Question

In organizations today, employees often take advantage of their company’s information systems. Email abuse is increasing, and so is the amount of time employees spend surfing the Internet on company time. Indeed, statistics suggest that approximately 70% of the total amount of time spent surfing the Internet is company time.

1.Explore and Evaluate the ethics of using IT for personal uses at work. Should employees have some rights to use these resources?

2.When does their behavior become unethical? Some companies keep track of the way their employees use IT and the Internet. Is it ethical for managers to read employees’ private email or to record the sites that employees visit online?

Answer 1

1. For what I believe is that every thing when you used in an obsessive manner becomes unethical. Same is the case with the information systems and the internet. If the internet is being used in a balanced manner where you are only browsing and doing the work related search and browsing, the providance of internet is fine. Otherwise, if the limit exceeds for the usage of the same resource, it becomes unethical and can effect the workplace culture and productivity. The ethics regarding the usage of this Information Technology are: how one effectively communicates using the intenet, respecting the authorisation and privacy concerns of the organisations, not revealing important and restricted data on the social media, focus should be more on work rather than private use, keeping work data and private data different from each other.  Thus, employees should have the right to exercise these resources if they use the resources optimally and within limits.

2. All of the things and points mention above become unethical when an employee doesn't take care about the ethical considerations of how to effectively use the IT for. The hours he/she spent for private browsing is more for than work hours, sharing authorised and important stuff on social media, and revealing important data and thus affectiving the culture and productivity are the unethical aspects for the same usage. I believe that An employer doesn't have a right to see the personal mails of the employee but do have the right and access to all the resources especially used in the organisation and the reasons why the productivity is getting affected. This is the major reason why now all organisations have an intranet installed in all resources and computers in the firm to have a check who is doing what work. No personal mails or browsing is permitted on such computer system or the employee would be fined for that. One should always keep the personal and his official data apart. And when being in the organisation, should follow the norms and rules to have your concentration on work.