HC2121 Comparative Business Ethics: Google's China Dilemma

This essay explores the ethical issues surrounding Google's decision to develop a censored search engine for China, as reported in The New York Times article "Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China." The essay examines the arguments presented in the article, focusing on the lack of transparency and the potential conflict with human rights. It also analyzes the ethical decision-making processes, applying virtue ethics to evaluate Google's actions. The essay discusses whether Google's decision to re-enter the Chinese market, despite previous concerns about censorship, is ethically justifiable. It also considers the implications for Google's employees and its reputation, concluding with an assessment of how increased transparency and ethical considerations could improve the situation. This essay and other solved assignments are available on Desklib.

Running head: ETHICAL BUSINESS
ETHICAL BUSINESS
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Author's Note:

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This essay will discuss the moral and ethical issues in the current business context which
create problems among the employees regarding their dependability on the organizations. This
easy is completely based on the news published in the New York Times under the name Google
Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China. The authors of this
particular report are Kate Conger and Daisuke Wakabayashi who have pointed out the unethical
business decisions and actions of the global company Google (Conger and Wakabayashi 2018).
This issue is mainly associated with the transparency issue in this international organization. The
authors of this report have identified this issue from the letter of the employees to the CEO of the
company where they have asked for the organization for becoming more transparent to the
employees regarding their operations. The employees need to know I which particular projects
they are working and how these projects will affect their career. This essay will analyze this
article in detail, how this type of issue can be judged and whether this can be supported or not.
this essay will be concluded with the discussion of this unethical issue in the context of moral
philosophy and ethical decision-making processes.
This article is connected to one previous action initiated by Google while operating in
China. The main problems were the government of the country started to censor the activities of
the company which seemed to be unethical for Google. As mentioned by Conger and
Wakabayashi (2018) there were regulations based on which the company had to introduce their
services to the customers and these regulations had imposed censorship on opening certain sites
by the Chinese clients. This is the reason why this company lead the biggest internet market of
the world in 2010. At that point of time, the company gained huge support from the employees
due to following its code of ethics. The position of the company has changed completely in these
eight years. Now the company has initiated to enter the market of China as it has been identified

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as a scope for the companies like Google with a huge customer base. This news was kept secrete
from the employees which has created issues and insecurity among the employees who are
pointing out to the inconsistency in the company and its ethical decisions.
The issue of censorship of the countries that once affected the business of Google, has
molded the strategies and responsibilities of the company. After leaving the country, Google
gained respect from the other companies and their employees as well as the customers for not
being curbed by the autocratic rule of the Chinese government rather chose the way to leave the
market. To the authors of the article Conger and Wakabayashi (2018), the company has
completely changed its strategy and trying to enter the largest internet market of China for
increasing their business. The company has initiated to build a special search engine which will
follow the censorship of the Chinese government. This will filter the search results and eliminate
the sites banned by the government of China. This action of Google has effectively shaken up the
expectation of the employees which they have reflected in the letter. Unethical issues happened
in the global company like Nestle when it was employing forced labor in the branches of
Thailand which hampered its reputation greatly (Hrw.org 2018).
The main problem of the employee of Google is associated with the project Dragon fly
about which the company does not want to open up to public. This is the reason why it has
imposed various regulations about leaking any information about this particular project. To the
employees, this project will be able to restrict information from the citizens of China which is
completely against the human rights laws in which Google will have a prominent part to serve.
The employees who are employed in this particular project, do not possess proper information
about the project itself hence they are urging the company to increase transparency about this
project (Conger and Wakabayashi 2018). Usually the employees of the company get fair chance

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to question the operation of the company and participate in the decision-making process about
the process and product innovation and launching but in this case, they are not having proper
answers even after they are questioning the validity of this project.
As mentioned in the article by Conger and Wakabayashi (2018) in the weekly meetings
of the employees, this ethical question gained importance but the CEO completely denied the
existence of this type of project aiming to enter the market of China. However, to the authors, the
company has clearly taken some initiative to enter the market of China which it once left based
on ethical consideration. According to this new article, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai had
clearly stated one thing that there were some reasons for which the company left the largest
market but with the progress of time it has become necessary for the company to re-entre this
market without thinking about the ethical questions (Conger and Wakabayashi 2018). As the
competition in the global market has increased in these eight long years, the company must
exploit the market of China also. The main reason of leaving the Chinese market was the
continuous censorship of the government on the operation of the company and secondly, the
company found the presence of some Chinese hackers in the market who started to get the Gmail
count of the clients and affecting the corporate structure of the company.
The company has now initiated to enter the market of China to capture the largest
consumer base. The company is not completely unaware of the business in these eight long years
in China. It has launched file manager apps and translation apps in the Chinese market for which
they have employed more than 700 employees (Conger and Wakabayashi 2018). In this recent
business context, all the internet dependent companies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and
Google are trying to the conflict with the government of China and entering the market of the
country with largest population. However, another issue is compelling the company that most of

