Ethics Essay Sample with Answer PDF

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Facebook has recently been embroiled in a data privacy scandal with controversial firm Cambridge-Analytica. Does a lack of moral awareness explain Facebook's decision making in this case? Having moral awareness in business organisation is important as it aids in ethical decision making in the organisation. Lacking of moral awareness can lead to organisations behaving unethically. This can lead to circumstances where the organisation may encounter increasing ethical consequences without knowing it (Schwartz, 2016). In an ethical organisation, individuals are able to make important decisions. Being in an ethical organisation, it means that the organisation is honest, fair, have efficient communication, liquidity and many more. This way, ethical decisions could be made easier by each individuals in the organisation. Ethical decisions are covered with a perception about what is right and wrong (Jones & Ryan 1998).

The issue between Facebook and Cambridge-Analytica is that Cambridge got hold of Facebook users data given by a third party called Kogan. Kogan created an app that entitles users to be paid by doing a psychological test and at the same time, collecting data of the users. This not only collected the data of the users, but also the user’s Facebook friends data. Over 50 million data were collected from the app. He then shared this data with Cambridge which help the firm to setup a platform to have an impact in the choices of the users during elections.

In the context of moral awareness, Cambridge-Analytica lacks of moral awareness as they have collected users data using unethical ways. Knowing that the data given by Kogan was not supposed to be used, Cambridge still use the data for their own advantage which is to set up a platform that could aid to have an impact on the choices of the elections from the users. Being untruthful or unethical may be normal practice for certain company in different environment. When there are non-identical opinion and execution, everyone see things in their own perspective and level of exercise (Azhar et al. 2011). This set of data that is used to build the profiles of people from their usefulness, point of view, curiosity to convey Trump’s information to the users online. This result in unfairness in the votes of the US presidential election in 2016.

This cause a lot of Facebook’s users private data got leaked into Cambridge database. It has also caused a huge problem to Facebook as they have violated the federal privacy act (FTCA) based on FTCA privacy enforcement cases (Alan, 2017). As Cambridge declined that none of the data was used in the Trump campaign, Facebook had to carry the blame and had to solve 1

the issue. Facebook has been cheated by Kogan as he has claimed that the data given to Cambridge was allowable which he had hoax the social media about it. Facebook was defamed by Cambridge and Kogan and they had used Facebook as a platform to gain the user’s data. This is an act of immoral management which they gave in to their ethical behaviour to get the rewards. Even though reward systems in the organisation usually reward those with ethical behaviour, it can promote unethical behaviour too (Trevino & Nelson 2007).

In Singapore, there are a large number of citizens getting their personal data leaked to certain companies. As companies are expanding, they would spend money using third party vendors to get data to do survey so that they are able to earn more revenue. In this case, large amount of personal data are used. With that being said, Singapore has come out with a new regime to protect the citizen’s data which is called the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). This act is created so that organisations can maintain the trust of each individuals so that personal data are being used in an ethical way. The PDPA will happen when the individuals did not give consent to reveal their information, the organisation did not inform the parties involved what the data collect purpose is and that the parties feel that the use of the data collected is reasonable. Failure to abide to the PDPA will result in paying a penalty of amount not exceeding $1 million, stop collecting the data or revealing to other party, deleting all data accumulated (PDPC, 2018).

Using it as a benchmark, in America’s context it’s different. Cambridge wasn’t given any warnings or being told to pay fines. Kogan’s app got banned and was ordered to erase the data that he had collected but this did not happen at all. Cambridge even declare that the data was deleted when being ordered to do so. As the lifestyle in America is different from Singapore, it lacks of thorough federal law that control the collection and use of personal data. The US government has commence privacy and security by managing certain type of sensitive information relating to health and financial data (Connor, 2018).

With the evidence given by News investigation that there is a footage showing that Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Nix, who met up with Trump multiple times during Trump’s campaign activity. Yet, they still deny that they did not use the data given by Kogan as it was all their own effort by doing all the research, data and analytics. Under the leadership of CEO Nix, it was full of lies. Even though he denied of all the data being leaked out for political campaigns was not true, there is evidence of him saying that he could trick the rival of his clients by offering incentive. With having such CEO who has unethical belief and behaviour leading the company, the employees of the company would also have the same belief and behaviour. Nix is an unethical leader even though he tried to help the company by denying all the facts about the scandal and showed that the data was collected in a legitimate way. Nix lacks of corporate governance where it can both affect the internal and external of the company. Internally, it will affect the employees by setting a wrong culture for the employees to follow. It also might affect the relationship with the stakeholders and shareholders (Mallin, 2013). As their client was Trump, who is the president of the United States now, that’s the 2

more they would deny the fact that they did not used the leaked data from Facebook. This way, Trump could benefit the company as they are the organisation that helped him to win the election. All these are done to maintain the personal relationship with the president of United States and for the sake of the future of the company so that many other clients will go to them for political campaign activity.

In 2015, Gushcloud, took on a project with SingTel, a telecommunication company from Singapore for a marketing campaign. SingTel uses the influencers from Gushcloud, who have a sizeable number and following on social media platforms, to help SingTel boost their youth mobile plan. The influencers’ job are to tarnish SingTel’s rival telecommunication companies reputation by publishing negative comments about them on their own social media accounts. Eventually, Gushcloud’s rival had revealed online about both companies marketing campaign (Singtel may face legal action, 2015). For the profit and popularity of the both companies, they had used unethical ways to reach their goal. Storylines were fabricated as an examples to of how usually the influencers can do to post on their social media accounts to tarnish the reputation of the other telecommunications companies. The influencers were told by their company what to do as they wanted to obtain more popularity. This is an example of how reward systems in companies can have an effect on how the employees to make unethical decisions as they are more possible to act in ways to be rewarded (Trevino & Nelson, 2007).

