Ethical Dilemma Faced By Christina: Analyzing And Resolving The Dilemma

Background of the case study

a) Recognizing the Moral Dimension

Christina is a programmer in a small software company. Being a smaller company, they are establishing their market shares and are setting the dates of software release. She has the core responsibility to program as well as test the next release of accounting package software. In one of such program, she has found minor bugs and decided to fix them. However, even before all of the bugs are resolved, the organizational management has decided to release the software and for this purpose, Christina has to sign that all tests are being completed. The implementation of ACS Code of Ethics and ACS Professional Conduct with Australian legislation are the moral dimensions (Noddings 2013).

b) Who are the Interested Parties? What are their relationships?

The interested parties in this particular case study are the organizational management, software developers and Christina, the programmer. The relationship amongst all the above mentioned individuals is that all of them are the parts of a same organization and hence all of them are colleagues (Frank 2013).

c) What values or principles are involved?

There are some of the major values or principles involved in this case study. The first and the foremost ethical value is honesty. The management is not at all honest and hence the clients could suffer. The next value is professionalism. They are not being professional by releasing erroneous software (Fromm 2013). The third value is competence, since they are not informing their clients about the bugs in the software.

d) Courses of Actions

The major course of action for Christina is to inform the higher authority about this type of misconduct. Moreover, she should not sign on the completion of test agreement; else she would be termed as unethical and illegal in nature.

e) Benefits and the Burdens

The major benefits here are identification of bugs by Christina and keeping employee satisfaction on the highest priority (Peters 2015). However, the burdens here are that emphasizing Christina to sign on the agreement of completion of testing and releasing software without resolving the bugs.

f) Analogous Cases

The three analogous cases in this specific case study are as follows:

1. i) The management could think of a different idea of releasing the software after proper testing.
2. ii) Christina will not be forced to sign on the agreement of completion of testing.
3. iii) The author could himself check the bugs while writing the code (Crane and Matten 2016).

g) Discussion with Relevant Others

This decision is undertaken by the management. However, Christina can discuss the matter with the higher authority and could even take legal help to resolve the issue.

h) Accordance of Decision with Legal and Organizational Rules

The decision that is taken by management is not following legal and organizational rules. However, by applying ACS code of ethics and ACS code of professional conduct, the decision could be aligned (Niebuhr 2013).

Comfortable with Decision

I am not at all comfortable with the decision of management since they are breaking the laws here. Moreover, they are not following the work ethics or organizational ethics and hence I can call them unethical in nature.

The three values of ACS code of ethics that are relevant to the case study are honesty, competence, primacy of public interest and professionalism (Fromm 2013, p. 2). This is mainly because the organizational management is not following the rules and laws of ethics and hence could be termed as unethical (Krier et al. 2014).

The basic recommendation in this particular case study is that Christina should take up the help of legislation and also inform her higher authority about this decision. The second recommendation for Christina here is to follow her ethical values and standards and hence a proper work framework would be maintained. Another significant recommendation for Christina is to communicate with the significant person, who is responsible for allowing erroneous software to the clients. This specific recommendation would help Christina is solving the issues faced by her and clients.

There are some of the clauses that are relevant in the case study after the identification of the 3 ethical values of honesty, competence, primacy of public interest and professionalism.

Regarding honesty, the major clauses are

1. Misleading the clients by providing erroneous software and
2. Not enhancing the organizational reputation or Christina’s reputation for the clients.

Regarding competence, the relevant clauses are

1. Not following the relevant legislation and standards and
2. Providing products to the clients that are not tested properly (Crane and Matten 2016, p 3).
3. iMoreover, advising the clients to use the product, with the assurance that the product is the best.

Regarding primacy of public interest, the most relevant clause is

1. Identifying those, who are potentially impacted by the work and explicitly considering the interests. The customers are majorly impacted by this product and their interests should be considered (Board 2014).
2. The second clause that is relevant for the case study is raising with the stakeholders that all the potential conflicts within professional activities and legal accepted public requirements.

Regarding professionalism, the relevant clauses are

1. Taking appropriate actions against the unethical persons and
2. Not attempting to influence the ethical person in undertaking actions that could breach the code. Here, Christina is being influenced to sign the agreement of completion of the testing.

The relevant Australian legislation for this case study is Fair Work Act 2009. As per division 536CA, the management is being unethical and dishonest. The second relevant legislation for the case study is Privacy Act 1988. This particular law regulates the proper handling of the personal data regarding individuals. The personal data is regarding the identified individuals.

The main issue for this case study is that the organization, where Christina is working has decided to launch an erroneous software, without properly eradicating the minor bugs of the software. The second issue here is that the management has asked Christina to sign on the agreement that the software is appropriate even after knowing that it is not. This is completely unethical in nature.

The major strategy for solving this particular issue is to identify the main individuals, who are involved in the case of providing erroneous software. When Christina will be able to identify those people, she would be able to undertake relevant steps against them (Board 2014). The second strategy to solve this type of issue is by undertaking legal steps against the specified person directly and without considering outcomes. This would help Christina in maintaining her work ethics and standards.

References

Board, B.A.C., 2014. Professional and ethical compliance code for behavior analysts.

Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Frank, A.W., 2013. The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. University of Chicago Press.

Fromm, E., 2013. Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. Routledge.

Krier, P., Parman, A., Piercy, D., Erlandson, J., Keele, R., Hill, S.L. and Erlandson, J., 2014. CODE OF ETHICS.

Niebuhr, R., 2013. Moral man and immoral society: A study in ethics and politics. Westminster John Knox Press.

Noddings, N., 2013. Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. Univ of California Press.

Peters, R.S., 2015. Ethics and Education (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.