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the Chinese people of younger generation do not get access to the world outside thus remaining
outside of these company’s target. These companies are becoming non-essential for the internet
users of China giving scope to the local entrepreneurs to garb the national market. This is the
reason why Google has started to establish a research Centre in China which will actually forces
on the artificial intelligence. To Meyers (2014) the main problem is the understanding of the
Chinese government as thy think that the America companies will be capturing their markets and
exploit data from their market to use in other projects which is another reason why the company
has started to end this miscommunication and focused on the reduction of homegrown internet
behemoths of the country.
Among the seven moral philosophies, in case of Google, the virtue ethics will be the best
fitted moral philosophy. It is a part of the normative ethics which is associated with the
organizations and individuals associated with virtues and moralities (Crane and Matten 2016).
This emphasizes the moral duties and consequences of the actions. According to Pearson (2017)
the virtue ethics also supports the fact that the process of helping people in need would be
charitable or benevolent. Under this particular ethical consideration, the persons need to be better
persons to support the others. Virtue ethics discusses the morals of the individuals, enthusiasm
and characters are needed to be analyzed (Schmidt 2016). The people if want their environment
to work properly need to work for good cooperatively. This will give a positive impact on the
environment and culture where they live and work.
The employees of Google are asking for more transparency from the CEO of the
company so that they can know their duties and perform them well. The company on the
contrary has been hiding information from their employees but expecting loyalty from them. As
pointed out by Pearson (2017), it is intentionally observed and unethical work to both their

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customers as well as their employees. The company’s association with the project Dragon fly
has created dissatisfaction in the minds of the employees regarding their job. This is also creating
the feeling that they becoming a part of really immoral or unprincipled to support the censored
search engine for Google. In this regard the virtue ethics have been applied inductively to this
problem as well as draw general conclusion from the specific observation (Kolk 2016). This
mandates the company to share all the available information about the project to understand the
importance of this particular project. The path of ethics will be the best way to make the
employee realize the essentiality for the company to enter the largest market of China so that
they can help the company to overcome any issues regarding the project.
Therefore, it can be concluded that this new article has identified a very important issue
of unethical behavior of Google in operating in the market of China. To this article, the
employees of the company are feeling insecure about their application of their efforts to create a
project for entering the Chinese market by abiding all the conditions of the government. Initially
the company had left the country due to restrictions of the government inn the free operation of
the company inn the market but now with the changing business situation, Google is convinced
to enter the market again. Now the ethical question lies in the fact that the employees do not have
any idea about how and why they are being attached with the project as they do not have
information. This problem has been analyzed under the lens of virtue ethics which can be used to
solve the problem effectively.

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References:
Conger, K. and Wakabayashi, D. 2018. Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored
Search Engine for China. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-
china.html [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].
Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Hill, A., 2017. Just business: Christian ethics for the marketplace. InterVarsity Press.
Hrw.org 2018. [online] Available at:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/23/hidden-chains/rights-abuses-and-forced-labor-thailands-
fishing-industry [Accessed 27 Sep. 2018].
Kolk, A., 2016. The social responsibility of international business: From ethics and the
environment to CSR and sustainable development. Journal of World Business, 51(1), pp.23-34.
Meyers, D.T., 2014. Subjection and subjectivity: Psychoanalytic feminism and moral philosophy.
Routledge.
Pearson, R., 2017. Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice and the
idea of dialogue. In Public relations theory (pp. 111-131). Routledge.
Schmidt, J., 2016. Melancholy and the care of the soul: Religion, moral philosophy and madness
in early modern England. Routledge.
Trevino, L.K. and Nelson, K.A., 2016. Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it
right. John Wiley & Sons.

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Wallace, M. and Sheldon, N., 2015. Business research ethics: Participant observer
perspectives. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(2), pp.267-277.