Question

1. Consider the following scenario:  

Suppose you are on the information services team of a large advertising firm. Your team holds a secret meeting to talk about ways to improve productivity. The company president wants to ensure employees are not sending personal e-mails or surfing the web for entertainment at work. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) suggests that employees be informed that their e-mails and web services will be monitored. In truth, the company does not have the resources to do this and will not be doing any monitoring. What should you do in this situation?

Evaluate the scenario by applying each of the following ethical frameworks: (a) rule utilitarianism, (b) rule deontology, (c) act deontology, and (d) social contract theory.

Answer 1

So the rule utilitarianism determines the rightness of the act by using a different approach. This rule actually uses the consequences of the other rule. So, in this scenario also this rule can be applied by analyzing the previous policies to protect the data. So, this framework can significantly helped the organization to restrict the access of personal emails from the workplace machines. Another thing they can do is to block those public mail servers to be accessed from the machine.

The rule deontological theories basically maintain that the good and moral obligation are being linked to some set of objective rules. Here in this scenario, also the same rule can be implemented by setting up a set of guidelines that are mandatory for the employees to follow when using the workplace machine.

Act deontology is the theory by which they argue the humans which have a special intuition by which the rule perceive the obligations. Most of the moral actions are unique and then calls for the unique ethical decision. It is the responsibility of the organization to create ethical norms that might fit in the circumstance or the situation.

The social contract theory basically states that people live together in society in accordance with the agreement which establishing the political view of behavior. The social contact theory can also help the organization to set up the desired goal which they are looking for.