University Assignment: Professional Ethics of Wearable Technologies

This report examines the ethical issues arising from the use of wearable technologies, such as smartwatches and Google Glass, in the workplace. It identifies key ethical concerns, including conflicts of interest, honesty, and integrity, which can arise from employees using these devices. The report analyzes how these issues manifest, particularly regarding data security and privacy, as well as the potential for misuse of company information. The analysis includes discussions on the risks associated with employees sharing data, and the potential for loss of privacy. The report concludes with a recommendation for companies to carefully assess the features and capabilities of any technology before allowing its use in the workplace, to mitigate ethical risks and ensure data security.

Running head: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN COMPUTING
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN COMPUTING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The wearable technologies are largely utilised by various people around the globe. The
employees are using these technologies in their place of work. However, the use of these
technologies has created many ethical issues. The report discusses about the ethical concerns
that occur from the utilization of these technologies’. The report provides a discussion about
the identification of the ethical issues that occur. The issues that have been indentified
include conflict of interest, honesty, and integrity. The report provides an analysis and
evaluation of the ethical that arises and the way they arise due to the use of these
technologies. The report concludes by providing a recommendation to the company that they
should check and consider the features of any technology before allowing them inside the
company.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Identification of Issues...............................................................................................................3
Analysis of the Issues.................................................................................................................4
Evaluation of Issues...................................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Ethical issues take place when a decision, activity or scenario that is given develops a
conflict with the moral policies of society. Both the businesses and the individuals can be
involved in all these conflicts as any of their activities can be put to question from a
standpoint of ethics.
This report explores the way various technologies has assisted this world in the
procedure of transformation. However, the negative concept that is related with the
advancement of technologies is raising various ethical problems for the modern companies
and the businesses. There are various inventions of technologies such as the smart watches
and the Google glasses are raising ethical issues in the place of work due to their intrusive
nature. These are the examples of some of the wearable technologies that the workers are
permitted to use in place of work devoid of any limitation. These technologies those are
making the security of the work place susceptible. Workers can utilise these technologies in
the place of work and they can click photos and videos with the assist of these technologies.
The people in the work place can easily share the data with others with the assist of these
technologies. These report focuses on the identification of ethical issues those are potential
and that can arise from utilising wearables at the place of work.
Identification of Issues
Various employees of different companies are utilising wearable technologies at work
and utilising these technologies in order to click pictures and record videos and they cane
easily share these data with other people with the help of these technologies. This situation
indicates that there are two ethical problems those are arising (Moore and Piwek 2017).
These ethical issues include issues of integrity and honesty and conflict of interest.

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Conflict of interest takes place when a person selects an action that encourages their
interest and the personal interest interferes with the interest of the Company.
The problems of integrity and honesty take place if a person works against the
regulations and rules of the organization or doing something without the permission of the
organization (Maltseva 2020).
Analysis of the Issues
The conflict of interest is a familiar problem of ethics those are found to take place in
the place of work. It takes place when a person selects their personal interest rather than the
interest of organization or interest of the Company (Goodyear 2017). It develops a
disagreement of concern and then the employees of the company lean to assure their interest
by ignoring the concern of the Company. Therefore, the ethical issues arise due to the conflict
of interest. In this case, an employee wants to carry some of the data of the company outside
the premises of office can easily utilise the technologies such as Google Glasses and smart
watch. However, this is in opposition to the interest of the Company or the stakeholders of
the company and therefore, the conflict of interest arise (Bowman and West 2019).
The integrity and the honesty issues are another anxiety for most of the companies. It
can be seen that in various cases, the workers fail to uphold the integrity and the honesty to
make sure that their own concern is fulfilled. The code of ethics of the makers of decision is
to act what is wrong and right (Heikkilä et al 2018). This principle says that idea of the
theories of ethics should be to develop something good as individuals get various advantages
from the things those are right. Therefore, anything that goes alongside the good is reason of
raising issues of ethics. For example, in this case, the employees of various companies are
utilising technologies in order to get admittance to the company, share their data, it does not

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assist the company, and it does no good to the company (Bowen et al 2017). Therefore, the
Workers are failing to uphold the integrity and honesty inside Company.
Evaluation of Issues
The disagreement of concern is a cause for the problems those are ethical. People lean
to do something like those are best in order to satisfy their concern and while fulfilling the
personal interest they forget what is good for others. In scenarios, those are ethical, various
conflicts occur when the concern of a person interferes with the Company’s concern
(Michael, Gokyer and Abbas 2017).
In several cases, it can be seen that Companies do not permit workers to use any type
of gadgets and they are threat to the safety of the company. These gadgets include laptop,
mobile phones, or any other technology having the capacity of carrying the data. However,
very few organizations have provided any kind of restrictions on the devices those are
wearables like Google Glass or Smart Watch (Marrington, Kerr and Gammack 2016). This
assignment investigates how the employees of various companies can wear these
technologies and get into the place of work. These devices permit the employees in order to
take a picture and record a video and then share the data with other. Therefore, it is against
the ethics and the integrity of the organization. There are no companies that permit its
employees to share their important data outside the premises of the organization. By
permitting or providing easy admittance to sharing of data, the technologies those are
wearable are raising issues of ethics within the Companies (Mårell-Olsson and Jahnke 2019).
According to the principles of ethics, integrity and the honesty are the guiding
principles of action of ethics. Employees that uphold the integrity and honesty cannot take
action unethically. A worker who is honest always works well for the Company. Therefore,
probability of clash of concern is less.

