Doing Ethics Technique
What’s going on? What are the facts?
This case is sourced from the author’s workplace with a recent situation being uncovered in a private conversation; all real names were replaced with pseudonyms.Nick Carter is working as a software engineer for the medium-sized company specialized on developing customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, mainly financial modules.
The company works on the market since 2007, and has already built on its successful reputation in the market, constantly working with more than forty clients on a permanent basis. Nick is a part of a team which supports five strategically important clients. This is Nick’s primary job, but on top of it, he also builds small mobile applications in order to sell them. Nick is typically working on those systems on weekends or late evenings when there is nobody in the office. In the meantime, Nick does not hide his presence in the office since he is required to attach his security card to the scanner while entering the building, thus security manager is aware on his presence. Some of Nick’s colleagues are aware of him using workplace resources for personal gain while it is not clear whether Nick’s alternative work is approved by senior managers.
Issues
The following issues are identified in relation to Nick’s behavior:
Nick uses internal resources available at his workplace to generate profits which are not a part of his primary job responsibilities
Nick did not align his personal needs with business needs, meaning that he violates internal corporate policies
Senior managers are not aware on Nick’s engagement into additional profit generation to satisfy personal needs
Security managers have not approached Nick on the reasons why he works on weekends
Nick could be using the software code written for his clients as the source code for other applications development, which is illegal.
Who is affected?
The following stakeholders are affected by Nick’s wrongdoings:
Company management – people in charge of the organization are not aware that corporate resources are used for personal purposes, thus are taking financial and reputational risks
Security personnel – since Nick has not communicated reasons of him working on weekends, security team will not be able to explain this to management
Colleagues – Nick’s colleagues could be accused of not reporting Nick’s behavior to senior managers and security personnel
Corporate clients – clients working with Nick’s team could experience risks of their products illegal distribution to other users if Nick is using parts of the source code for alternative projects.
What is the ethical issue?
The main ethical issue identified for the given case is that Nick’s actions are not aligned with main stakeholder, which is the company management. Ethics in software development projects relates to philosophy of morality, where some standards defined for group members that are committed to follow those (Brickman & Sanders, 2013). As any other team member, Nick should use corporate resources only for reasons which …
