BUSINESS ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 2
Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
It is apparent that Tony is in a critical ethical dilemma, and his scenario can be analysed
from three perspectives: Virtue Ethics, Duty Ethics and Utilitarianism.
Virtue Ethics calls for observance of morals in line with virtuous behaviour (Mackey &
Sisodia, 2014). Tony lacks virtue ethics because he has infringed the privacy rights of Robert for
accessing his PC without Robert’s knowledge or permission. Besides, Tony has violated the
company’s information technology regulations on privacy. As such, from Virtue of Ethics point
of view, Tony has no grounds to report Robert for gambling because he has not conformed to the
virtuous behaviour. If indeed Tony wants to be seen as virtuous, then while reporting Robert he
should also report that he has violated the company’s information technology regulations on
privacy and that is ready for any discipline or action against him that might be taken by the
company.
Duty Ethics involves evaluating actions using the morals principles, and this ethical
dilemma scenario, Tony was morally wrong. With the moral principles being the main element
of duty ethics, Tony lacks them while accessing Robert’s PC. It would be ethically justifiable for
Tony to fail to present the report the following morning, and give out the reasons why we were
unable to do so. In line with Duty Ethics, Tony will be right to report Robert. It is true he has
violated the company’s regulations, but if he is to observe moral principles, then he should not
hesitate to inform the management about Robert’s violation of the company policies.
From utilitarianism perspective, Tony is justified to access Robert PC to acquire the
much-needed data. Tony is working on the project, and usually, projects have many
stakeholders. Failure to present the project the following morning will inconvenience a lot of
people. Tony’s justification to violate company rules can be equated to O'Toole & Vogel (2011)

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