University Ethics, Sustainability, and Social Impact Report

This report delves into the crucial areas of ethics, sustainability, and social impact, addressing key questions about law enforcement access to digital information and the protection of private data. It explores the ethical principles relevant to IT, including personal privacy, access rights, and the prevention of harmful actions, while also discussing the importance of closing the digital divide. The report further examines ethical principles in international business and presents two research projects. The first investigates forced labor practices and the role of private economies, while the second focuses on forced labor within the Information, Communication, and Technology sector. Both research projects analyze the methods used, key messages conveyed, and common observations regarding labor rights infringements and unethical business practices. The conclusion summarizes the findings and emphasizes the importance of ethical considerations in various sectors.

Ethics, Sustainability
and Social Impact

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK A...........................................................................................................................................3
1: Should Law Enforceable Agencies be allowed unrestricted access to such complete and
intrusive information on people's lives?......................................................................................3
2 What would be the worst scenario you could personally imagine in regards to unrestricted
access to the digital communications of the general population?................................................3
3 Should we afford data stored in private email accounts as much protection as letters in a
locked desk drawer, that is, stored where law enforcement agencies would otherwise need a
warrant to access and review the documents...............................................................................4
4 Describe which are most relevant to Support each of them with an example in relation to IT.
.....................................................................................................................................................4
5 what are the argument as to why closing the digital divide is important?................................5
TASK B...........................................................................................................................................5
1 Which are the ethical principles relevant to international business. Give example.................5
2 Research Project: 1...................................................................................................................5
3 Research Project: 2...................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Ethics are the moral values which governs the behaviour of a person in their day to day
activities. It is the branch of knowledge which deals with the moral principles. Sustainability
means the ability to maintain certain things. Ethical values should be used in Information
Technology which helps in the development of Information Technology sector as well as
development of society. In international business there are issues related to Ethical Values
because every country determines their own ethical values. The difference of opinion makes the
issues on the international platform.
TASK A
1: Should Law Enforceable Agencies be allowed unrestricted access to such complete and
intrusive information on people's lives?
Law enforcement agencies are those authorities which has the power to enforce the law in
the specified zone. They are separately organised in every legal system to take safety and
security measures in nation (Henninger and et. al., 2017). When these authorities have the power
to access the information of the general public without any restrictions then that will harm the
right to privacy of every individual. It is not safe for the public also because the authority might
use their information in the wrong manner or may be interpret it wrongly. In other words, it can
be saying that the authority should not have a unrestricted access on the information cause that
amounts to the breach of their Privacy. This has a bad impact on the lives of the people because
the people will find the other ways to protect their information, as everyone has some personal
information which they don't want to share with the other fellows (Green and et. al., 2019). The
authority may access to that information which they thought that information will have a impact
on the safety and security of their nation.
2 What would be the worst scenario you could personally imagine in regards to unrestricted
access to the digital communications of the general population?
In this context if every individual has the right to access to information of others without
any restriction than that will harm their privacy. The worst scenario can be everyone will be use
the information in a manner they want. Everyone will access and interpret it the way it will be
useful for them. It will be easy for them to edit the information. This amounts to zero value of
information because that will be treated as the tampered information. The digital communication

means the communication between two people or with a group of people on digital platform.
This amount to demising the value of the information as an evidence before the Court (Diallo
and Lambey-Checchin, 2017). If someone has commented digitally then the aggrieved person
will not be able to sue the accused, as the unrestricted access to the digital communication will
be treated as the tampered information.
3 Should we afford data stored in private email accounts as much protection as letters in a locked
desk drawer, that is, stored where law enforcement agencies would otherwise need a
warrant to access and review the documents.
Private email accounts mean where it has an End to End Encrypted email. This helps the
individual to protect their data. In this no one can able to access the data without the permission
of the authority who has generated it. Lockers Desk Drawer means the physical drawers where
the individuals can save their documents in that drawer and protect them from the lock and key
system. If the data is on digital mode, then it can be easily secured in Private email account but if
the data is in the tangible document then that can be saved in Locked Desk Drawer. Both has a
fear of theft because on digital made the data can be hacked by hackers and in the physical way
that has a threat of theft (Lee, Kim and Kim, 2018). The individual should use double security
measures to protect their data.
4 Describe which are most relevant to Support each of them with an example in relation to IT.
Information Technology sector is used to store, fetch and manipulate the information. It
is the mode of communication. There are some ethical principles which is in Information
Technology and they are as follows: Personal Privacy: It is the significant aspect of IT. The data of every user must be
protected by the service provider. The Privacy includes Hardware as well as on software
because they help the individuals to connect with each other. Access Right: This is the high priority thing, which says that everyone can restrict the
access of unknown users or irrelevant users (Child and et. al., 2018). Harmful Action: The Ethical Value must be there that no one can damage the data of
other and also not to manipulate the stored data. The damages can be like loss of
ownership, damage in hardware, undesirable sustainable impacts of the actions.
 Piracy: It means when someone copy the data without any authority. The principle of
ethics says that every software should be protected from Piracy so that no one can copy

