How Companies Can Integrate Ethical Practices In An IT Organization?

Ethics in IT firm

Evaluate how companies can integrate ethical practices in an IT organization?

The term ethics primarily refers to a set of values and principles that are utilised by any individual for the purpose of governing his decisions and actions. Every business organisation is guided by ethics to implement its policies, decisions and programs without any kind of hesitation. Ethical culture in a business organisation primarily develops through a close collaboration between workers and leadership management. An ethic based business organisation primarily composed of the following traits mentioned below:

• Honour: Honest and sincere people often laid the foundation of the ethical pillars of the any business firm. Unfortunately such persons do not receive any recognition for such initiative and the firm often bestows showers of praises to those employees who have helped to raise the shares and stocks of the firm in the open competitive market. Now it is time for such firm to recognise the contribution and sacrifice of those employees who have brought an ethical attachment to their organisation. In achieving such feat they need to exhibit a polite behaviour with the clients and also to face their grievances patiently with proper reply to their queries.
• Respect: It is very essential for a businessman to earn respect from his subordinates to handle them quite easily. It is essential to be noted that earning respect of the subordinates do not imply zero responsibility on the shoulder of such businessman. It implies dictating his terms and training techniques over his subordinates without any sort of protest or resistance from them. In this respect no businessman should employ subordinates from whom he is unable to earn the required trust and respect which is quite necessary while dealing with the clients. In such scenario he must dismiss such arrogant employees to save the reputation of the organisation from the criticisms of the clients.
• Customer Focus: The existence of a business firm becomes meaningless if it fails to deliver the demand and requirement of any customer within a fixed deadline. In such scenario people will lost interest to engage in commercial transactions with such organisation. Therefore, in order to regain their confidence and faith the firm must deliver all the requirements of every customer in a true spirit of an ethical organisation. In case it fails to do so it must instantly report to the concerned stakeholders and clients without assuring them with false hopes and promises.

The work culture and the relationship between management and employees of an IT firm are often governed by corporate ethics and principles. IT firms unlike other business enterprises have to provide latest available technological facilities and functions to its clients at all costs. Hence the employees of the IT firm often requires to have alert mindset while updating themselves with latest technology and software applications while persuading clients to avail them. Ethics in this scenario mainly plays a significant role. The honest and hard working employees of an IT sector always provide accurate information in response to the query of any client regarding certain technical products and devices. They shall not mislead the client with wrong information for that may tarnish the images of the organisation. So every IT firm while recruiting an employee often focuses on hiring ethic governed employees to enrich the reputation of the organisation in a global competitive market. For establishing the relationship of trust and faith the role of ethics is paramount and supreme in respect of an IT firm. When any IT firm is succeeded to establish its reputation in the market with the help of ethics then it receives huge stock of clients and customers which in turn automatically increases the annual average revenue of an IT firm. Recent study has suggested that these ethical principles and policies are often cultivated by an IT firm as a professional tactic to suppress the grievances of the clients in case it fails to deliver to its potential.

At present IT industry is marked with wide range of criticisms that mainly comprised of infringing the privacy of the internet users all over the world. This comes with stealing of sensitive and personal information of the users for sinister or mischievous purposes. Sometimes these disturbances are often manipulated by the governing authorities and the IT firm has no option but to succumb to the pressure. Unfortunately, it is the IT firm which is held responsible for such malicious actions. Thus to strike a balance various philanthropic information associations like IFLA Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression, Globethics.net and other organisations in favour of IT freedom have participated in a conference known as The World Summit for Information Society to discuss on such unpleasant issues in a friendly atmosphere in Paris. The outcome of this summit meeting is nothing so substantial (Glob Ethics 2014).  This is because the ethical issues which are quite relevant in today’s world but poses some confusion at the same time. Some of these disputed ethical values are mentioned below:

• Access to knowledge for All: Accessibility to all kinds of information from the internet is a basic right of every user to enrich their base of knowledge. However, an opposite contrary theory is gaining ground around this ethical aspect is that world of internet is always infested with unauthorized contents that are harmful particularly for the children to access. There is still now no favourable solution has been emerged to strike a chord between individual freedom and reasonable restrictions. Besides, government archives often contain secret documents and files that are inaccessible to the viewers. But that cannot be used as a substantial ground for curbing the IT freedom of the users.
• Information on people comprising of culture, gender and education: Ethical aspect does govern every IT firm to provide accurate information on people including their gender, culture and social life in respect of their geographical location on the planet. However, critics are of the opinion that the contents of such site must be exhibited properly otherwise it may hurt the feelings of the people of the other communities.
• Privacy: It is an essential base of ethical values of the IT firm. Privacy of all individuals must be respected at all costs. There should not be any incident of hampering the privacy of an individual user. However, critics are of the opinion that it is necessary to monitor the online activities of every user in respective of national security, terrorism and other sinister plots.

