Reference no: EM133236674
Star Enterprises provides manufacturing services to the city of Denver, and generates an annual revenue of at least $1.5 billion. The company employs over 10,000 people, and this includes a team of 20 members of the Business Intelligence Department. One the BI Department's primary responsibilities is analyzing all company data to keep management informed at all times of the business position, analyze financials, audit any discrepancies, identify possible fraud, and all other facets of business analytics. The employees in this department are held to the highest ethical standards, because as part of their job, they have access to all data, which includes many confidential pieces of information, including financials, pay data, confidential invoices, etc. When dealing with company data, it is expected that employees that have access will only use the information as part of what is necessary to perform the function of the projects or assignments they are working on. These employees should not use the data for personal gain.
Henry is a senior member of the Business Intelligence Team and is a direct report to the Jackson, the Director of Business Intelligence. Henry's morale and performance has been diminishing since the beginning of the year. Jackson scheduled a meeting with Henry to discuss his performance and morale. During the meeting, Henry confessed that he was unhappy with his bonus that was paid at the end of the year, and he was unhappy because he believed he was paid a lower bonus that others and felt he was more deserving than other members of the team, who he believed were paid higher bonuses. When probed about how he would have a basis to compare other employee bonus amounts, he illuded to having an understanding of all other bonuses that were paid to other employees, including other members of the BI team.
Immediately after the meeting, Jackson reviewed Henry's security and determined that he did have access to see all employee's pay and bonus data. Henry's job function pertains to analytics of company assets, and he does not have any reason to view employees' pay or bonuses for his current project, however, he does have access to view this information as a senior member of the BI team. Jackson then ran a report to determine which reports had been recently run concerning confidential information and noticed that several reports had been accessed recently that would list multiple pieces of employees' confidential information, including birth dates, addresses, pay rates, and bonus amounts. However, there seems to be an issue with the audit report, and while it was recording the date/time the report was run, it was not reporting the user name (it was reporting a generic system account name). Jackson should have been performing periodic checks on these reports to monitor his team's data use.
This prompted Jackson to review Henry's background check that is supposed to be performed prior to hire, and Jackson immediately noticed that Henry disclosed on his application that he had been fired from his previous employment for reasons concerning a data breach. Jackson realized that he must not have fully vetted Henry's application upon hire, which was Jackson's responsibility as the Director of BI.
Needless to say, a leak of information about employees' salaries and bonus data could have serious implications for the BI team, including loss of reputation and loss of employee morale if the information were to spread throughout the company. Depending on the information that was accesses and how much was disclosed, it could be necessary to notify other employees that their data has been breached.
Jackson is now in a position to determine if Henry did indeed break protocol and identify what his next steps will be.
Individual Ethical Assessment Questions
- Identify at least three ethical dilemmas that occurring in the business situation. What is the situation, and what must be decided?