Internet Use in the Workplace: Crafting a Policy for Ethical Decision-Making - Essay Sample

Introduction

Most organizations are today faced by several ethical issues. As a recommendation, all businesses should possess respective policies that can be utilized to prevent or deal with such problems whenever they arise. In this particular assignment, the ethical issue to be discussed is the use of the internet in the workplace environment. The central aim of this study is to recommend a policy to resolve the issue, perform an evaluation for various ethical decision-making models and the parameters related to the issue, discover the relationship between the issue and social responsibility, perform analysis in support of the issue using examples, evaluate ways of communicating the policy within the company and explore on the associated limitations with the policy.

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Recommended Policy

With the recent advancement in the field of technology, the internet has become a must-have component to most people. In the process of running day-to-day activities, people often employ the use of phones, computers, laptops, or tablets, of which internet avoidance is almost impossible. Similarly, these changes in technology have had an equal impact on business. Most business institutions demand the use of the internet to compete regionally, or internationally by creating a sustainable competitive advantage. For this reason, the ethical issues arise more regularly, especially in the process of utilizing the internet, as apart and parcel of business. Policies are, therefore, demanded to help in controlling this issue, before creating drawbacks in the rates of profitability or growth in general.

In this case, I would recommend a policy that governs the usage mode of the company computers to access the internet. For instance, an organization should offer computers to individual employees and assign them persona login credentials that are private and are best known by them and the organization ICT board. It would mean that any piece of information sent or received by the device remains as a property of the company; this would require personal usage by the employees. Moreover, this policy should bar any non-work or organizational websites from accessing the internet, by blocking any external attempts to log in, through the use of guest logins, and strengthening of privacy options. It is therefore imperative that the policy would outstandingly help to reduce or eliminate the possibilities of breaches of the organizational data via its internet.

Ethical Decision Making that is Applicable to the Recommended Policy

To make an ethical decision with the policy, it is sufficient to implement the use of five ethical theories or models, namely: utilitarianism, rights, virtues, fairness, and the common good. For all of these distinctive models, each can play a critical role in the shaping of an ethical-based decision and potential avoidance of dilemma arousal. Utilitarianism model outlines that the outcome must benefit everyone, and have the least volume of harm to the employees. Rights ethical models ensure that employees and protected from exploitation, and that the outcome respects all the terms of agreements; for the fairness model, it states that the result must be fair to every employee devoid of their positions on the recommended policy; Virtue theory offers much emphasis on the workers' character instead of the practice act. Finally, the common good model promotes equal sharing of the outcome, fairly and honestly that does not raise any distrust questions concerning the metrics used to reach the recommended policy (Ghods et al., 2014).

However, for this study's policy concerning the internet usage, a common good model emerges as the best ethical model to implement, because it prioritizes everyone within the organization at the same level, thus encourages equal benefit. Because network breaching can lead to severe impacts on every individual within the company, this company policy would ensure that everyone benefits. Personal information protection and limitation of risks of information loss are thus the common good, or achievements that would help everyone, including the corporation, employees and all stakeholders at the same level.

Relationship Between the Recommended Corporate Policy and Social Responsibility

Although the policy restricts internet usage by the company’s electronic devises, it still can be said to be socially responsible because employers have full authority to use the same internet but in their gadgets like phones or personal computers in having fun during the breaks. They may realize fun by calling their friends using online platforms, sharing files with their friend's relatives and loved ones, and playing games. The use of mobile phones, tablets or laptops is an international practice; hence any possibilities that an employee might lack a self-gadget are very minimal. Due to this freedom during the break sessions, the policy remains to be socially responsible in all angles.

Supporting the Recommended Policy

Practically, allowing employees to use the company's computers for personal use significantly subjects the organization into risk. For instance, some employees would utilize more time for their private surfing of the internet, rather than completing the assigned tasks. In this scenario, the organization would lag because many jobs would delay or other workers forced to complete the remaining tasks. Generally, this reduces overall workers motivation. Zeiger (2016) found that organizations that allowed their workers to use Facebook during the working hours averagely lose 1.5% of their productivity. The activity may also expose organizational data to outsiders who may steal a piece of confidential information. If this occurs, then competitors could have access to the data, and use it to outdo the reputation of this company at the local, regional or international level (Young & Case, 2004). Unfortunately, employees may not stand in for the losses, mainly if it occurs unintentionally, where a worker accidentally or negligently loses the company's information by accessing prohibited websites or installing viruses in the form of viruses.

Potential Limitations and Strategies for Monitoring and Compliance

First, a company that utilizes this policy relies on the use of social media for marketing or any other service; then this will not work effectively; hence more strategies would be needed to supplement it. This is because, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are public, and this makes the organizational data more vulnerable. Secondly, it is logically not practical to train workers or automatically block all the unsecured websites, because as technology advance, so makes the hackers advance with the ways of making their websites seem almost similar to the secured ones.

However, managing these limitations is possible because this is the point where monitoring and compliance policies come into play. For example, all employees should be monitored regularly to ascertain that they are not using non-work-related sites. Besides, since asset tags and unique login credentials were assigned to every employee, a team enacting monitoring policy can easily detect the individual employees who violate the policy. Upon realization of violation cases, the organization should use a disciplinary policy to ensure compliance with the guidelines. Disciplinary policies could be procedural from training the employee, warning them and eventually terminating their contracts, if they did improve or change.

Conclusion

In summary, there is various form of ethical issues, but organizations should set its policies right, to curb these issues from posing hazards or threats in an organization. To promote this, ethical models should accurately be evaluated, and social responsibilities considered, to align the policy with overall acceptance. Nevertheless, despite the limitations, it is visible from this study that they can be monitored and other policies enacted to ensure that every partner in the organization complies with them.

References

Ghods, M., Najafpour, H., Lamit, H. B., Abdolahi, N., & Bin, M. S. F. (2014). Evaluation of the effective factors on online internet usage in organizations. Life Science Journal, 11(1), 58-63. http://www.lifesciencesite.com/lsj/life1101/008_22333life1101_58_63.pdf

Young, K. S., & Case, C. J. (2004). Internet abuse in the workplace: new trends in risk management. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(1), 105-111. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/109493104322820174

Zeiger, S. (2013). The Disadvantages of Social Networking in the Workplace. Small Business. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-social-networking-workplace-21064.html