Ethical Issues within Organizations
Social media companies have faced ethical challenges due to social networking. Social media is used to define social interaction through technology-based tools that are internet based. This research aims at examining the organizational ethical issues that are faced by the Facebook company as a social media platform. Facebook has been identified as the most popular world’s social media company that has been relied upon social and enterprise responsibilities and ethics. Most firms have been associated with information technology in their daily operations that have been reported to have data security breaches. The use of more information technology has raised more issues regarding information security.
Facebook ethical issues
Facebook has been faced with a lot of ethical challenges and moral crises in the context of the rapid development of technologies and information. Social networking has been concerned with internet privacy whereby the users give out their personal details on the internet. There has been an ongoing controversy on the ongoing issues of privacy on Facebook. Facebook has been faced with ethical challenges related to corporate culture, reputation and innovation. Management and leadership style, sustainability, ethics and compliance, security breach and core values. These will be discussed in the research paper in order to clearly indicate the organizational ethical issues that social media companies are facing.
Boldness and openness in their organizational culture
Facebook organizational culture has put more emphasis on innovation and creativity. This has facilitated innovation which is important in the social media business. Facebook has described its corporate culture as a hacker culture whereby it has pushed its employee to strive and enhance improvement which has enabled more connection in the world. However, the organizational culture has had a limitation that has led to ethical issues that are related to their corporate culture.
The corporate culture has facilitated boldness and openness in employee’s activities (Griffin and Moorhead, 2011). This is whereby the employees have been encouraged to tackle problems right away without consulting senior management. This has led to negative effects of the problems in the social media business. Openness has significantly affected the culture of the company. This is because it has influenced efficient and effective internal communications. They have minimized the restrictions of their employee’s activities. This has led to the difficulty of imposing limits on the employees’ access to information hence leading to ethical concerns.
Innovation and reputation
Technological innovations have led to both opportunities and challenges for organizations. The advancement of new information technologies has led to numerous ethical concerns and issues in the social networking etiquette code (Chatterjee, 2015). The update on Facebook social networking has led to raised questions about the ability to facilitate social grooming, deception and defamatory content creation (Wasike, 2013). Facebook has wealth of data that has been a serious issue in privacy. Innovation has led to identity theft which has led to ethical issues on Facebook. This is a form of technology that has been utilized by cybercriminals to imitate somebody’s identity with an aim to cause criminal acts. This has been done through the creation of a fake account, hacking or stealing the password of the victim in order to access certain information in their account.
Personal autonomy has been influenced by innovation and reputation on emerging technologies. Technology has been identified as one of the keys are that has contributed to increasing awareness and control of human actions. As a digital company, Facebook has to ensure that they address the challenges of privacy of the user. They have struggled with the development of new processes that have led to ethical issues on security, transparency, and reliability.
Leadership and management style (lack of integrity)
Being ethical is considered as one of the core parts of management and leadership styles. Democratic leadership in the Facebook company has led to ethical concerns in the management of the organization. Facebook leadership has allowed flexibility and with the less consultative approach. Lack of consultative approach has led to lack of informed decision of the employees which has influenced the operations of the company (Griffin, and Moorhead, 2011). The Facebook company has increased employee relations which have motivated the employees through giving them numerous benefits that can assist them, in balancing their personal and work life. However, most of the employees have complained that there is lack of more clear vision to the team.
There are less privacy and functional infrastructure on Facebook which has led to inefficient team leadership hence unethical leadership (Waters and Ackerman, 2011). The fact that the company is still acting like a startup whereas it is a big corporation has led to unethical management that has led to potential issues while dealing with social media practice. Facebook has been identified to add more employees faster than their revenue growth. The enormous growth has led to ethical concerns due to more problems associated with more people in the company.
Sustainability issues (Misleading information and advertisements)
Facebook has a large list of unethical issues that are related to sustainability of the company. These include harassment, foreign interference, potential threats to user’s mental health and misleading information. Facebook is facing a lot of challenges as it matures as an organization. The company has been faced with issues such as misinformation and misleading advertisements. The company needs to identify its role in the society in order to be sustainable and address issues related to accurate information that will reduce ethical problems in the business.
The most demanding problem in the Facebook company as a social media platform is the fact that there is fake news that has influenced the sustainability of the company in the community (Weiss,2014). This has led to the company being banned in some countries because of the negative aspects of the technology. The fact that the company has been used to interconnect billion of people, has facilitated it to spreading misinformation. This has led to ethical concerns on how the company needs to balance on their influence on public perception.
Compliance and ethics (Privacy issues)
Facebook has faced substantial business risk in relation to rules for general data protection. The danger that Facebook has faced has been related to complying with rules on targeted online ads for users. Insufficient privacy regulation has led to ethical challenges in the social network company (Martin,2015). Facebook recent crisis on compliance is one of the privacy issues that the company has to deal with in their existence. Facebook has lost handling of data and how it can be acquired by the developers of their app. Facebook has around 8 million users who have indicated lack of satisfaction about their personal life being shared with their friends on a daily feed.
The default privacy setting on Facebook has enabled individuals to access personal information and the profile without a limit on personal information. The controls in Facebook have not been capable of limiting the viewers. There is a lot of misused power on access of information which has led to the security risk of the intimate details and breeding of malcontent in the social networking website.
Company Core values
The aim of Facebook is to build a close community and bring more people connected. Core values are considered as the principles that are utilized in an organization in order to ensure that their internal conduct is in relation to the external world. Facebook is facing challenges of the general erosion of their trust to their users. The company has been associated with ethical challenges of copyright and patent issues which have led to barriers in the company. Lack of maintaining trust for their users has failed the company on the core and personal values. Trust in
Facebook has reached a low standard whereby there have been more concerns about tackling bullying, a scattering of radical content and illegal activities. Content on the fake news has also led to unethical information that has ruled out the traditional respect of source of news (Guerci, 2015). Infringement of patent rights on Facebook has led to ethical concerns. Facebook has been committed to assisting organizations and people to protect their intellectual property but has failed to enhance the secure page. Violation of these rights has led to Facebook failing to grant patents hence leading to challenges of ethical business practices.
Security breach (Security issues)
Today there are a number of threats to information and information systems that have led to major security issues facing organizations such as Facebook. Their security issues have been facilitated by hackers, crackers, and employees (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015). This has led to ethical concerns while working with customers and employee’s information. Security issues have led privacy concern within Facebook that has put personal information on the threat of being highly publicized. Invasion of privacy through data mining engineering that has influenced online market on Facebook. Facebook has been so careless about their security such that it has contained systems such as super wall and creation of enormous security gap. Facebook is also vulnerable to an attack that has the potential of losing personal data. These have led to attempts of leakage of information through Facebook.
Organizational ethical issues are common problems within operations of an organization. Ethical challenges and dilemmas define the ethical issues in a company. Facebook being a social media company has faced ethical challenges related to privacy and security issues, management and leadership styles, sustainability of the organization and its corporate culture. This has indicated the ethical problems that have been related to Facebook and how they have influenced their users and the entire community.
References
Chatterjee, S. et al 2015, the Strategic relevance of organizational virtues enabled by information technology in organizational innovation.Journal of Management Information Systems, 32(3), 158-196.
Collins, D., 2012. Business ethics: How to design and manage ethical organizations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Ferrell, O.C., and Friedrich, J., 2015. Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education.
Griffin, R.W. and Moorhead, G., 2011. Organizational Behavior. Cengage Learning.
Guerci, M. et al 2015, The impact of human resource management practices and corporate sustainability on organizational ethical climates: An employee perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(2), 325-342.