Introduction
Ethical dilemmas take place when a circumstance necessitates one to choose amongst alternatives that generates a values conflict amongst the various organizational stakeholders. One of the major contemporary ethical dilemmas is the use of social media. In the present-day organizational setting and the advancement of technology, social media has become a significant business marketing tool, and it a fundamental part in the lives of personnel (Massotte, 2017). The progressing nature of social media implies that it is becoming more challenging to make a distinction between personal and professional within the organization in terms of a social media setting. This paper will examine this ethical dilemma using the PLUS ethical decision-making model as a guide.
Application of the PLUS Ethical Decision-Making Model
Step 1: Define the problem
The first step of the model encompasses defining the problem. The most important stage in any decision-making process is to make a determination as to why a decision is called for and ascertain the desired results (Ethics & Compliance Initiative, 2018). Regardless of the numerous benefits that social media brings to organization, there continues to be several risks associated with its use including the misappropriation of organizational resources, conflict of interests in addition to vilification of others. It paves the way for breach of confidentiality and conflicts of interest. Another associated problem is the organization’s use of social media in monitoring employee conduct and behavior and whether such actions are ethical or not.
Step 2: Seek out relevant assistance, guidance and support
The second phase encompassing searching out resources...
In this case, the resources employed comprise of professional guidelines and organizational policies and codes that delineate the ethical conducts that ought to be followed by organizations.
Step 3: Identify alternatives
The key to this particular phase is to ascertain as many solutions as possible to the problem at hand. There are different alternatives for dealing with social media within the organizational setting. These comprise of the following:
1. Prohibit the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the workplace entirely.
2. Encourage employees to use social media in the workplace devoid of any prohibitions
3. Separate the professional from the personal
Step 4: Evaluate the alternatives
This phase of the decision-making model emphasizes on evaluating every alternative and ascertaining the prospective positive and negative consequence of each one of them (Ethics & Compliance Initiative, 2018). The first alternative is to prohibit employees from using the social media platforms in the workplace as a whole. The main advantage of this alternative is that the company will not face any ethical problems regarding employee privacy and online vilification. However, the key shortcoming of this particular alternative lies in the fact that the lack of incorporating social media into the corporate setting means that the organization loses out on the numerous advantages of social media (Stafford, 2016). The second alternative is encouraging and fully permitting the use of social media within the workplace. The key advantage of this approach is that the organization will be able to fully capitalize…
