Comparative Business Ethics & Social Responsibility

This essay discusses the ethical issue of privacy breach by Facebook and its impact on decision-making. It explores the process of decision-making in relation to the issue and discusses ethical moral philosophies that can be applied. The essay also suggests possible solutions to mitigate the issue.

COMPARATIVE BUSINESS ETHICS & SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY
Name Anil Adhikari
Student ID EIN3009
College Holmes institute

Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................3
Summary of ethical issue..............................................................................................3
Process of decision-making in relation to the ethical issue..........................................3
Ethical moral philosophies............................................................................................4
Conclusion....................................................................................................................5
Reference list................................................................................................................6
Appendix.......................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
Business ethics refers to the core values, principle, and standard of organizations
that reflect on the behavior of internal stakeholders. The chosen newspaper article
has been published by ABC News, Australia and this paper is demonstrating the
ethical issue regarding maintenance of privacy by the large social media platform,
Facebook. They have admitted that they pay a large amount to the contractors for
transcribing the audio clips of users. This essay is focusing on understanding these
ethical issues and their impact on the decision-making process. Besides, ethical-
moral philosophies relevant to the ethical issue are included in this essay.
Summary of ethical issue
The ethical issue raised in this article is regarding privacy of users. Facebook has
recently admitted that this firm pays contractors for transcribing private messenger
audio clips (Abc.net.au 2019). This can hamper trust of its millions of users and
hamper the reputation of this organization. As opined by Boddy and Dominelli (2017,
p.172), a privacy breach is a serious ethical issue that increases the risk of diluting or
losing security. This act can be categorized as a violation of business ethical
principles. Privacy protection of Facebook users is under question mark because
contractors were not given the context of audio before transcription. However,
Facebook confirms that only those messages were transcribed, which are permitted
by users. Besides, Facebook told that they have masked the audio to maintain the
privacy of users. Moreover, Beke et al. (2018, p.2) argued that assurance of privacy
by a company means protecting serious information about clients or users fairly and
legally. Although, Facebook confirmed that transcription is done through artificial
intelligence but they have not told that what happens to that audience after
transcribing. This is raising a serious ethical issue regarding privacy of user data. In
the article, it is mentioned that other companies such as Google, apple also
transcribed messages of their users. Jamie Winterton, director of strategy at Arizona
State University's Global Security Initiative stated that using human transcribers for
training artificial intelligence is a good process. However, it is impacting on trust of
users as it is hard for user to believe the facts provided by companies. According to
the privacy policies of Facebook, they can use data of customers for making their
products more attractive and flawless. However, it does not mean that they can
transcribe personal audio messages of users. Tim Bajarin, a tech columnist and
president of Creative Strategies, says in this article that if humans act as a part of
analyzing messages then it should be mentioned in privacy policies.
Process of decision-making in relation to the ethical issue
The identified ethical issue of breaching of privacy violates ethical principles and
impacts on trust of users. Individual ethical decision making is made by following
some steps that include establishment of facts that must be collected by reviewing
a situation. As opined by Mai (2016, p.193), it is essential to collect relevant and
adequate evidence about a situation that can help in ethical decision making. The
next step is making a decision about the nature of issues. This means whether is
identified issue is ethical or legal. Identification of options and consequences is
the next step. An individual needs to analyze possible consequences that can occur
due to the identified issue. Other steps are evaluation of the option, choosing the
best option and implementation of decision.
From analyzing the information in the article the facts are established that Facebook
transcribes audio messages of users without proper permission. Moreover, they
have not mentioned this process in these privacy policies that have raised an ethical
issue regarding privacy of data of users. Facebook has paid contractors for
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transcribing the messages that involve both humans and artificial intelligence. Thus,
it can be identified as an ethical issue that has occurred due to improper
communication of Facebook with users.
Possible consequences of this issue are lack of trust among users, impact on
reputation of the organization and legal actions from users. For mitigating this ethical
issue different options can be chosen. These include direct communication of
management with users, changing privacy policies of the firm and communicating
that to users and stopping the process of transcribing immediately (Chell et al. 2016,
p.619).
However, stopping the whole process can impact on trust of customers as it will be
proved that Facebook was hampering privacy of users. On the other hand, it is a
