E-commerce content management systems and strategies

E-Commerce Ethics

The author of this report is asked to answer to five major questions or series of questions. First, the author of the paper is asked to answer a few brief questions relating to Alibaba.com as described in application case 15.3. The second question is what business ethics defines and the third asks the author to provide an example of an e-commerce activity that is legal but not ethical. The fourth question asks what any good code of ethics could or should include and the final question is what e-commerce websites can do to safeguard personal information.

Questions Answered

The Alibaba website improved its content management by filtering out spam and other nefarious material and communications. The social and cultural aspects of Alibaba.com are obvious in that the site gives Chinese SME's of small and medium size the portal to sell their wares to American and other non-Chinese buyers around the world. Many companies do not make their own content management system because drawing one up and developing such a system is a very intensive, expensive and time-consuming task and the start-up time and cost is much less if the software/content management system is leased. As for the "revenge" comment, many people wield business as a cudgel to crush rivals and exact revenge, even on a whim.

Business ethics is the generally accepted guidelines and rules that business are expected to follow including things that are both unethical and illegal but it also includes other things that are legal but highly objectionably if not wholly unethical. In an e-commerce context, an illegal AND unethical act would be stealing credit card information, either from within or outside of the business. An example of something that is unethical but not illegal would be badmouthing one's competitors in a public fashion on the website in a punitive and incendiary way. Showing value is one thing but character assassination, whether it crosses the line of slander, is not right and not ethical (SCPR, 2013).

Any proper code of ethics should include general guidelines as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. It should be stated clearly that the law should never be bent or broken but it should also be defined what is permissible in terms of negotiations, competition and daily business activities in general. It is perhaps too far a reach to account for every specific contingency, but the general guidelines should make clear what the prism is for determining whether something is ethical or not.