Ethics Newsline®

According to a survey released last week, 45 percent of responding workers have used new technology to behave unethically at least once during the past year.

	Did It in Past Year	Consider It Unethical
Use company E-mail for personal reasons	29%	34%
Use office equipment to help children/spouse do schoolwork	19%	37%
Create a potentially dangerous situation by using new technology while driving	19%	67%
Use office equipment for shopping on the Internet	13%	54%
Use office equipment to search for another job	11%	66%
Visit pornographic Web sites using office equipment	5%	87%
Sabotage company system or data	4%	96%

Special to NEWSLINE

by Rushworth M. Kidder

We like new technologies. We don’t think they’re dangerous. We don’t feel they create a less ethical world.

But we foresee tough techno-ethical issues in the future. And we certainly haven’t come to terms with the gender differences they raise.

Those, in a nutshell, are the results of “Technology and Ethics in the Workplace,” a new and thoughtful survey released last week by the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants and the Ethics Officer Association. It addresses one of the gnarled questions of our age: What is the ethical impact of new workplace technologies?

The predictions have been scary. New technologies, we’ve been warned, will heighten workplace anxieties and lure us into on-line pornography. They’ll promote unethical business practices. They’ll interfere with family life, distance us from one another, and invade our privacy.

Not so, says this report. Of the 726 respondents to a questionnaire mailed between February 23 and March 17, 92 percent agree that using new technologies brings great improvements in business. Only a fraction say these developments create more problems than they resolve. And more than half feel more comfortable now with new technologies than five years ago.

While the flood of fax machines, CD-ROMs, and cellular phones produces new pressures–ranging from increased productivity expectations to inadequate tech support–today’s workers don’t fear being displaced. And they still maintain a reasonably clear sense of right and wrong when asked about 12 specific actions: They don’t think it’s right, for instance, to sabotage systems or data, access private computer files, listen to private cellular conversations, visit pornographic Web sites at work, or “create a potentially dangerous situation by using new technology while driving.”

Yet folded into these responses are some causes for concern:

• Nearly half (45 percent) admitted engaging in one or more of these 12 unethical actions in the past year.

• While most employees disagree that “increased reliance on technology has made traditional standards of right and wrong irrelevant,” one in six feels otherwise–and one-third either agree or express ambivalence.

• Although only 29 percent overall say it’s unethical to use office equipment for personal reasons, 60 percent of those older than 60 say so. And respondents younger than 30 are “much less likely to consider an action unethical than all other age groups.”

Where are we headed? The answers are sobering. Large numbers feel more comfortable about the future now than they expect to feel a year from now (46 percent) or five years from now (56 percent). And when asked to list our most serious future problems, they point to “the availability of dangerous and offensive material on the Internet (76 percent), invasion of privacy by the government (76 percent), invasion of privacy by business (75 percent), and the loss of person-to-person contact (65 percent).”

Yet perhaps the most significant finding is one woven so subtly into the data as to be almost lost: The concerns raised by women. The good news is that men and women feel equally comfortable with new technologies. But women (74 percent) are more likely than men (61 percent) to feel pressure from increased expectations of productivity, from the need to keep up with continual changes in technology (71 percent for women, 61 percent for men), from pressure arising from a lower tolerance for errors (67 percent versus 58 percent), and from fear of losing data (66 percent versus 55 percent). “But the largest gender difference,” says the report, comes from “not understanding terminology or lingo,” felt by 70 percent of women and only 51 percent of men.

Why does this matter? Because we’re still fighting the glass ceiling. And it appears that a principle requirement for future executive success–a natural adaptation to new technologies–may be harder for women to reach. As an ethical issue, this could well be related to the gender-based differences famously noted in Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice. She notes that women have an “ethic of care” that emphasizes responsibilities to the networks around them, while men have an “ethic of justice” that sees morality as a question of rights within a chain of command.

If new technologies focus us more on rule-driven machines than on care-based human relationships, men may adapt to them more easily. And that gap may widen in the future.