However, there has been a systematic effort to address some of these disputable issues in an appropriate platform which also include judicial intervention and vocal public opinion and support on these issues to remove the curtain of restriction form the internet.

The core five ethical practices of an IT firm mainly include the following:

• Employees: IT firms inculcating ethical values will always provide fair and equitable opportunities to every employee to prove their mettle. This also comprised of non discrimination while paying salary and promotion opportunities to extract the best from an employee.
• Customer: An IT firm must always provide all the technical information in respect of services and products to the customers. The information must be complete as well as accurate to win the good will of the customer everytime.
• Investors: IT firm governed by ethical values must provide tight security to the money and other financial details of the investors. This also involves paying of interest within a fixed period of time if they have invested in any project of the firm.
• Competition: While dealing with tough competition from any rival firm. The IT firm based on ethics must not resort to fraudulent means to defeat its rivals. The authority must strongly object to use of such deceptive means tooth and nail.
• Government: An ethic governed IT firms must always pay all the government dues and taxes without any failure and must also follow its guidelines to the letter.

• Distortion of information: IT firms governed by unethical practices always provide incorrect as well as incomplete information of any services and products to the clients and thus making them confused.
• Resorting fraudulent means: Dishonest IT firms often resort to deceptive means to beat their rivals and so to project themselves as a winner.
• Avoiding paying taxes and duties: IT firms governed with unethical principles often tend to evade tax payment and other duties of the government.
• Displaying fake documents: Dishonest IT firms often exhibits false documents to the investors to evade paying their interests and invested money.
• Manipulating the feelings of the people: Many IT firms often displays insensitive comments about particular race or religion of people and hence inciting tensions and hostilities among different groups of people.

The following impacts are mentioned in below:

• Decent work environment: Ethical practices and principles played a vital role in the development of decent work culture among the employees of an IT firm.
• Increased work participation: The sense of ethics has compelled both the management and the stuffs to share the burden of their respective tasks without any conflict or friction.

After discussing in details the role of ethical values in governing the policies and commercial approaches of an IT firm we are in favour of two most essential ways of inducting ethical principles in an organisation and these include:

• Strict enforcement of disciplines: Here the management of an IT firm must be strict enough in using means to earn the ethical values of the employees while assigning them any task.
• Incentives: Hard working and sincere employees of an IT firm must always be awarded with high incentives to set an example before other non-performing employees on the essence of ethical principles and values.

References

1. Glob Ethics 2014, Ethical Dilemmas in the Information Society: How Codes of Ethics Help to Find Ethical, retrieved on 21st May 2015, Solutionshttps://www.globethics.net/documents/4289936/13403236/GE_Global_11_web_final.pdf/0b8e3552-62e4-4495-a576-2f341326891b

2. Ethics 2009, The Importance of Ethical Culture: Increasing Trust and Driving Down Risk, retrieved on 21st May 2015, https://www.ethics.org/files/u5/CultureSup4.pdf

3. Ethics, Ethical Culture Building: A Modern Business Imperative, retrieved on 21st May 2015, https://www.ethics.org/files/u5/ECOA-Report-FINAL.pdf

4. SHRM 2009, Shaping an Ethical Workplace Culture, retrieved on 21st May 2015, https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/documents/9-13%20ethics%20epg%20final.pdf

5. Cima Global 2013, Embedding ethical values into the corporate culture, retrieved on 21st May 2015, https://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Professional%20ethics%20docs/Embedding_ethical_values_into_the_corporate_culture_report.pdf

6. Study 2015, Unethical Behavior in Business: Definition & Examples, retrieved on 21st May 2015, https://study.com/academy/lesson/unethical-behavior-in-business-definition-examples.html

7. Josephon Institute, The Hidden Costs of unethical behavior, retrieved on 21st May 2015, https://josephsoninstitute.org/pdf/Report_HiddenCostsUnethicalBehavior.pdf