their software, as this amounts to heavy loss to the owner of the software. The cost of the
software is high but pirated software costs low which destroys the market value of the
software.
5 what are the argument as to why closing the digital divide is important?
Digital Divide means the gulf between the one who are ready to use digital platform and
another those are not (Cantele and Zardini, 2018). It is a problem which affects people from all
walks of their journey. Ending this digital divide is very important as this makes the inequality
between the users of internet. This gap should be filled by the operators by providing them easy
access to the services which helps them to fill this gap. The individuals will be beneficial of this,
that will help them in easy access to things, time consuming, lowers the cost and many other
benefits.
TASK B
1 Which are the ethical principles relevant to international business. Give example.
Every business is required to follow the ethical principles for their smooth working. It
helps the business to attain the economic expectation by fulfilling their responsibilities. The
principles in international business are as follows: Honesty: the enterprise must be honest with their working. They must achieve their
targets in a lawful manner (Miller and Engemann, 2019). There must be transparency in
their transaction. Promise-keeping and Trustworthiness: The business enterprise must be on their
commitments. They must fulfil the conditions of the agreement.
 Protect the environment: the company must take all necessary measures to protect the
environment from their waste of product. They must protect the nation also.
And many other principles are there which the organisation has to follow.
2 Research Project: 1
1. What were the research methods and were they sound?
This report was talks about the forced labours victims and private economy enjoys this illegal
profits. Most of the big organisation are working in the Bonded labours (Asrar-ul-Haq and et. al.,
2017). This is the research report the author has used the Secondary Research Method in writing

this article. This method of research is sound because it has many advantages which are as
follows:
 In this the information is Ease to Access. It can be easily access via internet or books
which can be used by the researcher. It can be access worldwide.
 The cost of this research is low (Aramburu and Pescador, 2019). As in this research
the researcher has just to search about the material or content not to getting the
information from the primary platform.
 It helps in clearing the research question and answer. It can be like what the
researcher has to learn. It is important for the company to look into this it helps them
in telling about the competition in market.
 This method is less time consuming as it's research is already done by the primarily
researcher.
 This method is quickly in conduct because the data is already available. As the data is
not taken from the scratch.
2. What are the key messages given in this report?
The key message which is given in this report is the condition of forced labour is 24.9 million of
individuals are engaged in that, by which the organisations use to create more than $15 billion of
money. This is happening more in low cost countries like Bangladesh and Ethiopia. The
researcher has found in a social audit about this forced labour. The forced labours are those
persons who has forced by the employer to work there. They are not willing to do work. This
harms the right of the labours. That report has also mention the situation of the child labour and
also mention about the inequality which they suffered as a labour. They were getting unfair
wages and not access to freedom of speech and expression. Further the report said that they have
to solve this issue by creating the new task forces which helps them in achieving the objective of
the company and helps in economic growth (Andersson and Öhman 2017). This helps in access
the rights of freedom of speech and expression, health and safety and others rights of the labours.
3 Research Project: 2
1. What were the research methods and were they sound?
The researcher has used secondary research method for its research. It is also known as desk
research it just done with the already existing data in their new research. In this method, the
researcher just collaborates different data's in a single report to made the conclusion in a different

manner. This helps them in achieving the objective of the research. This includes already
published reports. This research helps in adding the things into the existing data. All these factors
emphasis the soundness of this research methodology.
2. What are the key messages?
This report has talked about the Forced labour in Information, Communication and Technology.
They mainly talked about the Average Performance in Sector. The organisations are taking the
high performers and take low scorers as the company forces the labour to work hard with less
amount of wages. The employers commit many things but not fulfil the same, this leads to lack
of motivation to the employees and treated like they have to work forcefully. The employees
have no remedial place on the infringement of their rights.
3. Are there any common observations to be made from both reports?
The common observation in both the above reports, these both were talking about the forced
labour in the different organisation. They talked about the situation of the labours and the
infringement of their fundamental rights (Silva and et. al., 2019). The first report has talked
about the bonded labours in the branded clothing industries. The second report was about the
situation in Information Communication and Technology Industry. They both talked about the
illegal profits of the organisations which were generated by them with this illegal activity.

CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be concluded as, Ethics means the moral values of the
business which has a impact on the organisation as a whole. The ethics in Information
Technology sector plays a significant role in the growth of the organisation. This report has also
talked about the impact of ethical value's impact on International business affairs. In that it was
said that the business enterprise must follow the ethical value so that it will be beneficial for the
organisation. The above report talked about the two case studies which were about the situation
of bonded labour in big and branded enterprises. Further it was discussed about the measures
which can be taken by those labours to protect their rights.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Andersson, E. and Öhman, J., 2017. Young people’s conversations about environmental and
sustainability issues in social media. Environmental Education Research. 23(4). pp.465-
485.
Aramburu, I.A. and Pescador, I.G., 2019. The effects of corporate social responsibility on
customer loyalty: The mediating effect of reputation in cooperative banks versus
commercial banks in the Basque country. Journal of Business Ethics. 154(3). pp.701-
719.
Asrar-ul-Haq and et. al., 2017. The relationship between corporate social responsibility, job
satisfaction, and organizational commitment: Case of Pakistani higher
education. Journal of Cleaner Production. 142. pp.2352-2363.
Cantele, S. and Zardini, A., 2018. Is sustainability a competitive advantage for small businesses?
An empirical analysis of possible mediators in the sustainability–financial performance
relationship. Journal of Cleaner Production. 182. pp.166-176.
Child, M. and et. al., 2018. Sustainability guardrails for energy scenarios of the global energy
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Green and et. al., 2019. Impact of JIT, TQM and green supply chain practices on environmental
sustainability. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management.
Henninger and et. al., 2017. Sustainability in fashion: A cradle to upcycle approach. Springer.
Lee, C.K., Kim, J.S. and Kim, J.S., 2018. Impact of a gaming company's CSR on residents'
perceived benefits, quality of life, and support. Tourism Management. 64. pp.281-290.
Miller, H.E. and Engemann, K.J., 2019. Resilience and sustainability in supply chains.
In Revisiting Supply Chain Risk (pp. 251-263). Springer, Cham.
Silva and et. al., 2019. Stakeholder expectations on sustainability performance measurement and
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