Real World Case Study - Texas Health Resources and Intel: Ethics, It and Compliance

Real World Case Study - Texas Health Resources and Intel: Ethics, IT and Compliance 1. Our text book defines corporate ethics (or business ethics) as being concerned with the numerous ethical questions that managers must confront as part of their daily business decision making. ( Marakas, pg 570, 2013) While investopedia.com is a little more specific in its definition: ‘The study of proper business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial issues’. (investopedia.com) All IT problems and solutions fall under the ethical use of technology. Both definitions, though slightly different imply that whatever decision is made on company computer or intranet, must be made with all ethical guidelines in place. You cannot treat company IT as if it were your own, you have to give 110 percent of your effort into ensuring that you do not do anything that could put the company you work for into a tough spot because of your unethical IT action. 2. IT and the future technologies that will eventually become available, open all companies up to a huge array of new ethical dilemmas, which they may have not encountered before. In the case study, there were two situations that really popped into the forefront of the story. The first new ethical decision that would not have been an issue before was the Texas Health Resources Inc. and how they talked about doctors having access to all of the patients records, and not necessarily just the ones for which they are caring. The ethical decision is in the doctors/nurses hands, on whether or not they would stray into a patient under someone else’s care medical record. The second one was the case where the marketing workers at a major telephone company were using the companies’ database to develop a list of customers with ties to the Washington area. Which after completion, they planned on selling the list to the highest bidder. Both ethical decisions could not have happened as easily without IT being a major part.

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