Business Ethics

ETH301 Business Ethics SLP Module 1

Steven Campbell

Trident University

Abstract

For my project I will be using the company that I am currently employed with. Since that organization is the United States Army it has some very particular circumstances for both utilitarian and deontological considerations. Since the Army is not individually owned and is not permitted to be represented by a union, some countries have an Army union, and then the majority of the physical privacy rights that are enjoyed by the country we help protect does not apply to soldiers. There are many reasons that the government has chosen to do certain things that may be determined to be physical privacy issues. The highest on the list and most quoted are “for National Security reasons” and “for good order and discipline”. Who determines exactly what that means varies from political administration to political administration. The current Army is all volunteer so no one in the Army is forced by law to sign up unlike a conscript, draft era, Army. So if any member of the U.S. Army believes his “rights” have been violated then he or she may leave service at the end of their service obligation but normally not until that service obligation has been completed because there is no “quitting” the Army. Serving in the Armed Forces is not a life choice for everyone.

The physical privacy rights issue that I would like to focus on is mandatory drug testing through urinalysis. Urine tests intrude on intimate bodily privacy. Mass drug screening violates the privacy of the majority of responsible soldiers, sailors and airmen in order to spot a minority of alleged drug abusers, many of whom are in fact not drug abusers at all. Military/ government imposed drug testing may be restricted by the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure and requires "probable cause" for search warrants. Questions about civil rights have surfaced but the military has determined that it...