So should we scale back our technologies? No. But we must rethink our training. Given the need to integrate the genders seamlessly within the executive levels, we can’t move quickly enough to break down the techy lingo–and support the personal relationships–as we ride the wave of technologies. Otherwise, we risk excluding from senior positions the care-based ethics that will be fundamental to progress in the 21st century.

New technologies, systems, and ideas propel the growth of civilization, andfew of us would care to sacrifice the benefits of progress.

But progress often entails unintended consequences–including ethicalcomplications that outstrip our ability to predict, judge, and adjust.

Several of this week’s stories involve this dilemma. At the top of ourreport, Rushworth Kidder’s column examines a new study documenting that computertechnology in the workplace creates ethical issues unheard-of in the old days(perhaps ten years ago) before widespread availability of E-mail and Web siteaccess.

In Japan, the intricate and sophisticated economic system that for so long wasthe envy of the world required an equally complex regulatory system. But thatsystem is now showing the strains imposed by corruption, as more than ahundred officials last week were disciplined for improperly trading in the newcurrency of the information age–information.

Information–who controls it and who is entitled to know it–is also thecenterpiece of a story from London, where a scientist was fired afterdisclosing details relating to the efficacy of a new drug under development byhis company. Another story from London focuses on a different consequence ofinformation, as a convicted killer is paid for telling her story to an author,leading some politicians to call for a ban on the forthcoming book about hercrimes.

There is no end to dilemmas involving medical ethics, but a story last weekinvolving the wildly popular anti-impotence drug Viagra raised a novelquestion: Where does medical need for the drug end and recreational use begin? Among the parties who want to draw a clear line are, of course, insurancecompanies.

Several other stories touch on the price of progress. In Washington, theSupreme Court ruled that Eastman Kodak’s patent rights to myriad repair partsdid not give it the right to monopolize the business of fixing photocopiers.In Pakistan, the privatization of that nation’s successful electric powerindustry has led to allegations of corruption and a subsequent governmentcrackdown. And in Hong Kong, another relatively new technology–the compactdisc–is the focus of a crackdown on copyright infringement.

We conclude our news this week with a look at a fairly low-tech dilemma froman ancient profession–fishing. In times when massive numbers of fishingvessels can deplete even the most fertile fishing waters, sticking to one’slimit is a crucial part of the business. We report on a case in Boston wherethe catch of the day was a pair of fishermen who didn’t play by the rules.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld a $78 million antitrust penalty against Eastman Kodak Co., upholding a lower court’s ruling thatthe firm created a monopoly in the equipment-repair industry by refusing tosell Kodak photocopier and machine parts to competing repair companies.

Kodak argued that its parts were patented, granting it a legal and ethicalright to refuse sales to its rivals.

But competitors claimed that only 65 of the thousands of parts withheld byKodak were actually patented, and the patent claim was simply a pretext tomonopolize the repair business on Kodak photocopiers and other equipment.

The Supreme Court rejected Kodak’s appeal without comment or dissent.

ISLAMABAD
Pakistan’s war on corporate corruption spread to the country’sprivate electricity industry last week when the government detained severalexecutives suspected of taking kickbacks.

While few criticize the government’s recent focus on ethical reform, someanalysts interviewed by Reuters say they worry that last week’s hard-lineapproach may scare away international investments in the nation’s lucrativeelectricity business.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Accountability Office are demanding thatexecutives of the privately owned power projects sign declarations vowingstrict ethical compliance in obtaining government power contracts.

LONDON
Drug company British Biotech last week fired its chief of clinicaltesting for discussing concerns over the effectiveness of a new drug withinvestors, according to The Financial Times of London.

Spokesperson for British Biotech said Dr. Andrew Millar was fired because it wasinappropriate for him to share internal company documents with investors, TheTimes reported.

Dr. Millar claimed that results of a U.S. trial of Zacutex, a pancreatitisdrug, were inconsistent with the results of a smaller study conducted in theU.K. and also warned that the company had an overly optimistic view of thedrug’s potential.

