Managerial
Studies in English
Are Camera Cell Phones Creating Ethical Problems?
Background
You are the manager of a large bookstore. You have seen customers use their camera phones to take pictures
of one another in the store. Yesterday, for the first time, you observed a customer taking photos of ten pages
of material in a cookbook (and not buying the book). Although you did not say anything to this customer, you
wonder what to do in the future.
Task
Which of the following options would you select?
1. Place a sign on the door asking customers to mind their ‘cell phones manners’. This way you
don’t have to prevent people from using their phones; you can rely on common decency.
2. Ask customers to leave their camera cell phones with an employee at the front of the store. The
employee will give the customer a claim check, and they can retrieve their phones once they
finish shopping.
3. Station an employee at the front of the store who places tape over the lens of camera phones as
customers come in.
4. Don’t do anything. There is nothing wrong with people taking pictures of materials out of a book.
5. sInvent other options. Discuss.
NB: You should justify each point to refer to and provide comparisons when applicable. You could also
make use of charts and figures to support your argument.
Do not write more than 2000 words.
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Are Camera Cell Phones Creating Ethical Problems?
Managers in any domain require to keep improving and developing their
business, which is not an easy thing to do. It really depends on various factors to
success, such as: customer satisfaction, products qualities, prices, other competitors,
and a more hidden and effective factor is the policies and rules dedicated by their
companies. For a bookstore manager it is more complicated to face huge competitions
especially with digital media and E-books, which is widely spread nowadays via
internet and websites and electronic stores. Cell phones Cameras could create an
ethical problem when a customer tries to take photos of bookstore’s materials with no
permission and without buying the book eventually. On the other hand, cameras can
help to promote freely the bookstore by showing it and some preferable books through
pictures and videos on social Medias. Therefore it is an important matter to be
considered by the manager on how to persuade clients to keep looking for their needs
in his/her store by taking the proper actions to such an issue, otherwise clients will lose
their desire to pass through his/her bookstore. In this report I will discuss different
aspects of views to be considered by the management showing the advantages and
disadvantages for each decision then I will try to invent a robust solution that will
provide a proper income for the bookstore even though if the client does not buy the
book.
First of all, management could rely on the general decency buy placing some
signs asking customers to behave properly with their mobiles cameras by not taking
photos for any pages from any book without special permissions. Actually, this is a
suitable and friendly procedure to be taken, as it will not violate the customer privacy.
However, it is a weak decision, because some customers will not consider these
directions and may say he/she does not read the headlines. For example, a customer
may try to take photos for some pages when he/she saw others doing so or he / she
could argue about what wrong with this action as he/she is not damaging the book or
the magazine and he/she just only needs some pages to read and not to buy the whole
material. Nevertheless, this step may not prevent most people, but minority, from
committing this crime, management should consider other effective and more
convenient steps to prevent people from doing so. I will discuss this matter later in my
invented solution.
For the second and third routines, which prevents people from entering their
mobiles in the bookstore or by tapping their cameras, it may firstly seems to be a
powerful decision to follow as it prevents totally all clients from being able to take any
picture within the bookstore. But it is really severe and unacceptable manor to be
taken. It is obviously violating the personal privacy with no respect to customers’
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rights. This in turn may leads to negative consequences like general dissatisfaction and
frustration which would dramatically impact on the total sales of the bookstore.
Moreover, this type of procedures could ends up definitely with losing clients forever
and they may look to other competitors to deal with. Nevertheless, the bad reputation
which may follow the bookstore for a long time. Therefore, I do not recommend such
actions as they have dangerous effects on the whole business.
Moreover, leaving everything without any concern or action, by thinking it is
better and essential to respect the personal freedom and customer rights, will create
tremendous issues with publishers and writers. It is important to be understood by
customers that the bookstore has legal commitments with writers and publishers and
allowing to violate their rights by allowing their materials such as books, magazines,
documents, stories and novels to be freely available online or within society with no
charge is not an acceptable process and will leads to statutory dilemmas. Therefore, the
bookstore managements needs to explain to their customers the illegal situation when
they help them to get these materials illegally.
Finally, before going to our developed solution, it is obvious that none of the
mentioned above solutions will really help the management to solve this matter
effectively. In this context our invented solution will mix and develop different
scenarios to help the management to handle this issue.
The invented solutions relies on the following points:
1. General Signs: It is preferable to place some signs that prevent customers
from taking photos of internal materials without asking for permission.
2. Especial Signs: It is also preferable to add especial signs that indicates
general headlines explaining the main illegal consequences by violating the
publisher and writers rights.
3. Helping Employee: It is also required to use employees inside the store
trying to help clients in finding their required books friendly and at the same
time help the management in observing any abuse of cell phones within the
bookstore. This in turn is a helpful procedure, as it will allow the employee to
help the management in explaining their point of view about this problem to
their customers more friendly.
4. Photo Copiers: It is a good practice to provide photo copiers inside the
bookstore that allow a limited copies for some pages with some charges that
return back to both the bookstore and the publishers at the same time. This
step could help mannerly to solve the needs of some clients especially,
students who are not affordable to buy many references during the
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implementation of their researches.it is just few pages may help a lot to this
type of students.
5. Digital Content: On the other hand, the bookstore can work in parallel to
provide a digital website which provides soft copies for their books and
follow their customer everywhere. This is an important step to realize that
today the general trend of reading has definitely changed and without
following up the common trend you will be out of the competition and will
limit your customers and resources and as a consequence decline your
incomes.
6. Reading Area: You can provide a small area for reading within your
bookstore and cost the reader a small amount money as if he/she enters a
café. This in turn could help a wide range of people especially students to
read deeply before deciding to own a book, reference or a document!
Furthermore, this will yield more people to visit the store and this will open
new horizons for other type of businesses; like a reading café, reading
galleries or an entertainment tour within the bookstore.
7. Surveys: Try to provide your customers with periodic surveys, which will
help you to get frequent feedbacks about your performance and will open
your mind on how to keep your customers satisfied.
In conclusion, it is important to respect others and convince them with your rights by
relying both on general decency and some effective steps that keep legal operations to
continue. Finally, it is a matter of time to realize and convince your customers about
your rules in running your business. I really believe that manger needs frequently to
follow up the general trends and needs to keep their business flourished, otherwise they
will find themselves outside the domain. This in turn, requires continuous development
of the marketing styles and system polices with respect of products’ types and
qualities.
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