Ethical Dilemma: Email Monitoring and Professional IT Practice

This presentation addresses the ethical issues arising from email monitoring in a workplace scenario. The case study involves an ICT technician, Joe, whose organization is secretly monitoring the emails of a negotiating group during pay and condition negotiations. The presentation explores the ethic...Read More

ETHICAL ISSUES OF
EMAIL
MONITORING

INTRODUCTION
 Joe works as the chief ICT technician.
 In the organisation where Joe is working, there is
some ongoing negotiation regarding the pay and the
conditions are being held among the management
and Union. Due to the stalling of the negotiations,
there is being the order the monitoring of the emails
of the negotiator group along with the reporting of
the emails to the senior management for
understanding the conditions of the negotiation
group.
 It is being intended to use the information that has
been gained from the monitoring of the emails for
finalising the negotiations. There is the ethical issue
that it is not ethical to violate the privacy of the
humans and monitor the emails of any individual for
gaining information.

STAKEHOLDERS AND THE
EFFECTS OF ETHICAL ISSUES ON
STAKEHOLDERS The main stakeholders of this issue who could be directly harmed or
impacted are the employees, ICT technician, manager, and staff of
the negotiating group, IT department, the Union members,
supervisor, and the customers.
 The main ideals that plays the significant role in the decision whether
to report this act to the senior management or not is that the
violation of the privacy of any individual is not considered as the
ethical act as there might be information that are sensitive and it
would lead to the severe damage to the individual if the information
is leaked.
 There might be the issue where the information that is gained from
the illegal procuring of the information might be used for damaging
the conditions of the business or worsen the situation of the
individual whose information has been obtained.

EFFECTS OF ETHICAL ISSUES
 . It violates the rights of the privacy of that individual and it could
mean significant legal issues for the individuals.
 The obligation is owed to negotiator groups and the negotiation that
is being done or whatever the result has been gained from the
negotiation is not manipulated or the data might not be manipulated.
 The pay and the conditions negotiations might be manipulated with
the data that has been gained from the monitoring of the emails.
 There might be significance preference provided to some of the
employees and the other employees might not be provide with the
equal salary and it leads to the introduction of the discrimination
among the employees.

BEST SOLUTION
 The best action that could be done is stopping of the monitoring of
the emails of the negotiator group and Joe could report this issue to
the higher authority for making this action stop before it is too late.
 It could prevent withdrawing of the negotiation by the Union that
could affect the organisation severely. The senior management is
required to have the knowledge about the various unethical acts that
are being done in the organisation for effective managing any kind of
legal issues that might rise in the future.
 It is strongly recommended that the monitoring must not be done and
all the information regarding the acts that are being done in the
organisation must be conveyed to the senior management.
 The senior management would have the effective knowledge about
the acts and this issue must be presented to the senior management
with the inclusion of the proof of the act that would make claim
trustworthy.

CONCLUSION
 it could be concluded that monitoring the email of the negotiator group is not
an ethical task and if there are any issue in the future, then the organisation
might face the legal issues that could damage the organisation severely.
 There is the ethical issue that it is not ethical to violate the privacy of the
humans and monitor the emails of any individual for gaining information.
When this issue was pointed out to the management of the company, the
management claimed that all the property on which the negotiation is taking
place is the property of that organisation, and it is not issue to track the
emails and monitor the information that is placed in the emails of the
negotiators.
 The main stakeholders of this issue who could be directly harmed or
impacted are the employees, ICT technician, manager, and staff of the
negotiating group, IT department, the Union members, supervisor, and the
customers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Cohen, I.G., Amarasingham, R., Shah, A., Xie, B. and Lo, B., 2014. The
legal and ethical concerns that arise from using complex predictive
analytics in health care. Health affairs, 33(7), pp.1139-1147.
 Connelly, L.M., 2014. Ethical considerations in research
studies. Medsurg Nursing, 23(1), pp.54-56.
 Harriss, D.J., MacSween, A. and Atkinson, G., 2017. Standards for
ethics in sport and exercise science research: 2018
update. International journal of sports medicine, 38(14), pp.1126-
1131.
 Kitchin, R., 2016. The ethics of smart cities and urban
science. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A:
Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 374(2083),
p.20160115.