Open Editorial: The Ethics of Human Dignity in Business Practices

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This essay delves into the critical intersection of human dignity and business practices, particularly focusing on the ethical implications of informed consent in the digital age. It examines how businesses, exemplified by companies like Google, collect and utilize personal data, raising questions about whether these practices truly uphold human dignity or exploit it for profit. The essay explores the tension between the pursuit of the common good and the potential for businesses to manipulate informed consent, ultimately questioning whether the current approaches adequately protect individual privacy and autonomy. It highlights the concerns of consumers who feel their choices are being influenced by data collection and the need for businesses to balance innovation with ethical responsibility.
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OPEN EDITORIAL
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One of the most important principles of the 9 principles of Catholic social thought is the
maintenance of human dignity. For a large number of the decades, the political consensus in the
different societies of the Western Nations has long held the protection of dignity as the central
character to societal Progress. The business world has also paid importance to the protection of
Human Rights while serving the customers and the nation (Tsesis, 2014). However, there still
remains a question that whether the human dignity and the common good are really the motto of
the organization or they are the pathways of securing information from people required for their
own benefit.
Maintenance of human dignity mainly means respecting the values, beliefs and wishes of
different citizens and not pressing others beliefs on them for making more profit. In simple terms
the rights of human dignity can be defined as the important sense of self respect and self worth
which are possessed by an individual of a particular Nation. Business has often proved to be an
important pathway of force for progress and betterment of different people and their quality of
life (Assenmacher, 2016). Each and every business should have a concern for maintaining the
human dignity by respecting the integrity of different ecosystems, social systems as well as
developing a concern for the well being and development of people who are included and
touched by the business.
However in the present generation, it is seen that the concept of informed consent has been used
in various ways by different companies for making their own profit in their business (Sdki &
Bakkali, 2014). There have been recent debates about the different techniques which are used by
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OPEN EDITORIAL
different organizations to get that information about the people and then utilizing their
information to either develop their business or selling their product or services to such people to
make more profits. Therefore new areas of wits and clever thinking had led many companies to
develop technologies where informed consents are first taken from the consumers and when the
details are provided by the consumers in one area of their requirement, this information is used
by the same business organizations for their own purposes or making future sales to the
customer.
Here lies the main irony when the question arises that whether asking for the informed consent is
really serving its purpose of maintaining human dignity. It is sometimes seen that the customer
does not himself know what he is consenting for as it seems an obvious process or following of
steps to get their products (Allen, 2016). Therefore the business which are destined to provide
the greater benefits for the common good are actually gaining benefits from the financial profit
made by them through the mirage of informed consent.
One of the best examples that can be given is the renowned organization called Google. Over the
years Google has developed Technologies which ask for permission as well as filling up of
different pages of personal information to gain access to a particular page or site. The
information which is taken by Google can be considered as a breach of privacy and
confidentiality because they often use this information to provide us with new suggestions that
help us in refining our searches. However, there lie the questions that “are they not intervening
with the privacy of different people”. There have been complaints from many consumers who
all of a sudden see them being tracked by Google telling them what are the best suggestions for
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them when they find stranded in traffic. There are different apps like the shopping sites which
continuously follow the different searches made by consumers and accordingly send certain
suggestions for them which automatically show that they are following each and every activity of
the consumers on the sites (Mahlaola & vanDyk, 2016).
Two different sets of consumers have been seen. One set of consumers are happy as they get
many suggestions from different organizations regarding their shopping, travelling, buying goods
and different things. While others are quite unhappy with the procedure as they do not want their
own choices as well as different aspects of their personal life to be followed or dictated by
different business organizations (Floridi, 2016). However, from the view of common goods and
human dignity they are still a big question that “are business organizations really helping people
with their Technologies or using the strategy of informed consent in name of human dignity for
their own benefits?”
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References:
Allen, A. L. (2016). Protecting One's Own Privacy in a Big Data Economy. Harv. L. Rev.
F., 130, 71.
Ashenmacher, G. (2016). Indignity: Redefining the Harm Caused by Data Breaches. Wake
Forest L. Rev., 51, 1.
Floridi, L. (2016). On human dignity as a foundation for the right to privacy. Philosophy &
Technology, 29(4), 307-312.
Mahlaola, T. B., & van Dyk, B. (2016). Reasons for Picture Archiving and Communication
System (PACS) data security breaches: Intentional versus non-intentional
breaches. health sa gesondheid, 21, 271-279.
Sadki, S., & El Bakkali, H. (2014, April). Towards controlled-privacy in e-health: A comparative
study. In Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS), 2014 International Conference
on (pp. 674-679). IEEE.
Tsesis, A. (2014). The right to erasure: Privacy, data brokers, and the indefinite retention of
data. Wake Forest L. Rev., 49, 433.
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