Comparative Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Running head: Comparative Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
Comparative Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
Name of the student
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Author note

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Introduction
Ethics play a crucial role in the business world since it impacts on the reputation of any
business. Business ethics is not only limited to ethical behavior and attributes of the employees,
rather it means beyond of that. Ethics in business refer to practicing ethics in entire business
process. Thus the whole essay shedding light on the importance of business ethics analyses a
news article which documented an issue regarding business ethics. In the whole course of the
discussion, the essay begins by summarizing the key arguments made in the article with giving
an overview on the background. The discussion further elaborates on the main ethical issue
focused in the article. The article will be discussed based on the key arguments as to whether an
appropriate ethical decision has been made or not. The analytical part further relates the seven
moral philosophies while aligning with the ethical discussion regarding the chosen article. The
essay concludes by giving a sum up of the whole essay.
Discussion
Outlining and summarizing the arguments made in the article
The article named “Google staff protest against plan for censored Chinese search engine"
documents the ethical issue in Google. The issue which has been highlighted in the article is that
Google, the giant company in the search engine industry, has made a secretive plan of building a
search engine which would comply with Chinese censorship (the Guardian 2018). However, the
employees of the company protesting such unethical practice of the company signed a letter
calling an urgency to review the company’s ethics and transparency.

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As mentioned in the article, Google has left China eight years back protesting the
Chinese censorship and the government limits to freedom of speech. However, the media reports
based on secret sources have claimed that the company has been working on a project called
Dragonfly, a Chinese search engine as secret practice (the Guardian 2018). The article states that
the search engine is being designed in a way that would block a range of websites as well as
some terms such as human rights and religion. The employees expressed their concern fearing
that they had been working unwittingly in the unethical development of a search engine which
will assist the country to suppress the freedom of expression (the Guardian 2018). In this regard
it is important that the great firewall of China is the internet censorship operation in the largest
scale across the whole world. The Chinese internet censorship gives no result for the searches on
Taiwanese or Tibetan independence, sites related to Dalai Lama, Chinese policies, pro-
democracy sites and incidents of military brutality like Tianamen Square massacre.
Discussion of the key ethical issues raised in the article
The major concern raised in the article is that the employees expressed their concern over
the whole idea of the development of a heavily censored version of Google’s search services
which they consider to be unethical since it will assist China in oppressing the freedom of speech
of the people of country (the Guardian 2018). Moreover, the article stated that the employees
claimed to be working on the project unwittingly. The employees of the company signed a joint
letter that calls on the leaders of the company to review its ethics and terms of transparency for
which the company withdrew its services from the country eight years back. The employees also
find it unethical since they had no knowledge about their work and especially the purpose of the
project. Hence, it is right to state that the article had stated two key issues in terms of ethics (the
Guardian 2018). The development of the project called Dragonfly violets the primary principal