face an ethical dilemma about whether they must fulfill the interests of the clients or the interests of the volunteer program. This conflict can come into a number of ways such as,

• It is possible that a client has expressed a wish for support that is not within the limitations of tolerable service as distinct in the volunteer program. However, in this situation, the volunteer wants to help the patient.
• Volunteer program includes rules and regulations that allow a volunteer to report abusive behavior by the client. However, most of the times, volunteers ignore to report such behaviors out of affection for the client (Forbes & Zampelli, 2014). This can create problems for the next volunteer who will support the same patient when the first volunteer will leave.
• Volunteers also face an ethical dilemma while determining whether they have greater loyalty to the client or to the family members of the client when wishes of these parties conflict with each other.

Conclusion

In the end, it can be concluded that there are several ethical dilemmas that trouble both the organizations and volunteers in different ways. These ethical problems must be addressed properly. If these ethical problems are ignored, it will negatively affect the clients and their care. In most of the situation, it is seen that volunteers are going beyond their limitations but only to provide better services to the clients. Therefore, while making rules and regulations related to voluntourism, the organizations will have to consider these incidents. If the managers of volunteer program are facing ethical dilemmas about the volunteers, then they must directly communicate with the volunteers to find out a proper solution. Organizations can openly explore, address and respect differences between their thinking and the thinking of volunteers which will boost the experiences of the clients.

References

Forbes, K. F., & Zampelli, E. M. (2014). Volunteerism: The influences of social, religious, and human capital. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(2), 227-253.

Germann Molz, J. (2015). Giving back, doing good, feeling global: The affective flows of family voluntourism. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 0891241615610382.

McLennan, S., 2014. Medical voluntourism in Honduras:‘Helping’the poor?. Progress in Development Studies, 14(2), pp.163-179.

Nelson, R. L. (2017). The limits of cosmopolitanism: exchanges of knowledge in a Guatemalan volunteer programme. Tourism Recreation Research, 1-10.

Rodell, J. B., Breitsohl, H., Schröder, M., & Keating, D. J. (2016). Employee volunteering: A review and framework for future research. Journal of Management, 42(1), 55-84.

Schwarz, K. (2016). “It’s not voluntourism”: unpacking young people’s narrative claims to authenticity and differentiation in the international volunteer experience (Doctoral dissertation, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge).

Smith, M. (2015). The Cost of Volunteering: Consequences of Voluntourism.

Song, X., Nie, L., Zhang, L., Akbari, M., & Chua, T. S. (2015, August). Multiple social network learning and its application in volunteerism tendency prediction. In Proceedings of the 38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 213-222). ACM.

Stone, G. S., & Olson, K. R. (2016). The ethics of medical volunteerism. Medical Clinics of North America, 100(2), 237-246.

Stukas, A. A., Snyder, M., & Clary, E. G. (2016). Understanding and encouraging volunteerism and community involvement.

Trau, A.M., 2015. Challenges and dilemmas of international development volunteering: a case study from Vanuatu. Development in Practice, 25(1), pp.29-41.

Young, R. (2016). Tie Up the Lion: An Insight Into Voluntourism. BookBaby.