On the other hand, we can see that the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg was trying to salvage the situation by banning the app that Kogan has designed and urging all parties involved to destroy the data collected. Not only Mark was trying to find ways to solve the situation, the senior executives have stepped in to do what is needed to make sure that the user’s data are protected and to find out the truth of the leakage of data. Due to the honesty that Mark has, he is an ethical leader as he stands out and fight for what is right even if being in the limelight where, he might face a loss in Facebook business. Ethical leadership emphasis on each characteristics and values such as honesty, morality, virtue and fairness (Trevino & Brown, 2004). An example of ethical leadership would be Mr. Barack Obama, former president of the United States. He portray the traits of integrity, fairness, respect and mindful decision making and has influenced others to accept his decisions on the matters concerning to the States. He has helped in the America’s regression, improved the healthcare situation and helped in the drug situation by treating drugs as a public health issue.

In this case, we could say that it was Facebook’s carelessness as they did not foresee such circumstances to happen and did not have a solution to solve it. We could say that Facebook is unintentional amoral management. Facebook did not know that allowing third party app to enhance users experience could cause leaking of users personal data. Unintentional amoral behaviour is insensibility and thoughtless, implying acts that does not have moral thought or thought about the consequences that comes with it. This also means that the leader of Facebook did not think morally and considerations were missed out during ethical decision making (Carroll & Meeks, 1999).

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The solution to help Facebook is to come up with contracts and get it signed so that there is something to protect Facebook’s data from leaking out. When a contract is signed between the third party and Facebook, both parties should follow the contract and in case of a breach of contract, a penalty should follow. Hiring extra internal staff to do audit and making sure personal data is protected every time when a user select to link their Facebook account with a third party app. Hiring extra security IT staff so that they are able to track when data is being leaked out and have extra security to prevent data being leaked out.

In conclusion, moral awareness is very important in organisations. It can affect the leaders and employees during decision making. To be able to improve the situations in organisation, leaders can follow a strict regime in rewarding those who are right hoping that this could see more moral behaviour in employees. Rewards are one of the best motivation for employees in the current century. Unmoral behaviour should also be punished being at any position in the organisation. With all these implementations, employees will work hard towards their goal. In organisations, employees would also like to see fairness as unmoral behaviour is not acceptable and there should be serious outcome of it (Trevino, L.K, 1992). This can encourage moral awareness n the organisation. The organisation should also hold stakeholder and shareholder meetings once in a while to set the goal of the organisation right. When the CEO of the company is behaving unethically, the board of directors should have a meeting on how to deal with the CEO. With the right leader chosen, the code of the organisation is right and employees will follow the right culture and path that is set. This way, it can affect the employees in having ethical or unethical behaviour. The code of ethics should be displayed and conveyed over regularly in their daily routine so that they can be reminded of it.

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References:

A. Quality References – 1. Azhar, S, Selph, J, Maqsood, T, & Kim Haugbølle, Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb, Kalle E. Kähkönen, Ole Jonny Klakegg, Göran A. Lindahl Kristian Widén 2011, Unethical Business Practices and Corruption in International Construction: A Survey of American Contractors Working Overseas. 2. Carroll, A.B. & Michael, M.D., 1999, Models of management morality: European applications and implications, vol. 8, no. 2, p, 108-116. 3. Mallin, C.A. 2013, Corporate governance, 4th edn, Oxford University Press, United Kingdom. 4. Trevino, L.K. & Nelson, K.A. 2007, Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right, 4th edn, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York.

B. Peer Review References – 1. Carroll, A.B. & Michael, M.D., 1999, Models of management morality: European applications and implications, vol. 8, no. 2, p, 108-116. 5

2. Jones, TM & Ryan, LV 1998, ‘The effect of organizational forces on individual morality: Judgement, moral approbation, and behavior’, Business Ethics Quarterly, v. 8, n. 3, pp. 431-45. 3. Schwartz, M. (2016). Business Ethics: An Ethical Decision-Making Approach

4. Trevino, L.K. & Ball, G.A. 1992, The social implications of punishing unethical behaviour: Observers’ cognitive and affective reactions. Journal of management, vol. 18, no. 4, p. 751-768. 5. Trevino, L.K. & Brown, M. 2004, ‘Managing to be ethical: Debunking five business ethics myths.’ Academy of Management Executive, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 69-81.

C. Other References – 1. Barack Obama’s Leadership and Character Traits. Available from: . 2. Here’s everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, 2018. Available from: . [21 March 2018]. 3. Personal Data Protection Commissiong Singapore Overview, 2018. Available from: . [7 August 2018]. 4. Reforming the U.S. Approach to Data Protection and Privacy, 2018. Available from: . [30 January 2018]. 5. Singtel may face legal action for smear campaign against rival telcos, 2015. Available from: . [23 August 2015]. 6. The Privacy, Data Protection and Cybersecurity Law Review – Edition 4, 2017. Available from: . [December 2017].

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