Is there an Ethical Dilemma?

Describe about the Professional Environment for Busta Bigwig Alice.

After getting a mail from Busta Bigwig, the owner of the ACE, there were certain questions that Sheila should resolve while considering the whole matter again about dismissing Alice from the job and hiring her again. With the legality she also needs to discover whether there is any ethical dilemma that needs to be look closely. The very first thing she does is to look upon the laws governing the situation. She has find out that there are certain laws which could assist her to deal with the issue. The main issue was that whether it was right to fire Alice from the job without looking into the whole matter closely and the program she has to offer. (Relkin, 2006)

Sheila knows that it is legal as Alice was fired formally by issuing employment termination letter. After ensuring the legality, Sheila still feels that there is an ethical dilemma which needs to be addressed. (Shinder, 2005) Ted rejected Alice’s program by regarding it as dangerous due to its validation feature and also terminated her from the job without any valid reason. Both the situation raises an ethical question. Sheila felt that there is something wrong with Alice’s termination.

Sheila prefers to keep quiet about the original entity of Lock-Smith and the termination of Alice when Busta asked her to hire Lock-Smith for ACE. But still the direction is not clear. So she decided to go for more formal guidelines. Does the act consistent with the corporate policy? Sheila find out that corporate policy does not allow for unreasonable termination of any employee and the act violated the ethical code of conduct also. Now the guideline asks does the act violate the Golden Rule. It means, Sheila must ask herself if she would want this to be done to her. Would she want to get terminated without any valid reason and further reviewing of the matter?  Alice has to know the reason of her termination which is violated. Also as a head, it is Sheila’s duty to review the matter closely which was not met. If everyone acted the way like Ted did then it might happen in the future that other employees are also fired without any valid reason.

At this point, it is clear to Sheila that there is an ethical dilemma. To determine a specific course of action, now she moves to examination of ethical principles by application of four-step process.

Four-steps of Ethical Analysis and Decision Making Process

Step I Understand the Situation

1A: List and number of the relevant facts

ACE Inc., one of the major graphics software providers in Australia.

Alice is a system programmer at ACE who currently assists in computer security matters and has an extensive knowledge of all the problems concerned with ACE’s security procedures, systems, and networks.

Due to her interest and knowledge in systems security software, Alice developed an anti-virus program at home.

To make her program stand out from other competitors, she designed it and makes it operate in a network environment.

Most important feature of the program is validation. This allows the user to copy and modify the virus to any quarantined memory location.

After successful trials, Alice approached her manager Ted and offered the program to ACE as she was aware of the virus infections of ACE and that this program could greatly improve ACE’s security.

Ted examined Alice’s proposal and denied to buy it by calling it as very dangerous program. (CalChamber, 2016)

Due to unreasonable rejection of her program she decided to become a consultant named Lock-Smith on the internet and released her program on a Bulletin Board System under the name Safe-Tee.

After knowing about Alice’s consultation service and who actually Lock Smith is, Ted immediately fired Alice (by formally issuing her with the required notice of employment termination) and informed his manager, Sheila Silk.

Sheila Silk, the executive Head of IT at ACE, considers Alice as a disorganized person and always has a high opinion of Ted. She supported Ted’s decision to sack Alice with no further review of the case being necessary.

Busta Bigwig, the owner of the ACE, instructed Sheila to find Lock-Smith and offer him a position in ACE.

Sheila knows who Lock-Smith actually is and decided to consider the situation.

1B: Which of these raise an ethical issue? What is the potential or resulting harm?

 Number    potential or resulting harm

    5           users can use the feature for wrong purpose

    9           does unreasonable termination provides job security to employees

   10           personal disliking causes the case to remain unsolved and company losses its faithful employee

1C: List the stakeholders involved

Alice

Ted, the Head of I.T Security at ACE,  

Sheila Silk, the executive Head of IT at ACE

Busta Bigwig, the owner of the ACE

ACE as a corporation

All ACE employees

ACE customers

People taking consultation services from Lock-smith

Society as a whole

Step II Isolate the Major Ethical Dilemma

Should Sheila review the case and the program before terminating Alice from the job so that a valid reason of dismissal can be stated?

Consequentialism:

If action in Step II is done, who will be harmed?

No one will be harmed.

If action in Step II is NOT done, who will be harmed?

Alice would be harmed as she loses her job.

Which alternative results in the least harm?

Alternative A will result in least harm.

If action in Step II is done, who will benefit?

ACE would be benefited as after proper review, the company will not lose its faithful employee and also the program developed by Alice would be beneficial for ACE’s security. Also, other employees will get assurance of proper review of any such issue in future.

