350 Word Essay On Business Ethics

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and explain the ethical practices in the business. An article from the recent five years had been taken. The name of the article is Cambridge Analytica scandal which was published in N.Y. times which is written by Perrin. The business practices and the ethical responsibilities of an organization and the responsibilities of the organization which were carried by the particular organization while working in a particular country are analyzed and discussed. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal has been analyzed and discussed in this paper. The rigid structure of the business of Facebook has been discussed and how Facebook is not willing to change its business model after unethical scandals had been discussed in this paper.

Responsibilities Of The Facebook

From this case it has been observed that Facebook has breached the principle of the United Nations Global Compact. The principle which is breached by the Facebook is the violation of the Human Rights because it breached the privacy of the users. As it is known that the right to the privacy is considered as the Human right (Nytimes, 2021).  According to United Nations global compact human rights principle include two principles and these principles are: –

• It is the responsibility of businesses that they should support and respect the human rights, which are particularly identified as the human rights globally.
• It is mandatory for the businesses that they should not be in any kind of conflict with these human rights and there should be no human rights abuse by the businesses.

The N.Y. times has published an article about the Cambridge Analytica scandal which was carried out by the Facebook (Perrin, 2018). New York times worked with The Observer of London and The Guardian and they together obtained the documents and these documents were mainly obtained from inside the Cambridge Analytica. The Cambridge Analytica was mainly a data firm which was owned by Robert Mercer. From the collected documents it has been proved that, this data was used improperly and this data was obtained from the Facebook.   It has been stated that this data was obtained for the purpose to build the voter profile. This news which was published by the N.Y times accelerated an investigation against the Cambridge Analytica and it has also dragged the Facebook into it and Facebook faced its biggest crisis ever (Brown, 2020). It has been reported that employees of the Cambridge Analytica collected the data and sold the profiles of the American voters for election campaigns. It has reported that the data of around 10 million users had been acquired and sold which was known as the largest known leak in the history of Facebook. Cambridge was received a warning from their own lawyer regarding the collection of the data and the violation of the election law of the America.

 It has been found by the Times that there is the existence of the data and this data is beyond the control of the Facebook which clearly violate the right to privacy of the people and right to privacy is declared as the universal human right (Wilson, 2019). After the reports published by the Times the C.E.O of the Cambridge Analytica suspended and a video was released by the British T.V channel in which it was shown that bribery and seduction was used so that the foreign elections can be influenced. Later it has founded that Facebook has violated an agreement for safeguarding the data of the users. It has been reported by the Times that the data of the 50 million users had been harvested by the Facebook and there was an estimate response from the side of the Facebook which showed that 87 million users were affected from this scandal (Venturini and Rogers, 2019).

Business Ethics And Corporate Social Responsibility

From this case study it has been observed that Stakeholder theory is used which can help in understanding the dilemma of Facebook. This theory states that there are some business responsibilities of the organization and its stakeholders should be respected. This theory focused on the concept that everybody deserved to be treated with the respect.  The rights are given by the society and these rights of the individuals should be protected on the highest priority. The concept of the rights is ethically valid and considered as right because large population endorses these rights. In this Cambridge Analytica scandal the rights of the people are violated and their right to privacy was not protected by the Facebook and the trust of the stakeholders has bene broken by the Facebook (Kozlowska, 2018).

The human rights element of the Corporate social responsibility theory has been violated in this case. As it is known that ethical standards should be maintained by the businesses for the purpose of improving the rights of the employees, local community and society as whole. But in case of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook was unable to protect the rights of the people and it breached the human rights of the individuals, due to which people had to suffer a lot (Chen, 2018). It has been observed that this entire scandal affected the reputation of the Facebook across the world. This scandal  has impacts on the people and society as whole because the exploitation of the data of the users had been found.  The trust of the people was broken by this scandal and this scandal had the potential to shut down the company. As it is known that the billion of the users share their information on the Facebook and this data which is shown by the users is prone to the unethical and other malicious activities (Tuttle, 2018).

Recommendations

It is necessary for the Facebook, that it should have the well-defined quality management system because it has personal data of the people which is at risk and it has been observed that there is risk of the hijacking of data which can be misused. For Facebook it is necessary to gain the confidence of the of the customer which can be done only by building trust among the customers. Facebook should follow the approach of monitor and improve the systems. There should be the introduction of the third-party developers to access the data which can help in maintaining the confidentiality of the data of the users. It has been found that for companies like Facebook it is necessary that, they should improve and control the quality. This improvement and control of the quality can be done by involving the creating processes and these processes should able to meet the desired results and for the improvement purposes, it is necessary that there should be optimal effectiveness (Tarran, B., 2018).

Conclusion

From this paper, it can be concluded that, Facebook is a conglomerate of social media that has connected billions of people across the globe through advertisements and made millions in the process. However, by disregarding legal and ethical issues, it has become vulnerable to third parties who have taken advantage of their users’ private data for political purposes. Nevertheless, Facebook reacted quickly to the scandal, and its strategic leadership objectively assessed the situation and took positive steps to regain confidence. In building a successful company, Mark Zuckerberg and Sandberg have done a remarkable job. However, now that Facebook’s privacy concerns are actually on their radar, they need to come up with a permanent solution to the problem.

References

Brown, A.J., 2020. “Should I Stay or Should I Leave?”: Exploring (Dis) continued Facebook Use After the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. Social Media+ Society, 6(1), p.2056305120913884.

Chen, A., 2018. Cambridge Analytica and our lives inside the surveillance machine. The New Yorker, 21, pp.8-10.

Kozlowska, I., 2018. Facebook and data privacy in the age of Cambridge Analytica. Seattle, WA: The University of Washington. Retrieved August, 1, p.2019.

Nytimes.com. 2021. Cambridge Analytica And Facebook: The Scandal And The Fallout So Far (Published 2018). [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html> [Accessed 18 January 2021].

Perrin, A., 2018. Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook. Pew Research Center, 5.

Tarran, B., 2018. What can we learn from the Facebook—Cambridge Analytica scandal?. Significance, 15(3), pp.4-5.

Tuttle, H., 2018. Facebook scandal raises data privacy concerns. Risk Management, 65(5), pp.6-9.

Venturini, T. and Rogers, R., 2019. “API-Based Research” or How can Digital Sociology and Journalism Studies Learn from the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Data Breach. Digital Journalism, 7(4), pp.532-540.

Wilson, R., 2019. Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and Influence Operations: A Case Study and Anticipatory Ethical Analysis. In European Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (pp. 587-XX). Academic Conferences International Limited.