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Furthermore, the values of ethics have capability to assist individuals with correct making
of decisions. Based on the justice that is provided, the decision makers of the ethical
principles focus on the capability to take reasonable activity for each one those are concerned
in the situation. It also advises that if one action of a person is not right then it can be
considered as an action those are unethical (Gauttier 2019). In this case, the technologies
those are wearable can be utilised by the workers in order to obtain information that belongs
to the company. Therefore, it is creating an ethical issue. There are various other issues other
than the ethical issues regarding the use of wearables in work place.
 Less privacy: Wearables provide new features in order to interact with the customers
consisting of recording of interactions, biometric data and many more. The employees of
the company can be driven by considerations of liability to utilise wearables in order to
track the health of the employees or to interpret harms such as entering dangerous area.
However, these mechanisms of tracking can be useful to the employees but there is lack
of privacy.
 Security of personal information: various wearables have the latent to gather personal
information. The possession and the ethical utilisation of these data are complicated and
growing battles, those are legal (Kapoor et al 2020).
 Data security of corporate: Several wearable devices may collect and keep sensitive data
of a company such as messages, images and emails. Various wearable devices are used in
the place of work on the policy of Bring Your Own Device and the employers are not
conscious of the danger of information that is related with the utilisation of such
wearables.

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Conclusion
The aim of this study is to understand the ethical problems that have occurred from
the utilisation of technologies those are wearables in the place of work. From the above
discussion, it can be inferred that two important ethical problems can be seen in this scenario.
The first is the conflict of interest and the second issue is integrity and honesty. From the
report, an design can be done that the clash of concern in some scenario when a person
selects to take an action what is best for their personal interest and hinder with the concern of
the company. A worker can use wearable technology inside the company. However, it can
compromise the security of data inside the company.
The honesty and the integrity issue is the second problem that arises due to the
utilization of wearable technologies. Various Organizations do not permit the company to get
admittance to important and sensitive information or take the information out of the premises
of the company. However, with the assist of these technologies the workers can take the data
out of the premises of the company. It can be said that it is a violation of rules and regulation
of the company and here the employees do not succeed to keep the integrity and the
truthfulness. In this report, it can be recommended to the organizations to scrutinize and
consider the features and type of any technology before permitting the employees to utilise
the technologies inside the premises of the company or at the place of work. Every Company
should do this in order to minimize the probability of issues of ethics within the organization.
The employees should have proper ethics and they should not utilise the technologies
wrongly that can the organization adversely.

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References
Bowen, J., Hinze, A., Griffiths, C., Kumar, V. and Bainbridge, D., 2017, July. Personal data
collection in the workplace: ethical and technical challenges. In Proceedings of the 31st
British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Conference (p. 57). BCS Learning &
Development Ltd..
Bowman, J.S. and West, J.P., 2019. WEARABLES IN THE WORKPLACE. Human
Resources Management Issues, Challenges and Trends:" Now and Around the Corner",
p.119.
Gauttier, S., 2019, June. Modifying Consent Procedures to Collect Better Data: The Case of
Stress-Monitoring Wearables in the Workplace. In International Conference on Business
Information Systems (pp. 350-360). Springer, Cham.
Goodyear, V.A., 2017. Social media, apps and wearable technologies: navigating ethical
dilemmas and procedures. Qualitative research in sport, exercise and health, 9(3), pp.285-
302.
Heikkilä, P., Honka, A., Mach, S., Schmalfuß, F., Kaasinen, E. and Väänänen, K., 2018,
October. Quantified factory worker-expert evaluation and ethical considerations of wearable
self-tracking devices. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Academic Mindtrek
Conference (pp. 202-211).
Kapoor, V., Singh, R., Reddy, R. and Churi, P., 2020. Privacy Issues in Wearable
Technology: An Intrinsic Review. Available at SSRN 3566918.
Maltseva, K., 2020. Wearables in the workplace: The brave new world of employee
engagement. Business Horizons.

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Mårell-Olsson, E. and Jahnke, I., 2019. Wearable Technology in a Dentistry Study Program:
Potential and Challenges of Smart Glasses for Learning at the Workplace. In Perspectives on
Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL) (pp. 433-451). Springer, Cham.
Marrington, A., Kerr, D. and Gammack, J. eds., 2016. Managing Security Issues and the
Hidden Dangers of Wearable Technologies. IGI Global.
Michael, K., Gokyer, D. and Abbas, S., 2017. Societal Implications of Wearable Technology:
Interpreting “Trialability on the Run”. In Managing Security Issues and the Hidden Dangers
of Wearable Technologies (pp. 238-266). IGI Global.
Moore, P. and Piwek, L., 2017. Regulating wellbeing in the brave new quantified
workplace. Employee Relations.