Imagine that you are an ethics consultant to a multinational company that makes smartphones. You also make the operating system that the smartphones run. You are based in the USA but your phones are...

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BUSINESS ETHICS PRACTICE BY A SMARTPHONE COMPANY
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Answer 1    3
Answer 2    7
Recommendation    8
Conclusion    10
Bibliography    12
Introduction
A business organization has to follow certain rules and regulations that come under the ethical norms of the company. The fundamentals of the business ethics states that the promotion of conduct based on the integrity and that endangered trust for the organization must be done. It further emphasizes on the diversity, corporate social responsibility and the protection of the trust and ensuring security to the customers[footnoteRef:1]. In this assignment, the discussion will be made regarding the ethical issues of a Smartphone company who tries to gather data from the cell phones of the person who have died because of Covid 19 and trace their source of infection. [1: Linda K. Trevino and Katherine A. Nelson. Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.]
The effectiveness of this method has been seen in other countries, where the identification of infected person helped to trace further more people who came in contact and were infected and the way, which strategy helped in stopping the spread of the virus. In this study, the evaluation of the method along with the ethical consideration of the company and government will be discussed. The purpose of this article is to analyzecritically the effectiveness of the initiative that government proposes to take.
Answer 1
In the present scenario, the multinational Smartphone Company is trying to gather information of the patients who have died from the Covid 19 disease, on request from the USA government. However, as per the information security and the ethics, it is very important for the company to protect the confidentiality of the customers, which is a top priority of the IT department of the company. Going through the personal data of the person is not only violation of the ethical standards; however, it will lead to the compromise on the security aspect of the people.
As the company had already stated that this would take to get access to all the phones having the similar operating system and that could create a privacy concern. In this scenario, the government is asking for the data collection, however it needs the company to allow access for all the users who have the same operating system running phone, however based on the code of ethics it is not a right thing to do to violate the privacy of any people[footnoteRef:2]. The issue of privacy is one of the most important concerns in the present days. Many people are using their Smartphone devices to store extremely confidential information’s as that could help them to get an access at any moment of time. [2: N. H. Marmaya, N. A. Razak, N. E. Alias, R. A. Karim, J. R. Saari, H. Borhan, W. L. Koe, and S. M. Salim. "Generation Y’s Brand Loyalty for Smartphone in Malaysia." International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9, no. 10 (2019)]
The government had made certain laws, which take the responsibility of protecting the data and avoid the unauthorized access such as GDPR and CCPA, which are designed especially to address the privacy los because of the data compromise[footnoteRef:3]. As in this case, the government is insisting for the data because of the seriousness of the situation because of Covid 19, therefore following the ethical theories of the business ethics, company must follow and work according to that. [3: Aino Halinen and Päivi Jokela. "Exploring ethics in business networks: Propositions for future research." In Extending the Business Network Approach, pp. 333-356. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016.]
Any business ethics is being followed by certain theories and based on that, the company uses to take decision and function according to that. The major three ethical theories that can be considered with respect to the scenario are Utilitarian, Kantian and Virtue ethics[footnoteRef:4]. Before going further, the theories are as follows: [4: Göran Svensson, Carmen Padin, and David Eriksson. "Glocal business sustainability: Performance beyond zero!" International Journal of procurement management 9, no. 1 (2016): 15-26.]
· Utilitarian:
This ethical theory defines that any action taken is right if it tends to spread happiness and is wrong if it creates problems for any person. Further, elaborating the utilitarianism that the rightness or wrongness of any action is dependent on the motive of the action[footnoteRef:5]. Therefore, in this scenario the motive of the government is right with respect to track the persons who came in contact with the persons who have died of Covid 19 as to protect them from being infected or infect others. [5: Muhammad Yamin Lubis. "Land conversion to the poor people in the perspective of utilitarianism theory by Bentham." In E3S Web of Conferences, vol. 52, p. 00053. EDP Sciences, 2018.]
The wrong of this motive is with respect to the people who are fearful of the fact that their personal data and information will be compromised, as the mobile company needs to access all the mobile phones having similar operating system. Further, this theory argues that there might be some problems initially for few peoples, however the overall motive of this action will do god for all.
· Kantian Theory:
This...