The rise of 21st century marked the transition phase of the most global businesses towards a paperless office environment, where the focus shifted the manual to the computerized form of work culture. But at the same time, change brought a number of threats and menace in terms of one of the biggest issues of the current businesses, the social engineering used among the hackers for cracking techniques that rely more on human weaknesses rather than technology itself. The aim or motive of such attacks was getting access to passwords or other relevant information by tricking people for carrying out illegal or criminal activities. FBI and other security experts hold a firm view that majority of threats originate from the internal working environment or employees who have been granted additional privileges or authorities to company’s information. People who have an urge for power and control over other individuals exhibit the social Continue reading
Business Ethics
Individual Privacy – A Right Masked as Luxury
Personal privacy is a concept not foreign to most, if not all individuals. Whether it is to keep certain details about themselves private or to stray away from the societal obligations tied to themselves, individuals tend to isolate themselves to prevent things close to them from becoming public. Though in the last twenty years, information technology has essentially erased the barrier dividing what personal and private information should be. Large tech companies have imposed a risk on individuals’ privacy with the way personal information is handled and distributed within those companies. Companies such as Google and Facebook constantly track an individual’s behaviours online and use their data in immoral ways that most individuals are not aware of. Google is notorious for this, and even explicitly states in their terms of service that their “…automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized Continue reading
Business Ethics Case Study: The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal
Over the last few decades, there has been great concern regarding the sustainability and conservation of the environment. Environmental pollution and globalization have become the concern of most environmental protection agencies. The harmful and mortal effects of nitrogen oxide, which is a pollutant found in car exhaust have led the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten emission control considering the attention paid to conservation and saving the green. These concerns have made the EPA constantly announce restrictions for standard emissions for all types of vehicles the sports car, heavy-duty trucks, automobiles, and other types of cars. These stringent measures are necessary considering that nitrogen gas emitted is harmful to human health and results in diseases such as asthma, premature death, bronchitis, and respiratory and cardiovascular. In 2015, the scandal regarding diesel cheat damaged the image of the Volkswagen Company. In light of the discovery of the diesel dupe of Volkswagen Continue reading
Case Study on Business Ethics: The Inside Story of the Collapse of AIG
AIG or American International Group and its subsequent failure are one of, if not the most well-known company failures in financial history. Of the more recent bankruptcies filed for companies like Enron and Worldcom, the effects and unforeseeable consequences of the failure of a company like AIG would be much more widespread and felt by many more Americans at the lay person level. AIG is primarily an insurance company that sells Property casualty, life, and travel insurance to customers the world over. However, there was another arm to the company known as AIG FP or American International Group Financial Products division. This division dealt in the financial markets as more than an intermediary, but actually as a trader. The most publicized and understood version of what happened at AIG is that the federal government bailed them out. The term bailout has come to be understood as a final resort transaction Continue reading
Introduction to Business Ethics
There is a big difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. – Justice Potter Stewart Man is a social animal. Though rules of nature control humans as they control other living beings, man himself has derived certain principles to govern his own individual and group behavior. These rules, in the form of behavioral standards may differ across cultures and times, but their basic objectives are always mutual existence and peace within the particular community or the social group. By ensuring security and protection of the group these standards helps in the survival of the particular community or a social group and thus its members. These standards of behavior are called “ethics.” Ethics is two things: First, ethics refers to well-based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, Continue reading