Yours, Mine or Ours by Lisa Bertagnoli - Essay Example

With the growing inter-dependability, workplaces are flooded with the most advanced technologies and equipment to make work easier, faster, and better. It so happens sometimes that employees own hi-tech gadgets and equipment, that they carry over to workplaces and utilize them for greater productivity. This trend has been on an increase and apart from numerous benefits, it does give way to cons as well.

The article, “Yours, Mine or Ours?” by Lisa Bertagnoli throws light on a disadvantageous aspect of this sharing of technological equipment, by narrating a little incident before she goes on to talk about one of the topics gaining fast reputation---Business Ethics and its subsidiary, Intellectual Property Rights. She addresses this new practice, as a “new way of working”. Employees bring in their personal commodities and gadgets, to workplaces, while some others use company equipment for personal usage. These occurrences have been creating chaos when an employee is shown the door or resigns from a job since one does not know, whether he has been using his own equipment or the company’s, as it is very difficult to track down such minor problems when there are numerous employees involved.

This new practice has led to many chaotic occurrences, as when an employee leaves a workplace, he might carry away some of the internal business communication and information, in his personal equipment, thus exposing certain confidential matters. Sensitive information and secrecy are destroyed since the employee in question could share the information with competitive ventures or use it for his own benefit. This is termed the abuse of Intellectual Property and in a workplace where thousands of employees work in tandem, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint a particular person. Thus, this article relates to problems involved in protecting Intellectual Properties and privacy issues of a company.

The main ethical problem, dealt with in this business ethics-related article, is that of Intellectual Property and the Rights in its fold. One needs to analyze whether allowing employee privacy at the cost of the abuse of Intellectual Property owned by the company is an ethical aspect of the business. Does the company owner have a right to sue the employee when he uses the information of the company on his personal equipment like his laptop or PDA? This topic is related to Virtue Ethics, in terms of the classification under Business Ethics.

Virtue Ethics deals with what is right and how one’s obligations must be performed with sincerity and a higher degree of virtue. From the business ethics point of view, virtue ethics focuses on the ethics displayed by the employee. An employee needs to understand his obligations and perform them with utmost devotion and sincerity towards his job as well as, his company. The present article deals with this issue, in modern times. Technology has enabled betterment in communication, with its widespread reach and sophistication. However, what remains a sore eye, is the very abuse of technology and business ethics, eventually.

The advantage of virtue ethics in business is the fact that it sets the human ethical standards, even on a business plan, which is understood as a being with cut-throat competition. Virtue Ethics helps derive the best from employees, by acquainting them with a more humane perspective by molding characters. Virtue Ethics also mold good leadership qualities and team-building abilities that play a very prominent role in business. Thus, virtue ethics leads to the overall development of a person, apart from enforcing good business ties. However, one major disadvantage of enforcing Virtue Ethics in business is that one often tends to become sympathetic or empathetic, forgoing the profit motive or the attempt to rise above the competition, in business. Thus, it can make one a weak negotiator.
Measures

In this case, virtue ethics may have taken a beating, since one is faced with the problem of abuse of intellectual property within a company. Therefore, one needs to set demarcations and prevent the extensive usage of personal equipment at the workplace. Prevention of the passage of any company information should be the key objective and monitoring technological communication is the first step towards achieving this end. Of course, this does mean that the expenditure of the company will increase, in the process of providing equipment. However, the big possibility of internal communication leakage and abuse of patent, trademark, copyright, and intellectual property rights issues can be prevented.