Chap 8

Technology Affect Business Ethic

The more integrated a piece of technology becomes into the way we do business, the more the
potential ethical conundrums posed by that technology become apparent. Ethical business practices
need to grow and evolve in step with technology. While new devices and advances may make the day-
to-day operations of running a business easier, they also create challenges that the ethical
businessperson must contend with.

Privacy
Privacy has become a much larger concern in the modern technological age. Business ethicists are still
learning and debating how much privacy people are entitled to in the digital age, as are lawmakers. For
instance, many employers had taken to the practice of requiring potential employees to provide them
with the password to their Facebook pages. This opened up the door to potential privacy issues, not to
mention discriminatory hiring practices. In 2012, a law was passed in California to prohibit this particular
breach of privacy; but in some jurisdictions, the decision whether or not to ask for this information is still
an ethical, rather than a legal matter.
Software
One of the largest impacts technology had on business ethics was felt when peer-to-peer file sharing
came on the scene. People suddenly had a way to obtain software for free, and initially the law
struggled to keep up. Although anti-piracy laws are now firmly in place, businesses looking to cut costs
may still struggle with ethics when it comes to the use of software. Most software has a terms of service
agreement that users are required to agree to, and ethical businesses must adhere to these. For
instance, online services may require that only one employee at a company have access to an online
service, otherwise additional licenses or memberships need to be purchased.
Related Reading: Compliance & Business Ethics

New Standards
Corporate espionage has been a tool employed in the past to try and gain insight into the successes,
failures, research or strategic plans of competitors. In the past, this often involved face-to-face
communication, physical spying, bribery or similar techniques. Technology has hugely widened the
potential for corporate espionage, and ethical companies need to take wider measures to ensure
employees aren't engaging in this type of activity. For every new communications technology that
emerges, such as email or text messaging, a means of intercepting those messages is inevitably
developed and needs to be guarded against. Corporate espionage is only one example of how new
standards for ethical business practices need to be in a constant state of development. Activities that
aren't classified as corporate espionage but which result in the same benefits to a company are also
more and more possible as technology develops. For example, a company could choose to have an
employee surf all the public social media profiles of a competitor in case they have made any mistakes
and revealed any information which should have been kept private. While this might be legal, it may
appear to be unethical.
Monitoring
Technology enables companies to have greater oversight over the ethical practices of their employees.
Some companies include clauses in employment contracts that grant them the authority to monitor the
electronic activity of their staff. By doing do, some ethical violations become readily apparent. However,
this again raises the issue of privacy, and how much of it employees should be entitled to. It is certainly
ethical for managers to try and prevent unlawful or unethical activities on the part of their employees,
but technology continually complicates the question of how that type of oversight can be installed and
enforced. As they develop, new technologies create both ways that ethical violations can be
perpetrated, and ways to monitor or prevent such offenses.
THIN AND THICK
Thin consent If an employee receives formal notification that the company will be monitoring all email
and web activity - either at the time of hire or during employment - and it is made clear in that
notification that his or her continued employment with the company will be dependent on the
employee's agreement to abide by that monitoring, then the employee may be said to have given 'thin'
consent. In other words, there are two options - agree to the monitoring or 'pursue other employment
opportunities'. - Thick consent If employment conditions are at the other end of the scale -i.e. jobs are
plentiful and the employee would have no difficulty in finding another position - then the consent given
to the monitoring policy could be classified as 'thick' since the employee has a realistic alternative if he
or she finds the policy to be unacceptable.