This report has been established in order to identify whether email monitoring in the work place is ethical or unethical. The main philosophy

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report has been established in order to identify whether email monitoring in the work place is ethical or unethical. The main philosophy we have based this reports on is the Utilitarianism theory, which is a philosophy which takes the values of ethics into consideration and it takes into requirement all members that are involved and maintains a solution that is beneficial to them. The report also states advantages of the Utilitarianism theory as well as any major limitations.

Under Utilitarianism which is known as the belief that an act is either right or wrong based on the consequences of the act, monitoring of email is considered wrong. However there is a leeway in this as monitoring is required in order to protect the company from disgruntled employees so it can be considered acceptable. However with the Deontologism theory e-mail monitoring should not be allowed, ethically or not. The reason for this is that the Employees should not be allowed to access information that is not rightfully theirs, regardless of whether it is beneficial for the company/organisation.

When monitoring email, ethics is taken into major consideration when identifying different points of moral view, the key elements being discussed in this report are the views of employers who monitor and believe they should monitor, and employees who feel their privacy is being violated by their employers monitoring their emails.  

There are various guidelines which companies have to follow in order to stick by the rules. The major legislations that have been taken into account in this report are Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), the Human Rights Act and most essentially the Data Protection Act

TABLE OF CONTENTS

                                                                               

Page

1.        TERMS OF REFERENCE                                                                4

2.        INTRODUCTION                                                                        5

                2.1        What is Ethics?                                                        5

2.2        Email and Ethics                                                        5

3. PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWPOINTS                                                        6                3.1 What is Utilitarianism?                                                        7                3.2 What is Deontologism?                                                 7

4. EMPLOYER/EMPLOYEE VIEW                                                        8

                                                        

4.1 Employers views                                                        8

4.2 Employees views                                                         9

5. UTILITARIAN THEORY APPLIED                                                         10

6.        DEONTOLOGISM THEORY APPLIED                                                11

7. MONITORING EMAIL LAW                                                                12                                

  1. Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)                        12
  2. Human Rights Act                                                                13
  3. Data Protection Act                                                         14

                                     

8.        CONCLUSION                                                                        14                                        

9        BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                                        16                                

APPENDIX

10. GROUP LOG                                                                                 17

1.        TERMS OF REFERENCE

This report has been commissioned for those who have an interest into the ethical issues relating to email monitoring in the workplace, when defining the impacts of this to identify any potential problems within organisations. An in-depth analysis using ethical theories will be applied to this common and growing issue.

2.        INTRODUCTION

‘Is email monitoring in the workplace ethical?’

In order for this question to be answered coherently, firstly it needs to be defined clearly what is ethics.

2.1        What is Ethics?

Ethics is defined as the code or set of principles by which people live. It is about what is considered to be right and what is considered wrong. Such principles do not always dictate a single "moral" course of action, but provide a means of evaluating and deciding among competing options.

According to Sidgwick, the methods of ethics are rational procedures which enable us to decide what we should do voluntarily (or what it is right for us to do) in a particular situation. Ethics is a study of the principles that govern right action or conduct. Sidgwick differentiates between ethics and politics as practical disciplines, in that ethics is concerned with what is proper for each individual, while politics is concerned with what is proper for society. Thus the research question will be more in relation to individuals such as employees and employers rather than society in general.

Ethics helps provide answers to questions like “What should I do?, What should we do?, What goals should we pursue?, What laws should we have?, and What collective behaviour should we all pursue?”.

2.2        Email and Ethics

In 1999, the overall market for elctronic mail (email) services was estimated to be 1.2 billion, which shows that it is a big business. In 1999, almost 9 percent of company documents were sent via e-mail and this is increasing. Employee use of e-mail during business hours is a common feature of today’s workplace. E-mail provides a way to increase the efficiency of today’s workplace because it is inexpensive to provide, simple to install and easy to use. However, despite these efficiencies, this technological advancement is also creating collateral problems concerning issues of employee privacy.

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Beyond installing monitoring software, employees can simply go into employers hard drive, check the cache to see where employees been on the net,, and read their e-mail. Even if the message has been deleted the e-mail trash bin can still exists on the server, and there are plenty of computer consultants who can retrieve the incriminating message.

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Monitoring is a widespread-and-growing-phenomenon. Looking just at e-mail, a 1996 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 36 percent of responding companies searched employee messages regularly and 70 percent said employers should reserve the right to do so.

This report will look into weather email mentoring in the workplace is really ethical and is it justified. In order to judge whether the monitoring of email is right or wrong, our arguments will be based on the ethical theories of Utilitarianism and deontologism. The subject on whether there are any laws that deal with workplace privacy will ...

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