If action in Step II is NOT done, who will be benefited?

No One will benefited

Which alternative results in the maximum benefit?

Alternative D will result in maximum benefit.

Consequentialism Comments (on the choices at C. and F.)

If Sheila reviews the whole case and the program, less or no people will be harmed as compared to when she does not review the case. Selecting alternative A and D will result in considering the valid reasons of termination and also helps in differentiating the good and bad features of the program (Sheldon, 2016).

Rights and Duties:

List relevant abridged rights and neglected duties

Employees have a right to know on what basis they have been terminated.

ACE has a right to protect its employees from unreasonable job dismissal and support them for their new inventions.

Ted, as a head of IT department, has a duty to take any decision after considering all the facts properly.

Sheila, as an executive head, has a duty to ask Ted the valid reason for any of his action.

ACE has a duty to not offer any program to its user which can be used for any wrong motives. (Howe, 2016)

Rights and Duties Comments:

From the above it can be said that certain rights and duties are in conflicting position, such as ACE has a right to support its employees for new inventions but at the same time has a duty to not offer any dangerous program to its user that can be misused.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative: (Kant, 2016)

If action in Step II is done, who will be treated with disrespect?

No One

If action in Step II is NOT done, who will be treated with disrespect?

Busta Bigwig, the owner of the ACE

Which alternative is preferable?

Alternative H is preferable

If action in Step II is done, who will be treated unlike others?

Alice. She will get special treatment as Busta wants Sheila to offer position to Lock-Smith in ACE.

If action in Step II is NOT done, who will be treated unlike others?

No One

Which alternative is preferable?

Are there benefits if everyone did action in Step II?

Yes. Employees will have chance to prove their part and proper review would result in right decision

Are there any benefits if nobody did action in Step II?

No. unreasonable termination will lessen employees trust

Which alternative is preferable?

N

Step III Discussion.

Looking to the above analysis, it can be said that the main issue is to consider the whole case of Alice termination and at the same time review the features of the program that Alice has to offer so that dangerous feature, if any, can be removed.

It is clear that bringing Alice and her expertise to the ACE again and purchasing the program that provide good security to ACE outweigh the dangerous feature of Validation contained in the program because that feature can be removed with some negotiations but losing faithful employees without any valid reason is not ethical (Kallman & Grillo, 1996).

The conclusion is D, G2 and N should be given the priority and Sheila should review the case as well as program features in detail.

Step IV Making a decision

IV A. Make a defensible ethical decision

Sheila should review the whole case properly and also consider all the features of the program that Alice has to offer to ACE. If anything seems dangerous about the program then she can ask Alice to remove that feature from that program by giving valid reasons (Gilbert, 2012).

IV B. List the steps needed to implement your defensible ethical decision

Sheila will call Alice and examine all the features of the program Alice has to offer.

She will also ask Ted to give reasons for rejecting Alice’s program and her termination.

If she feels that validation feature is actually dangerous then she will ask Alice to remove this feature from the program so that users will not misuse it and will get ready to purchase the program.

Sheila will also inform Alice and Ted about the instructions from Busta and offer a good position to Alice in ACE again.

References

CalChamber, 2016. Employee Termination. [Online] Available at: https://www.calchamber.com/california-employment-law/pages/termination.aspx [Accessed 17 september 2016].

Gilbert, J., 2012. Ethics for Managers: Philosophical Foundations and Business Realities. Routledge.

Howe, R., 2016. Corporate Rights & Duties. [Online] Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/corporate-rights-duties-70463.html [Accessed 17 september 2016].

Kallman, E.A. & Grillo, J.P., 1996. Ethical Decision Making and Information Technology. McGraw Hill.

Kant, I., 2016. Chapter 2: Ethical Traditions. [Online] Available at: https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/MEDICAL_ETHICS_TEXT/Chapter_2_Ethical_Traditions/Categorical_Imperative.htm [Accessed 17 september 2016].

Relkin, J., 2006. 10 ethical issues confronting IT managers. [Online] Available at: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-ethical-issues-confronting-it-managers/ [Accessed 17 september 2016].

Sheldon, M., 2016. Establishing a Termination Policy & Guidelines. [Online] Available at: https://www.thehartford.com/business-playbook/in-depth/employee-termination-policy-guidelines [Accessed 17 september 2016].

Shinder, D., 2005. Ethical issues for IT security professionals. [Online] Available at: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2557944/security0/ethical-issues-for-it-security-professionals.html [Accessed 17 september 2016].