Organizational Philosophies and Technology

This entry will discuss how companies use technology to help set and manage ethical standards and guidelines, how these guidelines or ethics can shape the work environment or culture a company promotes, and how using technology to perform human resources functions affects company culture.

Ethics is born:

Ethics plays a very important role in a companies function. In fact the moment that technology is created so is ethics. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "If information technology is political - i.e., it already includes/excludes certain interests - then it is also immediately ethical." What this means, for example, is if a program is written to serve the public, or in this case, a company, but is only capable, by design, to serve everyone but those who can not type, then the program excludes certain persons and is automatically ethical. In this instance, the ethics could easily be defined as consequential ethics, meaning, one thing happens therefore, something else must happen to correct or justify the situation.

Companies use technology to help set and manage ethical standards and guidelines:

Companies use technology to help set and manage ethical standards and guidelines in a variety of ways. Some corporations are able to easily monitor employees' emails and telephone conversations through the network administrator. This division censors emails that arrive with inappropriate language or content and bounces the correspondence back to the original sender without the recipient ever being the wiser. Telephone conversations are monitored and should the caller or recipient use inappropriate language the call is disconnected and the employee could be reprimanded.

Another way a company ensures employee productivity and proper use of time is by blocking certain or all internet sites outside of company intranet. This company-wide blockage will prevent employees from visiting sites that are inappropriate for the workplace and/or playing games or chatting.