An advantage would be that a business is able to ask a potential employ who wants to work at the job if they are able to provide information to verify that they do not have a criminal record. If an individual is applying for a director position place and they have previously been declared as bankrupt the new employer can seek this information and this would be of benefit to the company because they would not want someone who had been bankrupt before working for them. A disadvantage of this would be that if a person is applying for the job to work in for a company and is currently employed by someone the disadvantage would be that under the DTA 1998 they are not allowed to obtain any information about them. Another disadvantage could be that they might be denied access to a certain piece of information which they require due to circumstances which the organisation would explain as to why they are being denied access to the information.
Ethical issues
Ethical conduct is what it is morally right rather than complying with the law. A lot of external information carried out by businesses involves advertising and other forms of promotion. The key in promotion is to influence customers’ behaviour and persuade them into buying one brand rather than the other. By putting pressure on the managers and marketing agencies may make it tempting over exaggerate claims about a product features and or performance. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) gets complaints from the general about products that are advertised that they think are unethical. This may result in the ASA investigating and if they are suggested to be unethical this will mean that they would report the business to the Office of Fair Trade which can lead to the firm getting fined for the unethical promotional material. So even though ethical reasons are not following any law however a business still can get sued for being unethical by producing promotional material which is considered to be unethical. An example of this could be if a car company like Mercedes suggest that there car is able to change your mood because it is that luxurious that would be considered to be unethical because that is exaggerating the feeling that the driver will get when driving the car.
The disadvantages for a business because of ethical issues are that if they are not careful they may get sued or bad publicity for being unethical. Another disadvantage would be that if they release promotional material and it may not be over exaggerating but it contains something which shows in appropriate content this would be considered unethical and this would mean instead promoting their business they are getting bad publicity. The advantage
Computer misuse act 1990
Computer miss use can occur in several ways that a business can do which are: hacking, unauthorised transferring or copying, distributed copyrighted programs, film and music, identity abuse and viruses. This act mainly concerns hacking which prior to this act there were no legislation in place to prevent people from doing this therefore it was not against the law a criminal could get away with it prior to 1990. Hacking is when a person has gets into a computer system without authorisation from the system administrator. This law makes it illegal to access, copy or use software or data stored on a computer without obtaining permission from the owner. If a business or organisation fails to comply with this law they can face legal action like get fined or sent to person for a maximum sentence of 5 years. Within a business computer misuse would occur if an employee was involved in accessing sensitive data that such as new product development or customer details such as buying trends without the permission of higher authority and they had the intention of selling this information to a rival competitor. This for example could occur at a retail such as Sainsbury’s and one of the employees accessed confidential information like the customer buying trends and their details and sell it to a competitor or a marketing company.
of this may be that if a rival company says something unethical in one of their promotional materials that also can get banned this would be an advantage to the company.
Codes of Practice
There are a lot of rules and organisations that have been created over a number of years to control business activities; and one of them is communication. The codes of practice they include are designed to supplement the law by encouraging businesses to take more responsibility; this is known as self-regulation. The ASA supervises the marketing industry in the UK, set up to ensure that all advertising communications are legal, decent honest and truthful. The rules that have been placed to make businesses take more responsibility in their advertising are set out in two main categories ‘The British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing: This factor covers non-broadcast advertisements, such as newspaper adverts, broachers, leaflets and magazines adverts. ‘BCAP’ covers TV and radio advertising. The ASA puts these codes out so that it helps businesses comply with what they are supposed to be doing. An example of Codes of Practice in action would be if the ASA asked for example Asda that one of their product advertisements were misleading and over exaggerating the features of the product.
The advantage to a business of any size would be that it would set standards and targets for their employees to meet; this would mean that employees at business would work at a highest standard possible so that have job security and they do comply with the law so this may be an advantage to a business. If unethical behaviour occurred at business Codes of practice would help resolve that issue because if it is was a rival business released some promotional material which was considered to be unethical this would get resolved because of Codes of Practice they could potentially get fined for it. The disadvantage of Codes of Practice would be that if a business does not comply with the regulation set by the codes of practice the same consequences could occur to the business; for example if in one of Sainsbury’s promotional materials they had had or said something unethical about Asda they would get the same consequences that would happen Asda if they did the same.
Organisational Policies
Businesses also like to have their own policies’ about the procedures that should be followed by the employees in the terms of internal and external communications. These policies are made so pacifically for that business and designed to achieve the targets of the business. The employees in that business are trained to follow the guidelines set out by them policies when communicating with customers and suppliers to ensure the business stay successful and obtain the cooperate image they currently have. These policies are also in place so that confidential information of the business does not go to the wrong people and end up with a competitor. Businesses that are operated with IT equipment also have IT polices for their employees to follow; this is to prevent hacking and the spread of viruses. The IT polices will have guidelines will have things such as not being able to use social networking sites, Memory sticks, personal email accounts, sending person messages via the internet, card and other devices which connect to the computer or are used for personal computing. An example of Organisational policies in action would be, for example is an employee at an IT firm was caught using his personal email account and opened a message on one of the companies systems ad a virus got on to the system the employee would in breach of the organisational l police therefore would have to face the consequences. There is not a disadvantage to the business as such because the policies are their own but the disadvantage is to the employees because even on their break they are not allowed d to use the computers for sending an email.
The advantages to Organisation Policies is that they have control on what their staff does and if they fail to meet them standards that the business has put out they will face the consequences theta the firm has in place for employees who do them things. The advantages of the IT policies is that their IT systems are protected form things such as hacking and viruses form the employees and if the employees fail to meet them policies they will face the consequences.