tough act to establish direct communication with all users of this social networking
site. This is because at present Facebook have nearly 2.41 billion of users.
Therefore, it is the best option to change the privacy policy of Facebook and
communicate the change to users. This is because this can help to increase
transparency of the process and details of transcribing can be provided in company
policies (Bender et al. 2017, p.e104). This decision can be implemented by
communicating the changed policy to customers through the medium of facebook.
Moreover, personal messages can be sent to each users' registered email IDs. This
can help to increase the trust of users and probable threats can be eliminated.
Ethical moral philosophies
Ethical moral philosophy refers to the section of philosophy that argues about the
right and wrong. The process to behave ethically is the main concern of ethical moral
philosophies. According to Sabin and Harland (2017, p.55), reviewing of ethical
moral philosophies can help to apply the appropriate philosophy to the consequence
of a specific ethical issue. In case of the selected newspaper article, transcribing
audio clips us the main ethical issue that has been mentioned. This issue has
questioned the ethical standard of Facebook as they may breach the legal aspects of
data protection through this activity. However, if Facebook does not use the data
obtained from those audio clips and maintain confidentiality. They may adhere to
their business ethics. As mentioned by Sidani and Al Ariss (2015, p.847), the
Golden mean philosophy can be considered as a neo-Confucian concept that has
been introduced by Zisi, the grandson of Confucius. This philosophy helps in
selecting a middle ground for choosing the most ethical point of view from two
extreme views. This philosophy can be applied in the consequence of selected
ethical issue. Facebook needs to choose whether they want to expose the extracted
personal information from the audio clips or they will not use the data. On the other
hand, the Golden Rule philosophy of ethics refers to one of the seven sages of
Greece. This philosophy helps people understand that they must love others as they
do for themselves. It means that privacy is As mentioned in this philosophy,
individuals must not harm others and try to be as humane as possible (Fox 2019,
p.131). This philosophy can be applied to the consequence of selected issue.
Facebook authority can suspend human transcribers for protecting its users from an
information breach. They need to focus on their attributes rather than other similar
companies while making decisions regarding transcribing user's audio clips.
Utilitarianism is another ethical principle, which states that actions can be
advocated for achieving betterment of society. This philosophy rejects actions that
cause harm or unhappiness (Barrow 2015, p. 36). This philosophy helps in
maintaining a balance between right and wrong. This theory can be used to change
the privacy policy of Facebook and gain trust from users. Positive actions like open
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communication can be done with users to increase transparency and gain user
loyalty. This theory can guide to solve this ethical issue because it has scope to
move beyond one's interest and provides importance to others interest.
Conclusion
From the entire discussion of this essay, it has been found that ethical issues take
place within a business due to inappropriate decision making. The chosen article
have postulated regarding the ethical issue of transcribing the audio clips of users by
Facebook. This concern can lead to breaching of the legal and ethical guidelines
regarding data protection. This study has included a process of decision-making that
can allow Facebook to solve this ethical issue. Additionally, three ethical moral
philosophies including the Golden Rule, Golden Mean, and Utilitarianism are potent
enough to be applied in consequence of the chosen ethical issue.
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Reference list
Abc.net.au (2019), ‘Facebook admits it paid contractors to transcribe private
Messenger audio clips’, ABC News, 15th August, Viewed 15th September
2019,https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-15/facebook-hired-contractors-to-
transcribe-messenger-audio/11416238
Barrow, R., 2015. Utilitarianism: A contemporary statement. Routledge.
Beke, F.T., Eggers, F. and Verhoef, P.C., 2018. Consumer informational privacy:
Current knowledge and research directions. Foundations and Trends® in Marketing,
11(1), pp.1-71.
Bender, J.L., Cyr, A.B., Arbuckle, L. and Ferris, L.E., 2017. Ethics and privacy
implications of using the internet and social media to recruit participants for health
research: A privacy-by-design framework for online recruitment. Journal of Medical
Internet Research, 19(4), p.e104.
Boddy, J. and Dominelli, L., 2017. Social media and social work: The challenges of a
new ethical space. Australian Social Work, 70(2), pp.172-184.
Chell, E., Spence, L.J., Perrini, F. and Harris, J.D., 2016. Social entrepreneurship
and business ethics: Does social equal ethical?. Journal of business ethics, 133(4),
pp.619-625.
Fox, C.J., 2019. The use of philosophy in administrative ethics. In Handbook of
administrative ethics (pp. 131-156). Routledge.
Mai, J.E., 2016. Big data privacy: The datafication of personal information. The
Information Society, 32(3), pp.192-199.
Sabin, J.E. and Harland, J.C., 2017. Professional ethics for digital age psychiatry:
Boundaries, privacy, and communication. Current psychiatry reports, 19(9), p.55.
Sidani, Y. and Al Ariss, A., 2015. New conceptual foundations for Islamic business
ethics: The contributions of Abu-Hamid Al-Ghazali. Journal of business ethics,
129(4), pp.847-857.
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Appendix
Copy of the article
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