Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
VIRTUE ETHICS ANALYSIS
Good coworkers exhibit many virtues, including honesty, dependability, fairness, friend-
liness, and respect for coworkers. Three that seem particularly important for this case
study are honesty, fairness, and respect. Ann demonstrated honesty by being completely
straightforward about the Girl Scout cookie drive with her fellow employees. However, it
wasn't fair or respectful for Ann to use the email system to promote her own daughter's
fund-raiser when other employees have not used email for similar solicitations for their
children. Ann clearly exercised poor judgment when she sent the email, since half of the
company's employees felt the need to complain about it.
Looking at this scenario from a completely different angle, we consider Ann in her
role as a parent. Good parents want what is best for their children, and Ann was un-
doubtedly thinking of her daughter's welfare when she decided to sell the Girl Scout
cookies at her workplace. Perhaps her daughter has a quota to meet, or perhaps nice
prizes are given to those who sell enough boxes of cookies. Viewed in this light, Ann's
actions seem consistent with those of a loving parent. However, parents are also sup-
posed to teach their children how to develop into capable and independent adults. Ann
could have used the cookie sale as an opportunity to teach her daughter some of those
lessons. After all, her daughter is 10 years old, certainly old enough to handle many of
the tasks. Instead, Ann ran the entire cookie sale operation herself and simply handed
her daughter the proceeds.
We conclude Ann demonstrated many, but not all, of the characteristics of a good
coworker and a good parent in this episode. If Ann wanted to help her 10-year-old
daughter sell cookies, fine, but she should have found a way for her daughter to play
a more active role in the cookie sale at Acme Corporation. For example, her daughter
could have come in after school one day to deliver the cookies to the people who ordered
them and collect their payments. In this way Ann's daughter could have gained the
satisfaction of knowing she had contributed a good portion of the time and effort
needed to achieve the desired result. Furthermore, Ann should have found another way
to advertise the sale that respected her workplace's culture of keeping the email system
free from solicitations.
SUMMARY
Although the analyses of Ann's action from the perspectives of these five ethical theories
reached different conclusions, it is clear she could have taken another course of action
that would have been much less controversial. Since Ann has only 49 coworkers, it
would not have been too difficult for her to find out who wanted to be notified the
next time the Girl Scouts were selling cookies. She could have put a sign-up sheet on
her desk or the company bulletin board, for example. By notifying only those people
who signed up, Ann's emails would have been solicited and personal. She could still take
advantage of the efficiency of the email system without anyone objecting that she was
“using” coworkers or contributing to lost productivity, meaning there would be much
less chance of the company instituting a policy forbidding the use of its email system for
fund-raising activities. Finally, Ann could have found a way to share the work with her
daughter.
