Ethical Issues Arising from the Usage of Electronic Communications in the Workplace

E-mail has become the most popular communication tool in the professional environment. Electronic communications, because of their specific nature, raise a number of ethical issues: e-mail communications are distance, asynchronous, text-based, and interactive computer-mediated communications and allow for storage, retrieval, broadcast and manipulation of messages. These specificities give rise to misunderstanding, misconduct in the absence of the interlocutors, information and mail overload, as well as privacy infringement and misuse of shared computing resources. Inexperience explains some users’ unethical behavior. Other forms of unethical behavior find their roots in corporate culture, internal competition and management styles. E-businesses, as early adopters of information and communication technologies, are being particularly exposed to such behaviors, since they rely heavily on electronic communications. They should therefore assess their internal situation and develop and enforce e-mail policies accordingly.

Ethics in E-Marketing

Some of the ethical issues experienced in traditional marketing practices are encountered in those of e-marketing as well. However, e-marketing practices raise specific new and different ethical issues as well. For instance, new forms of dynamic pricing, spam email advertising, and the use of tracking cookies for commercial purposes have all raised ethical issues. These issues can be examined from the perspective of such components of the traditional marketing mix as product, price, place and promotion, which are under the control of marketing executives. As such, an awareness of the ethical issues in e-marketing under the control of marketing executives is central to the realization of an ethical climate in e-businesses. The aim of this chapter is to present a critical analysis of ethical issues in e-commerce in relation to the marketing mix. The topics discussed within this framework will be enlightening for the ethical decision making process and practices of e-marketing.

Privacy Revisited

The underlying concept of privacy has not changed for centuries, but our approach to acknowledging privacy in our transactions, exchanges, and relationships must be revisited as our technological environment – what we can do with information – has evolved. The goal of this chapter is to focus on the debate over the definition of privacy as it is required for other debates and has direct implications to how we recognize, test, and justify privacy in scholarship and practice. I argue privacy is best viewed as the ability of an individual to control information within a negotiated zone. I illustrate this view of privacy through an analysis of Facebook’s Beacon program and place the case in the context of both privacy violations and successful business strategies. I find privacy zones are illuminating for situations from 10th century England to current social networking programs and are useful in identifying mutually beneficial solutions among stakeholders.

Against Strong Copyright in E-Business

As digital media give increasing power to users—power to reproduce, share, remix, and otherwise make use of content—businesses based on content provision are forced to either turn to technological and legal means of disempowering users, or to change their business models. By looking at Lockean and Kantian theories as applied to intellectual property rights, we see that business is not justified in disempowering users in this way, and that these theories obligate e-business to find new business models. Utilitarian considerations support disempowering users in this way in some circumstances and for the time being, but also show that there is a general obligation to move to new business models. On these moral bases, as well as on practical bases, e-business ought to refrain from using the legally permitted strong copyright protections, and should instead find ways of doing business which support, value, and respect the technical capabilities that users have gained.

The Transformative Nature of E-Business

The growth of various forms of e-business, from Internet sales and marketing to online financial processing, has been exponential in recent years. It is no exaggeration to say that nearly all forms of business involve elements of e-business today. Internet technologies provide businesses with the potential to more effectively research, market and distribute products and services, to more efficiently manage operations, and to better facilitate the processing of business transactions. However, e-business activities can raise ethical issues, as the new forms of technology and business practices utilized in e-business have the potential to pose significant moral risk as well. As such, both scholars and business persons have a responsibility to be aware of the ethical implications of e-business and to endeavor to promote ethically appropriate forms of e-business. The aim of this chapter is to aid in those enterprises by mapping out some of the major ethical issues connected to e-business. In doing so, this chapter seeks both to serve as a general introduction to this volume and to provide a conceptual framework for understanding and responding to many of the ethical issues found in e-business.

The Anonymity of the Internet

Commerce performed electronically using the Internet (e-commerce) faces a unique and difficult problem, the anonymity of the Internet. Because the parties are not in physical proximity to one another, there are limited avenues for trust to arise between them, and this leads to the fear of cheating and promise-breaking. To resolve this problem, I explore solutions that are based on Thomas Hobbes’s solutions to the problem of the free rider and apply them to e-commerce.

Moral Guidelines for Marketing Good Corporate Conduct Online

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is highly valuable for transnational corporations, but entails special requirements of heightened honesty in the marketing of CSR as compared to other goods and services. Companies need help in finding appropriate venues for advertising CSR. The Internet is an ideal medium for advertising CSR because it affords a global reach and greater space than the confines of standard advertising venues. However, using the Internet also poses special challenges in terms of perceived epistemic criteria for truth in a company’s online presence. This chapter highlights both the problems and benefits of marketing good corporate conduct online and provides moral guidelines for marketers of good corporate conduct.

Trust, Loyalty, and ECommerce

E-commerce has experienced a meteoric rise from technological curiosity to substantive institution in little more than a decade of meaningful existence. The annual value of its global transactions is measured in the trillions of dollars. However, the unique nature of e-commerce has created a host of challenges for those seeking to ensure its continued vitality. The most significant of these challenges is the maintenance of user trust. To this point, e-commerce has tended to look to traditional methods of regulation to govern its participants and their transactions. However, the unique character of e-commerce and the concerns it generates warrant consideration of non-traditional approaches to regulation as well. This chapter suggests that fiduciary law, with its focus on maintaining the integrity of certain important relationships in contemporary society, could be a useful tool in e-commerce regulation by facilitating the trust and loyalty that is foundational to its success.

E-Business Goes Mobile

Where others have remarked on the possible fiduciary regulation of e-commerce in general, this chapter makes a more specific and demanding normative claim; notably, that we in fact ought to regulate Mobile Location Based Services (MLBS) along fiduciary lines. Part I describes the limited-access nature of fiduciary relationships and the conditions of peculiar vulnerability and dependence that attract fiduciary obligations. Part II explains the dynamics of user-provider relationships in MLBS environments and argues that the conditions present therein generate fiduciary obligations. Part III describes and addresses a likely criticism; in particular, that the imposition of fiduciary obligations on MLBS providers is morally incompatible with the special fiduciary status rightly and already afforded to equity holders. In response, I argue that those who argue along these lines tend to confuse a manager’s nominate function with their strict fiduciary duty to refrain from the opportunistic exploitation of those they serve.

The Ethical Implications of A/B and Multivariate E-Commerce Optimization Testing

A/B and multivariate website optimization may not seem ethically problematic at first blush; however, in this chapter I will consider some of the less obvious elements that have been tested, such as header color, button design, and the style of tabs used for linking to product details. A/B and multivariate testing has shown that these seemingly insignificant changes can increase average order value and decrease abandoned shopping carts, among other results. I will consider these tests through the lens of the major ethical systems of utilitarianism, Kant’s respect for person’s principle, and virtue ethics, using specific case studies and examples of testing results. I conclude that this type of practice is likely ethically problematic in many uses, as understood through all three ethical systems. Along the way I will be careful to demonstrate how the manipulation resulting from A/B and multivariate testing is different and more problematic than that of advertising in general.