After talking about precautionary and proactionary concepts in class this week i really thought hard about what approach is best for an IT business, or any business rather, to take in today's market. It is becoming harder and harder to compete in the marketplace, forcing firms to make tough choices and cut already diminishing budgets. However, I feel that that does not give said firm the right to "chince" out on it's corporate social responsibility nor it's committment to its customers/clients.
I feel that whenever a business is operating in a life or death situation, or even severly life altering circumstances, it ought to be their responsibility to check and make sure that all data involved are correct, and then act ethically and appropriatly on that data. In my own personal opinion i feel that people in general should follow some set of ethics, i tend to follow deontological ethics, which just means ethics based on moral rules and the idea of duty. As with the example from class about the old man who lost his home to foreclosure because the bank had no reocrd on their computers that he had been making payments, i feel it was the bank's fault for not keeping accurate records, and furthermore the banking firm should've done more to help the customer transition to the new system. If the firm had followed a more precautionary system whn making the record keeping change maybe they could;ve avoided this whole mess!
I agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts. I believe a corporation has a resposibility to protect society, before protecting its bottom line. And, if they don't, they should be severely punished.
ReplyDeleteCorporations should definitely take responsibility for their actions. There are some areas that I think are a bit gray though. For example, if a corporation has information that is incorrect, it may be because they were given incorrect information from the get go. Or, a data entry person may have entered the information incorrectly. If this is the case, they should be responsible for quickly fixing the problem when it is brought to their attention, without harming the person whose information was incorrect. A bank using their position to take someone's home away because of an error, that should not be allowed to happen.
ReplyDeleteI agree you with you that the banks were the ones who were at fault. They should have tried to help him use the new system and worked with him instead of assuming that he wasn't paying and taking his house. That really isn't moral.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with what you've said, unfortunately it is not the world we live in. Law and Justice in the business world are quickly countered by campaign contributions, "generous donations," and other bull..it ideas to get corporations out of trouble. Sure, the CEO of a corporation can get in front of a microphone and report the mistakes made by his company and he may even say what the company is going to do to fix them...and everyone assumes its a lie. I think about people assuming bull..it lies when I think of the US government. I mean seriously, does anyone still believe that we are sending troops to the most oil rich part of the world because we want to promote freedom? Corporations are backed by the government and vice-versa.
ReplyDeleteTo think that back in the day, a person made a mistake or committed a crime, and they paid the price for it...that is just crazy talk in today's society.