WEEK 4 DISCUSSION 2: Different Stakeholder Perspectives: Workplace Privacy

Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read Chapter 7: Ethical Decision Making: Technology and Privacy in the Workplace in your textbook (Hartman et al., 2021). In addition, you may wish to review Chapter 21 in A Companion to Business EthicsLinks to an external site. (Frederick, 1999), and How to Monitor Your Employees – While Respecting Their PrivacyLinks to an external site. (Blackman, 2020).

The conflict with workplace privacy exists between the employer’s right to protect its interests and the employees’ to be free from wrongful intrusions. This conflict arises with the increasing abilities of technological monitoring. The employer might argue that such monitoring of employees allows it to efficiently manage the workplace and increase productivity through data gathering. The employee might argue that technological monitoring is not conducive to a trusting or respectful work environment, negatively affecting employee motivation and productivity. Do employers have the right to manage their organizations through monitoring, at least to a certain degree? Should employees have the right to privacy, or some degree of it, in the workplace? Can monitoring be done while also respecting employees?

In Hartman et al. (2021), review the Reality Check section titled “Privacy in the Future – It Is Now!” and consider practices of technological monitoring by the company Humanyze (p. 230). In an initial post of at least 400 words, citing at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed resources, address the following:

• Do the monitoring practices employed by Humanyze violate the privacy of their employees? Are their practices respectful of their employees? Explain your answers.
• What are the ethical issues associated with Humanyze’s monitoring practices? Incorporate utilitarianism, deontology, or virtue ethics in your answer. Demonstrate your understanding of specific and relevant aspects of the ethical theory you decide to apply.
• Reflecting on your responses to the above questions, identify the primary perspective that you were considering. Was your focus on the employee or the employer? If it was the employee, turn your focus now to Humanyze’s perspective and answer the questions above. However, if you initially focused on Humanyze’s perspective, turn your focus toward the employee’s perspective and explain how employees might answer the above questions. The aim is to fully and fairly consider both perspectives in this discussion.
• Considering both the perspective of the employer and employee, explain any overlapping consensus and any conflict between the two perspectives. Can a compromise be made that would satisfy both parties? And could this compromise be respectful as well as ethical? Explain why or why not.

Tutorial for Different Stakeholder Perspectives: Workplace Privacy