CHAPTER PROPOSAL
submitted for the inclusion in
Ethical Issues in E-Business Models and Frameworks
edited by
Dr. Daniel E. PALMER, Kent State University, Trumbull Campus
TOPIC
Ethical Issues Arising From the Usage of Electronic Communications
in the Workplace
AUTHOR
Fernando A. LAGRAÑA, DBA Student, Grenoble Graduate School of
Business, Grenoble, France
FOCUS
DURING THE PAST DECADE, e-mail has become the most popular communication tool
in the professional environment (even more than telephony). Because of the nature of
this industry – an early adopter of new technologies, this trend is particularly true in ebusiness. While other chapters may focus on B2B and B2C ethical issues, this chapter
aims at addressing the ethical issues arising WITHIN companies using electronic
communications, and particularly e-mail. Ethical issues are not specific to e-business
per se. However, e-businesses have unique characteristics, which make them more
sensitive to the specific ethical issues described in this chapter. This chapter will focus
on interpersonal communication within organizations, review and analyze the ethical
issues at stake, propose a conceptual and theoretical framework, and introduce some
guidelines on how to address such issues and foster ethical behavior in e-business.
APPROACH
This proposal is based on a wider research on the usage of electronic communications
in the working place. The principal hypothesis is that organizations involved in ebusiness are early adopters of ICT services and applications, that they rely heavily on
electronic communications both for their external AND internal communications, and
that they face, more than other entities, the “dark side of e-mail”.
After underlining the specificities of e-businesses in terms of ICT usage, this chapter will
review the ethical issues related to e-mail from three different perspectives: managerial,
employee, and interpersonal perspectives.
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The managerial perspective will cover issues such as employee monitoring, data
confidentiality, company liability, and private usage of company resources.
The employee perspective will cover issues such as privacy, autonomy, and
personal usage of company resources.
The interpersonal perspective – the most important part of the proposed
chapter, will cover issues such as the role of e-mail in interpersonal
communications, mutual respect, misunderstanding, and mail overload. It will
review the most common although questionable on-line behaviors, from address
(harmful) disclosure to denial, from ambiguity to flaming, or from forgery to
spam, to name but a few.
These various behaviors will be described from a practitioner perspective, and will also
be put in context of theory. In particular, three specific avenues will be explored:
modernity and communication with the “absent other”, mutual respect in electronic
communications, and the ethical usage of shared common resources.
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Communicating with the “absent other”: e-mail, as a characteristic agent of the
new modernity paradigm, faces the challenges of the separation of time and
space; the asynchronicity of communications, the lack of non-verbal cues in the
written matter, increase the risk of misunderstanding.
Mutual respect: “How do we treat the other” is one of the fundamental aspects of
ethical behavior. We should introduce the concept of “friendly spam”, referring
to the “friendly fire”, e.g. the accidental shooting of allies or own troups.
Shared resources: “How do we share common resources” is another aspect of
ethical behavior. We should explore it from the managerial and from the
employee perspective.
Finally, the last part of the chapter should go back to practice and provide some
guidelines, on how to address the various ethical issues arising from the usage of
electronic communications in the workplace and on how to foster a more ethical
behavior.
CONTRIBUTION
The proposed chapter should enlarge the scope of the volume by addressing ethical
issues from the point of view of internal communications. E-business models rely
heavily on electronic communications, which have made such business models possible.
While the other chapters should focus on ethical issues in the relation with the business
external environment, this chapter will complement this approach, by proving that the
ethical behavior also applies “behind the curtains”.