Question

Remember the Hawthorne Studies from Business & Society, Principles of Management, and/or Organizational Behavior? Even back in the early 1930 workers to the point where management knew how many telephone relays per hour, per minute. You have read about utilitarian theory. You have studied how managers have every right to optimize production. Hopefully, in a college of business, you are learning those tools every day-that is why you are studying business... Businesses own the machinery, the method, the material, and they hire the human resources to put everything together to build a good or service. Anything that decreases productivity is essentially theft of resources from the firm we could (and did) monitor were built per day, Question #1 Why in the world would any worker have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the workplace? Ordinarily I don't like to use the questions right out of the book, however this close to home for me. Please turn to page 342 under "Questions, Projects and Exercises" look at question #6. "Term papers on the Internet... one strikes practically every subject imaginable are available on Question #2: Are you persuaded? Question #3: Is there anything unethical about this service in general? Question #4: If so, who should be held accountable, the poster, the ultimate user, or someone else? Question #5: What can be done to combat this practice? Technological, or otherwise?

Answer 1

Question #1

The idea of reasonable expectation of privacy has changed over the years just as business operations and goals has changed. For example, in the 30’s we approached the market with a productivity based approach. This means that the firms were expected to focus on productivity alone and the needs/wants of the employees/workers were deprioritized. However, things have changed and nowadays concepts such as job satisfaction, motivation, etc. are considered a major factor in the success of the organization. This is when the organizations has begun to understand the true potential of the human resources and thus attempting to provide basic rights that he/she usually enjoys in personal life. Since one such right is the right to privacy, workers expect reasonable privacy at workplace.

Question #2

Yes. I am persuaded in the arguments provided. The two arguments made are that they are posted because it should be viewed as research resource and the second argument is that it encourages the instructors to innovate on the questions asked.

While both the arguments are valid in their own, we need to consider that in order for that to happen, two things need to happen. First of all, the papers should not only contain the solution but the method, approach and other aspects explained clearly. Then this can be considered as an academic contribution.

The next approach is that term papers should be different every time. This will indicate that the instructors are innovating. After all, instructors too work on the questions asked on term papers rather than picking them from book or other sources.

Question #3

I do not think there is anything unethical about this service. The purpose of the service should be to provide learning. However, I understand that there is a possibility that these resources will be used by some individuals to unethical purpose such as cheating on their term paper.

We need to look at this from an autonomy principle of ethics. For example, let’s say a man purchases a hammer and kills his neighbor with that hammer, is the hardware store responsible for the murder? Most likely no. The purpose of the hammer was to fix something and not commit crime. The same analogy applies to this instance.

Question #4

First of all, I do not think the services are unethical. In case they are, then we cannot hold a single person or a group accountable. We should hold the entire system accountable. The poster, users, and the service provider should be held accountable.