Business Ethics – Compromising Whilst on the Hunt for Money
As in the article Stop collecting health numbers, SaskTel told demonstrates, identity theft is still an ongoing issue in society. The Canadian telephone company SaskTel , based in Regina, Saskatchewan, was found to have breached the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
A customer was surprised the company had their personal information: health card number, as well as SIN number without their permission. The company claims to need two pieces of information (such as SIN number or a driver’s license) for credit worthiness. The fact that they had the customer’s information without having asked for it is quite terrifying.
Since the incident, SaskTel had attempted to clean up their mess by implementing and improving rules on customer privacy, such as allowing customers to pre-pay their bills if they do not wish to share two pieces of information for credit worthiness.
How did they get these private pieces of information? For what purpose do they need this information for?
Companies exploiting people’s personal information is just one part of a constant battle with business ethics. Conflicts of interests arise – trying to earn as much money as possible just isn’t going to cut it in reality.
How can we protect ourselves, and our businesses, and attend to each of our individual interests? Each one of us share a part in a group or organization. The biggest organization, is the global village. We all must have responsibilities for a functioning, balanced world. Seemingly miniscule decisions makes a huge difference if added up together. It changes situations completely.
For example, if every Canadian decided to eat vegetarian on Mondays, it would equate to being 1/7 of the population being vegetarian!
Massive corporations are treated as “people” in the courtrooms. From observing the personality of this “individual”, we can conclude that the corporate individual is a sociopath. Without being able to tell the difference between right and wrong is not only harmful to others, it is also self-destructive.
As in the SaskTel example, companies must compromise their ways to fit business ethics, otherwise, taking advantage of others will only corrode the balance of the economy.
