Ethical issues

• Alecia Swasy wrote an article in Wall street Journal about some problems in the company

• The disclosures had entailed serious breaches of security, like the release of the company's capital spending figures.

• The management was sure that this could not have been possible without somebody in the company leaking information. The company has the right to get loyalty from employees

• Company ahs the right to know who has leaked it

• Ohio law prohibits employees from disclosing confidential information about their company.

• So when an internal inquiry failed to uncover the sources of The Journal's information, Procter & Gamble turned to the police, who obtained subpoenas allowing them to check for calls to the newspaper's office in Pittsburgh and to the Pittsburgh home of Alecia Swasy, the reporter who had written the articles.

• Law-enforcement officials in Ohio have searched the records of every telephone user in southwestern Ohio to determine who, if anyone, called a Wall Street Journal reporter to provide information that Proctor & Gamble said was confidential and protected by state law.

• More than 800,000 phone records were subpoenaed.

• The investigation was headed by a Cincinnati police officer who is also a P.& G. employee.

• The sources have not been found, and the company has said it wants the entire matter dropped.

• But in the weeks since disclosure of the telephone search, the company has been a target of intense criticism by civil libertarians.

Later…..

• Its chairman says the Procter & Gamble Company, this city's leading employer, made an embarrassing error in judgment three months ago when it got the local police to trace hundreds of thousands of telephone calls in an effort to identify a reporter's sources.

The problems

• Freedom of individuals

• Privacy

• Rights

• Rights of the journalist

• In order to identify the elak, others cannot be treated as means

• After all it was not a trade secret or a formula (coco cola)

Privacy

• Organizations collect data for effective management of men

• What personal data is actually required?

• How will such data be obtained?

• Under what circumstances such data be released or used?

Using data

• Personal information as an input to managerial decisions regarding:

1. Hiring

2. Work assignment

3. Compensation and benefits

4. Promotions

5. termination

Using data

• Release of this data to external organizations

• Selling them to marketing firms

Importance of privacy

• Privacy is an instrumental value

• Different societies – different concepts of privacy

• Different situations and circumstances – different degrees of resepct for privacy – war, revolution etc.

• Essential for personal growth, creativity and rogress

Importance of privacy

• Allows us to accept help from trusted friends without exposing to the public

• Allows thinkers to experiment with unorthodox ideas without exposing

• Threat to privacy is threat to our very integrity as persons.

Non-intrusion theory

• Being let alone

• Being free from intrusion

• Confuses condition (content) of privacy with right to privacy

• Confuse privacy with liberty (being let alone)

Seclusion theory

• Being alone• Voluntary and

temporary withdrawal of a person form the general society through physical means in a state of solitude

• Different from liberty

• Confuse privacy with solitude

• More alone – more privacy one has

• Robinson Cruse

Control theory

• Nor secrecy

• Control over information about oneself

• An aspect of liberty

• Some information that I may share within a close circle of individuals, but not with all

• A necessary context of relationships – love, friendship and trust

Control theory

• Autonomy of individuals• Separates privacy from

both liberty and solitude• Recognizes the aspect of

choice – to grant as well as deny individuals access to infom about oneself

• One is never able to have complete control over every piece of information about oneself

• It suggests that one could reveal every bit of information about oneself to others and yet retain personal privacy

• Confuse privacy with autonomy

Limitation theory

• Privacy consists of the condition of having access to information about oneself limited or restricted in certain contexts

• Recognizes the importance of setting contexts or zones of privacy

• Underestimate the role of control or choice

• Tends to suggest that to the extent that access to information about a person is limited, the more privacy that person has. Here privacy is confused with secrecy

Combined theory

• Control/restricted access theory

• An individual has privacy in a STUATION if in that particular situation the individual is protected from intrusion, interference and information access from others.

Responsibility

FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

• Freedom and determinism – Freedom of choice• No freedom – no ethics• Determinism • External environment – Super Ego, Society• Human nature – hedonism, Thomas Hobes etc.• Other human beings – Will to Power (Neitzsche),

Survival of the fittest.

What is freedom?

• Non interference Negative

• Capability to act willinglyPositive

• Capability to choose consciously Action – Choice

Non-interference

• Alienation

• Absence of moral obligation

• Free from circumstances – logically and practically impossible

• Free to do anything – not possible as there will be limitations

• Our subjective choice

Act willingly - Choose consciously

• Refer to an ability

• Autonomy – not subjectivity

Choose autonomously- act willingly

• Employ reason

• To analyse circumstances

• To understand the potentials of a given situations

• Not proclaiming ultimate freedom from all external authority

The two constituents of Free Choice

• What we choose to do is not merely determined by external pressure and conditioning

• Situational – choices take place here and there– Understand possibilities– Evaluate– Understand the potentials of a given situation

Responsibility - organizational context

Avoid harming

• Pollution control• Consumer care• Working conditions

Contributory

• Improve quality• Respond positively

towards social needs Eg. Merck & Co

• Participation in social construction

Case of chemical leakage

• Gopal is a Supervisor of a Chemical Co. One day he gets a message from another department.: Check for open caustic valves. Supply tank is empty. Pump still running.

• Hence, either there is a leak or a valve is open.• Gopal found that a valve is open in his

department. • Cleaning is costly• The lead operator – Jairaj – forgot to close it. • Who is responsible?

Case of chemical leakage

• Gopal was confused. • He remembers that when he joined the

department, Jairaj took him around to show how the distribution system works. He observed that while the acid distribution piping has spring –loaded valves that automatically close when not in use, the caustic valves have to be manually operated.

Malpractice model

• A1.: Gopal was a disciplined professional. Does everything belong within his purview?

• A1.: But Gopal conforms to the standard operating procedures of his profession. Spring-loaded valves are costly. Moreover Jairaj’s job is to take care of such things.

• A2.: But he noticed that the caustic valves do not have spring –loaded valves and have to be manually operated. He could have got them changed.

• A2.: This is a very narrow view. It is minimalist and legalistic. This is the result of a view of responsibility which links the latter with blame. It looks for the person who has done it in order to blame him. It is based on the deterrent view of punishment.

Reasonable care model

• Gopal feels that he is also responsible.• Though I am not expected to go around

and check all the valves, I could have prevented it from happening.

• There may be a standard of reasonableness as seen by a normal, prudent non-professional that is more demanding than the mere minimalist professional standard.

Reasonable care model

• Explores what virtues or qualities of character professionals should have. Positive view

• What ought to be done without necessarily blaming or faulting. No focus on fault or blame

• No link between responsibility and blame. Responsibility is a virtue

• Other-regarding Intrinsically motivational

• Binds persons together. Focus on common good

Impediments to responsibility

Self Interest• Failure to see beyond

our horizon. • Failure to see the

larger picture.• .

Self Deception• Do unto others as you

would have others do unto you.

• Confront yourselves honestly and ask if you would approve of others treating as in the same way as we treat them

Rationalization• Eerybody does it.

So you have to do it in order to survive.

• In the name of ideology.

Weakness of Will• No courage• Give way to

temptation

Ego-Centric Thinking• Not egoistic –

Limited perspective• A special form of

ignorance – inability to understand things rom other perspectives.

Ignorance• Of vital information. An

engineer does not know the potential danger of a design.

Microscopic Vision• Seing only ne aspect• Overimportance to one

aspect.