Page 1 of 1 301005 PPC Assignment on Ethics and Codes of conduct Report (25%) Due Week 9, Saturday 11:59 pm Note: The Ethical and Codes of Conduct report is an individual assignment. You have to...

Ethics and Codes of conduct
Ethics and Codes of conduct
Contents
Abstract:    2
Introduction:    3
Introduction to the organization:    3
Overview of the case:    4
Analysis of Evident Unethical Practices:    5
Outcomes:    6
Ethical Code of Conduct for ICT industry:    7
Judging the practices of the organization against the given code of conducts    8
Conclusion:    9
References:    10
Abstract:
Usually, the growth of an industry or an organization is measured in terms of its commercial and economic growth, but there are certainly other factors that are equally important for suggesting the growth of an organization or a group as a whole. One such core factor includes the degree of social responsibility displayed by the organization. Social responsibility focuses on ensuring that all the practices and activities executed or implemented by the organization are ethically and professionally rich.
This report intends to highlight the importance of ethical practices in ICT industrial sector by critically evaluating a case ks professional and ethical misconduct in the industry. The report will initially provide an introduction to the relevant sector followed by the introduction of the involved organization.
Thereafter the report will present a basic overview of the case followed by a detailed analysis of the same on ethical and professional grounds. During the analysis, the report will provide the description of the key impacts, outcomes, unethical practices and the code of conduct for ICT sector. After evaluating the activities of the organization against the professional code of conduct, the report will provide a basic set of recommendations for the industry as well as the users to ensure ethical implementation of the organizational activities and practices.
Introduction:
Importance of Ethical and Professional Conduct for an organization:
The success of an organization cannot only be confined to the commercial growth or advancement of the organization. Rather, it is equally important for the company or the organization to show their sense of responsibility and commitment towards the well-being of the society. From the environmental responsibility of the organization (part of the engineering or ICT sector) to the ethical conducts and activities, the social commitment of the organization is one of the crucial factors that can be used to reflect or judge the performance of an organization in the industry. (Smith and Colvin, 2016) Every industry uses codes of ethical and professional conducts to control and outline the ethical and professional responsibilities along with the principles that will guide the decision-making and organizational operations of the organizations, who are a part of the industry. These ethical and professional principles describe the behavior of the individuals, groups or the organization in terms of the practices, communication and operational strategies used within their business processes. (Smith and Colvin, 2016)
ICT industry- Technology, growth and the rising ethical issues
ICT or Engineering sector has been one of the most commercially successful industry over the last couple of decades. With increasing number of business and employment opportunities to the commercial success that the industry has experienced is phenomenal. The advancement of technology and the continuously diverting focus of the customers towards technology aided services has further aided to the course of the development of this industry.
But this growth cannot be specified as “Success” for this industry sector due to an evident increase in issues related to ethical and professional misconducts by major players. From degrading user privacy to an increasing loss of crucial personal and professional information, the information and communication technology-based industry have been on the receiving end for several ethical misconducts.
This report aims to highlight one such instance where the practices of an organization (a part of ICT industry) have given rise to several questions related to ethical and professional misconduct. For the purpose, the report will analyze the case of “misuse of Facebook data and information” for commercial purpose. Early 2018, saw a massive scale political hype su
ounding the issue of user data miss-use by Cam
idge Analytica and Facebook, when the data of UK and USA citizens was used to analyze the professional, religious, and personal preferences so that it can be used to impact their opinion during the upcoming elections.
The report will analyze the case from an ethical perspective by addressing the evident (as well as other possible outcomes of this issue) and how the organization has failed to uphold to the ethical code of conduct for the industry.
Introduction to the organization:
Facebook
Facebook is a US-based social networking portal with over 2 billion active users. From being a basic high school project to a fully-fledged commercial organization which is cu
ently generating a revenue of over 40 billion US dollars, the organization has been a great commercial success. The social media portal was initially developed by Mark Zucke
erg and his high school friends as a school project. The portal was commercially launched in the year 2004 for the general public as a free to use social media or networking website. Since then, the social media platform has grown on to become one of the industrial giants.
Under the leadership of Mark Zucke
erg the organization has achieved great commercial success and market capitalization, but time to time the organization has been a part of a number of controversies related to ethical and code of conduct practices related to its Internal management and social commitment. From privacy constraints to the indefinite degree of user data collection, Facebook has attracted significant criticism on the ethical and professional code of conduct grounds.
Cam
idge Analytica
Cam
idge Analytica is a UK based Political consulting organization that uses high end IT services like data mining and data analyses to help the political parties in structuring they're electoral as well as political campaigns. The organization was initially started in the year 2013 and has developed into one of the leading consulting organization for political parties.
Although, the operations and results given by the organization have proved to be highly effective the organization has always been a center of controversies following its unethical practices. Earlier in March 2018, several media outlet along with the industrial experts accused the organization of illegally using the user data of Facebook in a number of its previous campaign consultation operations. Since then. Both Facebook and Cam
idge Analytica has been facing significant legal actions. This report will discuss the same controversy associated with Cam
idge Analytica’ “misuse of Facebook user data and generating a threat to privacy”.
Overview of the case:
There has been an evident increase in the use of technology in almost every industrial domain. Be it healthcare, e-commerce or politics, every industry is trying to take leverage of data-based insights and information to gain a competitive edge using the knowledge and information gained from the historical data records, user and customer preferences in the form of digital databases etc.
There is always a certain limit to the degree of the customer or user information that is publically available for the organizations, which they can use to construct their business strategies. This limit is defined as per the user privacy preferences and the Terms and agreements that the users signs with the digital service providers. For example, while creating a new Facebook account, the user has to fill in his credentials such as name, age, gender, date of birth etc. This information is then stored in the database of the organization but with a condition that the data will not be shared with a third party without the consent or agreement of the user itself.
Recently, in March 2018, there was the legal revelation that Facebook...