Unethical Practice in Google's Partnership with Chinese Government

Running head: UNETHICAL PRACTICE
UNETHICAL PRACTICE
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Introduction:
The aim of this report is to discuss the importance of ethical practices important for
the business success. This report will be discussing the incident initiated by Google in China.
Ethics is important for business because gives the business organisation power and support of
the stakeholders to work any part of the world. Previously the company had stopped working
in China due to the same reason when the government started to hack and crack down the
free speech. Now the company has been partnering with the Chinese government and worked
on building a search engine. This search engine known as Dragonfly has been designed for
hiding the search result which the authoritarian government of China wants to suppress.
However, this is not known to the employees working in china hence they have expressed
their dissatisfaction against the policies of the company. This report will discuss the ethical
issue of this chosen case, ethical theories matching with the case, Kline’s criteria why
stakeholders to should take responsibility and critical solution.
Ethical issues in case study:
It has been pointed out in the case study that Google has been using a spying tool for
the Chinese government and the employees do not have any idea about this secret and
censored search engine for this country. In this regard more than 14000 Google employees
had demanded answer for this unethical practice initiated by the Global renowned company
Google and expressed their concern that it has been violating its ethical principles especially
its motto ‘Don’t be Evil’. This search engine known as Dragonfly has been designed for
hiding the search result which the authoritarian government of China wants to suppress
(Conger and Wakabayashi 2018). The features of this particular search engine can also track
the location of the users and share their search history with the Chinese partner. This partner
of Google in China would have and unilateral access to the data along with the telephone

2UNETHICAL PRACTICE
number. This has created question about the ethical business process by Google among the
employees as well as the international Human Rights groups. The company has not initiated
any official statement to answer the claims of the employees and other stakeholders who have
accused Google for its unethical behaviour (Conger and Wakabayashi 2018). According to
the human rights groups of the world this initiative or unethical practices by Google in China
will complicit in the Chinese government act of repression of freedom speech as well as
human rights in the country.
As a response to this claim by the employees and the Human Rights organisations of
the world the company has not announced anything publicly rather changed the topic by
focusing on their investigation of developing Android through the mobile apps like Google
Translate and Flies go. Without answering the demand of the employees the company has
ordered to delete all the saved copies of that memo accusing the company to actually build
and implement such secret search engine for the Chinese government. These are the reasons
why the employees are accusing Google to lose its moral compass while operating in China.
Previously the company had stopped working in China due to the same reason when the
government started to hack and crack down the free speech. Google had left that large market
of 1.3 billion customers as a gesture of protest however the company has been doing the same
with the customers by partnering with the Government of China without thinking about the
ethical policies and morality is associated with the business.
Two ethical theories:
In the ethical decision making process, two most important ethical theories can be
discussed in this particular case of Google operating in China. These theories include virtue
ethics and deontological ethics. The moral philosophies contrast the individuals and
characters whose decision, actions and behaviour are unusual and unbalanced (Niebauer
2016). The virtue ethics as discussed by Aristotle, revolves round the process of becoming a