Communication Vitruvius Sportswear Case Study

Communication Vitruvius Sportswear Case Study Dennis Gardner, a marketing manager for Seattle's Vitruvius Sportswear has recently found out that his boss has been monitoring his email transactions at work and reading his personal email. He found this out by way of one of the company's IT systems engineers who told him what was going on. Dennis feels that his privacy has been violated and that something needs to be done about it. He thinks that he needs to tell someone about what is going on.

He decides the person to tell is one of the founding officers of the corporation, Tim Kelleher. The problem in this case is two fold. Has Dennis violated the companies' email policy by exchanging personal emails with his doctor? And is taking the problem to Tim Kelleher the right way to handle the situation? Facts Dennis Gardner has been exchanging personal emails with various people including his doctor. The system administrator has the right to look at message traffic at any time. Zack Crowell is listed as a system administrator.

Zack has been reading monitoring Dennis's email activity and reading his personal messages. Gardner was told by someone in the company that personal messages were fine, as long as they didn't overload the system, operate a business for profit, or pass along inappropriate information. There appears to be no set policy within the company in which to report ethical issues. Solution In this case there are a couple of different things that should have happened.

The first is that Dennis knew when he signed the statement about the email protocol at work he should have heeded what it said and followed it. If there was something in his life that he didn't want anyone else to know then he shouldn't have exchanged emails about it at work. Even though he was told in orientation that personal email were alright, he should not have assumed that meant that no one would be monitoring them.

There is a question though about whether monitoring personal emails and reading them is the same thing. The policy says that a system administrator can monitor message traffic but does not necessarily say that they can read those messages. If it were to be determined that monitoring and reading as two different things then Zack may have committed an ethical violation by reading Dennis's email.

If Zack had reason to believe that Dennis was using the company email system inappropriately then he should have brought that to Dennis's attention and dealt with it instead of reading the emails and then discussing that information with other employees. In regards to Dennis's decision to take this issue straight to Tim Kelleher instead of first taking the issue to Zack was probably the wrong thing to do. Dennis should have first confronted Zack about the issue to find out what was going on.

If he could not get any satisfaction there then taking the issue to Tim would have been appropriate. Another solution that could have taken place would be for Dennis to report the issue to an ethics hotline in order to have it investigated by neutral parties. This of course could only happen if the company has such a line and policy in place.

This type of system helps by providing employees with a way to report things that happen within the company without having to have confrontational discussions with possible offending parties. Reason If an electronic mail (e-mail) system is utilized within a business, the employer owns it and is permitted to look at its contents whenever it wants.

Messages that are sent inside the company as well as those that are sent from any terminal to another company or from another business to any terminal in the company can be subject to monitoring by the employer. This also comprises web-based email accounts as well as any instant messages that are exchanged. Generally, workers should not take for granted that any of these activities are not being looked at and that they are private (Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring, 2011).

It has been determined by many court cases that the employer has to right to look at what is coming and going via their email systems. Comments/Thoughts This case brings up a lot of.