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Chapter 08 - Ethics and Technology
Key Terms
Cyberliability: A legal concept that employers can be held liable for the actions of their
employees in their internet communications to the same degree as if those employers had written
those communications on company letterhead.
Extranet: A private piece of a company’s Internet network that is made available to customers
and/or vendor partners on the basis of secured access by unique password.
Intranet: A company’s internal website, containing information for employee access only.
Telecommuting: The ability to work outside of your office (from your home or anywhere else)
and log in to your company network (usually via a secure gateway such as a virtual private
network, or VPN).
Thick Consent: Consent in which the employee has an alternative to unacceptable monitoring.
For example, if jobs are plentiful and the employee would have no difficulty in finding another
position, then the employee has a realistic alternative for avoiding an unacceptable policy.
Thin Consent: Consent in which the employee has little choice. For example, when an employee
receives formal notification that the company will be monitoring all e-mail and web activity—
either at the time of hire or during employment—and it is made clear in that notification that his
or her continued employment with the company will be dependent on the employee’s agreement
to abide by that monitoring.
Vicarious Liability: A legal concept that means a party may be held responsible for injury or
damage even when he or she was not actively involved in an incident.
Review Questions
NOTE: Some questions allow for a number of different answers. Below are some suggestions.
1. Should you be allowed to surf the web at work? Why or why not?
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2. Are your telephone calls monitored where you work? If they are, how does that make you
feel? If they aren’t monitored, how would you feel if that policy were introduced?
3. What would you do if someone sent you an e-mail at work that you found offensive? Would
you just delete it or say something to that person?
4. If you had the chance to work from home and telecommute, would you take it? If the
opportunity meant that you had to allow your company to monitor every call on your phone
and every keystroke on your computer, would you still take it? Explain why or why not.
5. You have just been issued a new company Blackberry (to make sure you never miss an
important e-mail or phone call!). Are you now obligated to answer those calls and e-mails at
any time, day or night? Why or why not?
6. Would you use that new Blackberry for personal calls and e-mails? Why or why not?
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Review Exercises
1. How well did Matrix’s client handle this situation?
Matrix Technologies has upgraded its customer service extranet service for its clients to
2. What kind of message does this send to the employees of Matrix’s client?
When Matrix created upgrades through its extranet and had to mail upgrade CDs to its local
3. What other options were available here?
4. On the assumption that the downloadable software patches can greatly improve updates for
its client, does Matrix have an ethical obligation to get involved here? Explain your answer.
Internet Exercises
1. Visit the website for the RAND Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance (CCEG) at
www.rand.org/jie/centers/corporate-ethics.html.
a. What does the CCEG do?
Chapter 08 - Ethics and Technology
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Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
The CCEG is committed to improving public understanding of corporate ethics, law,
and governance, and to identifying specific ways that businesses can operate ethically,
legally, and profitably at the same time.
b. What are the stated comparative advantages of the CCEG?
c. Select and summarize a current CCEG research project.
One of the current projects is Accounting Methods and Systemic Risk: An
Investigation of Policy Issues and Lessons. The site explains that this project involves
2. Visit the website for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) at www.eff.org.
a. What does the EFF do?
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b. What is the EFF “Bloggers’ Rights” Project?
c. What is the “Open Wireless Movement”?
Team Exercises
1. When are you “at work”?
Divide into two teams. One team must defend the employer position on employee
monitoring. The other team must defend the employee position. Draw on the policies and
experiences you have gathered from your own jobs.
Students’ answers will vary. Employers view the issue of employee monitoring as verifying
and utilizing the time of the employees effectively. When employees are allowed to surf the
2. A new billing system.
A new system that bills corporate clients is under development, and there is a discussion
over how much to invest in error checking and control. One option has been put forward so
far, and initial estimates suggest it would add about 40 percent to the overall cost of the
project but would vastly improve the quality of the data in the database and the accuracy of
client billing. Not spending the money would increase the risk of overcharging some midsize
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clients. Divide into two groups and prepare arguments for and against spending the extra
money on error checking and control. Remember to include in your argument how
stakeholders would be affected and how you would deal with any unhappy customers.
Students’ answers will vary. Arguments for spending the extra money on error checking
3. E-mail privacy.
Divide into two groups and prepare arguments for and against the following behavior:
Your company has a clearly stated employee surveillance policy that stipulates that
anything an employee does on a company-owned computer is subject to monitoring. You
manage a regional office of 24 brokers for a company that offers lump-sum payments to
people receiving installment payments—from lottery winnings or personal injury
settlements who would rather have a large amount of money now than small monthly
checks for the next 5, 10, or 20 years.
You have just terminated one of your brokers for failing to meet his monthly targets for
three consecutive months. He was extremely angry about the news and when he went
back to his cube, he was observed typing feverishly on his computer in the 10 minutes
before building security arrived to escort him from the premises.
When your IT specialist arrives to shut down the broker’s computer, he notices that it is
still open and logged in to his Gmail account and that there is evidence that several e-
mails with large attachments had been sent from his company e-mail address to his
Gmail address shortly after the time he was notified that he was being fired. The e-mails
had been deleted from the folder of sent items in his company account. The IT specialist
suggests that you take a look at the e-mails and specifically the information attached to
those e-mails. Should you?
Students’ answers will vary. Arguments for looking at the broker’s Gmail account would be
Chapter 08 - Ethics and Technology
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Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
There were no signs of sent mail to the brokers Gmail account from his company e-mail, and
the broker could claim an invasion of privacy if the company were to go through his private
(Gmail) account.
4. Software piracy.
Divide into two groups and prepare arguments for and against the following behavior:
You run your own graphic design company as a one-person show, doing primarily small
business projects and subcontracting work for larger graphic design agencies. You have
just been hired as an adjunct instructor at the local community college to teach a graphic
design course. You decide that it’s easier to use your own laptop rather than worry about
having the right software loaded on the classroom machines, and so the college IT
department loads the most current version of your graphic design software on your
machine. Business has been a little slow for you, and you haven’t spent the money to
update your own software. The version that the IT department loads is three editions
ahead of your version with lots of new functionality.
You enjoy teaching the class, although the position doesn’t pay very well. One added
bonus, however, is that you can be far more productive on your company projects using
the most current version of the software on your laptop, and since you use some of that
work as examples in your class, you’re not really doing anything unethical, right?
Students’ answers will vary. An argument for using the software for personal use is that it is
Chapter 08 - Ethics and Technology
Thinking Critically
8.1 – Instagram: The Dangers in Changing Your Terms of Service
1. What prompted Instagram to change the terms of service (TOS) agreement?
Students’ answers will vary. At the time of the purchase, Instagram, while developing a very
passionate and loyal user base, had yet to figure out how to generate revenue from its
2. Critics and many Instagram customers reacted very strongly to the TOS change. Was there
an error of judgment on the company’s part? Why or why not?
3. Was Instagram’s response to the PR crisis over the change in the TOS appropriate? Why or
why not?
4. How could Instagram have handled this situation differently? What should the company do
now?