Information ownership
For a business it is very important to find out about the ownership of information before they use it. This is so that they can confirm is they are allowed to use it and if they are allowed to use the correct procedures are followed so they are able to use it. The term intellectual property means the ownership of written material, inventions, designs, and composed music. The material is sometimes protected under the law by the creation of patents, trademarks and copyrights. In such cases permission by the owner must be granted and most of the time this can cost a lot, this is so the material can be used or obtained legally. Using another company’s logo, name, slogan or any other business communication method in a way which is considered to be copying another company’s trademark can be in breach of the law this can result in expensive fines for those who copied it. Businesses that are carrying out market research and are using punished material from the internet they must make sure that they give credit to the publishers of the material on presentations, reports or other documents. This could also be schools and college when students write reports or produce presentation they need to make sure that the credit is given o the publishers of the material.
An example of this law in action would be if a restaurants name started with an ‘M’ and the interpreted the ‘M' form the McDonalds logo and it is too similar to the McDonalds ‘M’ McDonalds are able to sue the company under the Patents law and the company interpreting the ‘M’ may be asked to remove the ‘M’ or even may be sued for using it.
The advantage to this law for businesses is that they if the material is Patents protected nobody else has the right to use it therefore it is theirs only and they are able to take action against anyone using it therefore this is n advantage t businesses because it means that their designs and materials are protected and no one else besides the can use them. The disadvantage of this law to business is that the cost can be significant therefore smaller businesses may not be able to get their material/property protected against any one using it. Another disadvantage could be that if a business did not mean for the material for example the logo but it just happens to be really similar and they had no intention of copying the logo the business might still get investigate and sued.
Operational issues
Operational issues are things that a business has to deal with and if they do not it can disturb the functionality of the businesses communication. They need to make sure that the correct procedures are in place for any organisational uses that my or have occurred within the business. The things that a business has to deal with effecting communication are things such as: security of information, health and safety and backups.
Larger businesses generate a lot of communication material ever day. It is therefore very important for them to be clear both about the purpose of the communication material and the communication material is supposed to be for. A lot of information that businesses have is confidential and sensitive which should only be available to certain individuals and not be available to the whole public and the other employees in the organisation. An example of this occurring may be that a supermarket such as Sainsbury’s may have the addresses for their customers on the system due to them possessing a loyalty card; this information may only be allowed to be seen by the management and not the employees therefore procedures such as encrypting the address and having it under a user name and password protection will protect this information.
An advantage of this to a business would be that they are able to keep confidential information safe form unauthorised personal. The disadvantage to business would be that they have to consistently remember a complex user name and password and it cannot be easy because if it was easy there would be no point of having a user name and password in the first place. Another disadvantage could be that the costs of encrypting data can be significant and could cost a business a lot of money.
Backups for businesses are really important. Information which is on a computer system is vital for any business and can hold extremely necessary information such as all their contact details such as supplier and clients and if they lose that information it will mean that they have lost their business because having no clients and suppliers means that they will not be able to purchase any supplies and having no customers would mean that they have no one to provide a service and this kind o f set back can make a business go bust. An example of backing up information would be upon an external hard drive which can hold all of the information that is on the hard drive of a computer system and it is not very expensive to buy therefore smaller business are able to purchase them or larger businesses are able to have several in store.
The disadvantage to a business of this would be that the external hard drive is portable and in a big store may be get lost or get stolen therefore it is important for a business to store the external hard-drive(s) in a safe place. The advantage of this is that a business is able to back up vital information without spending a lot of money they are able to have the security that some of their most important information is backed up. A business example of this would be if Tesco backed up all the vital information of their customers is backed up on something other than the actual computer such as an external hard drive. In the same way a business like Sainsbury’s would need to back up their information and both businesses will have the same information.
Health and safety for business is vital and it is extremely important that they abode by the Health and Safety regulations set out by the government concerning a business. This can be prolonged or repeated use of IT equipment as part of the communication process can lead to a variety of health problems in the workplace, including neck and backache or hand and rest strain. These kinds of problems usually result from poorly designed workstations, and it may also be the operators fault because this may be because they are not using the equipment appropriately or even take regular breaks.
Protection for health and safety is provided by the Health and Safety act (1974). The act requires employers to carry out a number of actions such as: assessing visual display units for problems and taking steps to reduce any risks, ensuring the work stations meet health and safety requirements, and planning work so the employee has regular breaks.
An example of this in a business like Tesco for example would be that the supervisor has to give a break to all cashier workers so they get the rest that is required by law; the supervisor would need to ensure that they get a replacement for that worker. A firm that is constantly using It/computer is
Business continuance plans
Business continuance planning involves taking sets to help a business cope with unexpected situations that could damage the business and might force it to close down. This highlights the procedures that have to be taken too suddenly after a dangerous situation has occurred to allow the business to continue. An example of a business crisis could be loss or illness of key staff this could damage the performance of the business because if the key staff are not in place it could potentially force the business to close down because it is not function properly and not generating enough income because the key staff who run the important things are not their; to prevent this from happening the Business Continuance Plan can have a solution to this so that business is able to continue to perform.
There is no disadvantage because it is something that business has created the only disadvantage could be that a major crisis occurs but that is not due to the plan. There are many advantages such as a business is backed up if a major crisis occurs and without this plan if a crisis that occurred they could potentially go bust. Another advantage of this is that they are secure and know that they are backed up with a plan if anything were to happen which could potentially be dangerous to the company.
by
saiful15livecouk (student)
