Whistleblowing and employee social network privacy rights

Business Cases

Does Blowing the Whistle Violate Company Loyalty?

Summary of Sides

Whistle blowers face both practical and ethical dilemmas in deciding whether or not to shed light on internal workings of businesses or other organizations that pose a threat to the public interest or otherwise promote unethical or damaging practices. According to philosopher Sissela Bok, there is a clear moral violation in an act of whistle blowing and the destruction of company loyalty that it represents. Bok claims, in fact, that there are "jarring" and "bitter" elements of whistle blowing that earn it a certain label as a moral violation: "dissent, breach of loyalty, and accusation" (p. 178). The primary argument Bok makes is that the whistle blower necessarily destroys trust between themselves and the organization when they blow the whistle, and this carries an inherent ethical breach. Bok also spends a great deal of time discussing the appearance and the possibility of a conflict of interest in whistle blowing, suggesting that appearance alone is reason to possibly refrain from whistle blowing.

Robert a. Larmer takes the opposite view, suggesting that employees might not even bear their employees any duty of loyalty in the first place and that the duty to public interest and larger ethical principles is paramount, anyway. In addition, with moral principles as primary goals, Larmer insists that, "to the degree that an action is genuinely immoral, it is impossible that it is in the agent's best interests" (p. 187). In other words, an employee isn't harming an organization by blowing the whistle because blowing the whistle is meant to place the organization on a more moral track. All of this defends the act of whistle blowing from moral and ethical perspectives.

Analysis

Given both of the arguments above, it must be determined that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Neither author insists that the issue is black and white, but both ultimately conclude that the act is either good or bad based on the merits of the act and ignore the messy possibility that it could be both. Employees who blow the whistle are violating certain ethical duties to their companies and potentially to their families and themselves due to the retaliation that is likely to follow, but they are upholding their ethical duties to society at large when whistles are blown. Similarly, failing to bring attention to abuses is a failure of ethical duty to the general public even though it upholds duty to the company. The idea that employees do not have a duty to the companies they work must be dismissed as ludicrous; if this were true, there would be a great many problems faced by businesses.

In the United States' banking industry, whistle blowing is a highly sensitive issue in the wake of the recent financial turmoil and the "Occupy" protests. Pressure by the public for greater transparency and fairness in banking provides a compelling manifestation of the good served by blowing the whistle, however there is also a great deal of likelihood that events and actions will be misunderstood by the general public and that problems might be seen where none exist. Whistle blowing should be governed by legality, with only serious and harmful breaches warranting a violation of company trust in order to serve the public good.

Issue 11: Is Employer Monitoring of Employee Social Media Justified?

Summary of Sides

The rise of social media and the near ubiquity of its use has led to an increasing trend of employers screening potential hires and monitoring existing employees through their social media activity on sites like Facebook and Twitter. The ethicality of such monitoring has been questioned by ethical scholars Brian Elzweig and Donna K. Pepples argue that employers have a responsibility to their organizations to ensure that employees are not negligent in their actions that directly affect the company or that might negatively reflect upon the company. More to the point, these authors argue that there is no real expectation of privacy on social networking sites and that employers could not be violating any such expectation, as "a general expectation cannot be relied upon just by using the privacy settings" (p. 195). Employers are upholding their duty to the company and not violating any duties to employees as long as they remain within the bounds of the law, in this argument.

Eric Krell, on the other hand, insists that employees do have rights to privacy and that these should extend to their social media. He opens with the statement, "Corporate privacy generally covers customer and employee privacy, with subcategories including the privacy of job applicants" (p. 209). Krell does not really defend this statement, but rather describes a means of ensuring that privacy matters are consistently understood and applied without breaching this right to privacy. A privacy plan that is regularly reviewed, updated, and communicated will protect employee privacy and keep employers from prying into non-company affairs.

Analysis