Ethical Issues in ICT Information Communication

Question: Discuss about theEthica Issues in ICT for Information Communication. Answer: Introduction In the advent of information communication and technology, there are several ethical issues that are on the rise (Ludwig et al., 2016). Privacy and data security are the most crucial sectors where ethics needs to prevail. For instance, most of the businesses transactions like e-commerce and e-banking are done online, meaning that top level privacy is of great importance. The most affected areas affected by the lack of ethics include online transactions, education, hacking and many others (Van den Hoven, 2007). In most cases, it becomes impossible to avoid such issues but they can be prevented. Ethical issues in information communication and technology can fall on either individuals or the whole society (Vaccaro Madsen, 2009). In most cases, individuals are influenced by their peers especially when they are engaged in similar tasks. In the end, the resulting results can be good ethical issues (like the search of current information) or bad ethical issues (like plagiarism and pornogra phy). Scenario In Teter Company which deals with the interior design, an employee was discovered and reported to have been sharing information with unauthorized persons outside the company. Much of the information which was leaked was regarding some newly and unimplemented designs as well as a bit of operation at the company. The Facts Much of the information was shared with the competitors of the Teter design company who in turn took advantage and started bringing some designs into the market (Anderson Moore, 2006). Following complaints from the Teter marketing team, the top management decided to carry out a thorough inspection into the email accounts of each employee as well as a detailed SWOT analysis of the company. It was surprising to find out that the ICT employees had sent emails to the competitors regarding the latest designs by Teter Company. The Issues The facts in this scenario are that crucial management and operations information had been illegally shared out to Teter competitors and this company was now not competitive anymore. According to Hirschprung et al., (2016), the employees forgot that they had a role to play in ensuring that the information at Teter Company was supposed to be kept confidential. Further probing into what would have led to such unethical acts by the employees found that there was an aspect of the lack of satisfaction. Individual interviews with all the employees found out that the employees complained of a lack of recognition according to their efforts. In short, there was a lack of performance appraisal and the salaries had not been raised as previously promised by the management team. Who were the most affected? The most affected group, in this case, is the investors and shareholders because they were not able to get the value of their investments. Moreover, the general public came to understand some private issues at this company and it was really a shame to them. The investors threw blame to the Teter management for allowing such an offense to take place. Possible Options In order to prevent the possibility of such issues taking place in future, the management team needs to install surveillance systems in form of soft wares that can be monitoring the possibility of crucial information being shared out of the workplace (Chipidza et al., 2016). Time and again, the employees need to be inspected regularly so that in case such unethical doings have occurred, they can get to know in good time. The company should pay its employees based on the prevailing market standards as well as perform a performance appraisal which can motivate the staff to work harder (Esen et al., 2016). This is because the needs of an individual rise as days go by, indicating the need for a progressively increasing salary to the employees. Once the employees are satisfied, there is no likelihood of such malicious issues arising in the near future. Another possible step is for the company to provide individual electronic gadgets such as mobile phones and personal computers that need to be used at the workplace only and for business reasons. The best option Out of all these options, a preferable one would be to ensure that the employees are satisfied by paying them a good salary and appraising them for their outstanding efforts (Rasheed et al., 2016). Why is it the best option? This will motivate the respective employees to work more and better for the betterment of the organization. All the activities between the management team and the employees in a workplace should not in any way bring down negative effects to the investors, shareholders as well as the stakeholders. Finally, the employees need to be made aware of the norms as well as the ethical expectations in their workplace so as to observe the highest levels of honesty and integrity. Conclusion In most cases, people like using shortcuts when engaging in issues of information communication and technology. For instance, when one wants to download music or a useful software and they are required to pay for them, they are likely to use shortcuts to get that content. In the end, the hackers may use this illegal content to hack into the personal systems of computer users leading to loss of data. Therefore the final choice on how to use web content lies solely on the computer user. References Anderson, R., Moore, T. (2006). The economics of information security. Science, 314(5799), 610-613. Chipidza, W., Leidner, D., Burleson, D. (2016). Why Companies Change Privacy Policies: A Principal-Agent Perspective. In 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (pp. 4849-4858). 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