The newspaper also reported that in 1994 Dr. Millar warned company directorsof serious side effects of a cancer drug under development, and one directorsubsequently sold his shares in the firm.

NEW YORK
Responding to fears that the anti-impotence drug Viagra will beprescribed to enhance sex lives rather than to cure documented cases oforganically caused impotence, medical insurance companies are handing down newguidelines for reimbursement for Viagra prescriptions.

Insurers such as Cigna, Wellpoint, and Kaiser Permanente are adopting strictcoverage policies for the $10-per-pill treatment, according to a report in TheNew York Times.

The drug appears to benefit the sexual performance of both impotent andhealthy men.

Many of the new guidelines impose a limit on the number of pills allowed andrule out reimbursement for prescription of the drug to men whose impotencestems from psychological causes or relates to side effects from other medicines.

Critics of the new measures charge that such regulations amount torestrictions on the number of times patients can have sex, and unfairlyexclude those with nonorganic problems–denying them a new option that mayactually be cheaper than traditional treatments.

HONG KONG
Officials here seized their largest-ever haul of bootleg compactdiscs last week, pleasing international critics who have long complained aboutChina’s lax enforcement of copyright law.

The bust yielded more than eight million pirated compact discs with a streetvalue of more than $25 million.

A governmental agency called the Independent Commission Against Corruption ledthe raid on 53 sites across Hong Kong and arrested 18 people, including onecustoms inspector.

BOSTON
In a business in which playing by the rules is complicated by vastexpanses of water and a thinly spread enforcement system, a group of U.S. fishermen–caught crossing the line once too often–set history last weekby agreeing to pay the largest fishing fine in U.S. history.

James and Peter Spalt and several Massachusetts-based fishing companies werecharged with violating “practically every significant regulation we had on thebooks,” according to a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration.

The Associated Press reported that the violations included catching more fishthan allowed, fishing more days than allowed, illegally hiding portions oftheir catch, and lying to federal authorities.

The Spalts also were barred from fishing in federal waters.

TOKYO
After a massive internal investigation, Japan’s Finance Ministry haspunished more than a hundred officials who were charged with partaking in lavishentertainment provided by financial firms they regulate.

Two top securities and banking officials have also resigned in the wake of theprobe into allegations that staffers from the Finance Ministry provided firmswith information about impending investigations and other confidentialactivities in return for wining, dining, and travel.

The punishments range from “severe reprimands” to temporary pay cuts andsuspensions, and cap a scandal that has shaken public confidence in afinancial system already weakened by the downturn in the overall Asianeconomy.

Socializing–sometimes involving expensive meals and extravagant junkets–is standard practice in parts of Japan’s business world, and has led toincreased scrutiny of ethics policies and internal policing in the nation’sfinance industry.

LONDON
The biography of one of Britain’s most controversial killers hastouched off a firestorm of controversy here, with Prime Minister Tony Blaircalling the fact that the killer apparently profited from the book”repugnant,” and other politicians calling for the book to be banned outright.

According to various press reports, biographer Gitta Sereny paid Mary Bell,who as a child killed two small boys and served a 12-year sentence formanslaughter, about $87,000 for collaborating on the soon-to-be-releasedbook.

Sereny admitted paying Bell, but would not comment on the amount of money.She told the BBC that the book could not have been written without thepayment, and defended the work as an “extremely serious” effort to learn whyMary Bell “as a child committed two terrible acts, and what her life has beenlike since.”

The American College of Physicians, the major accrediting body for practitioners of internal medicine, has recently published a fourth edition of its venerable Ethics Manual. The new edition is notable not only for its depth, but also for its treatment of legal versus ethical issues. An excerpt appears below, followed by a link to take the reader directly to the Manual.

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Ethics Manual

Fourth Edition
American College of Physicians

Medicine, law, and social values are not static. Reexamining the ethical tenets of medical practice and their application in new circumstances is a necessary exercise. The fourth edition of the American College of Physicians’ Ethics Manual covers emerging issues in medical ethics and revisits old ones. It reflects on many of the ethical tensions faced by internists and their patients and attempts to shed light on how existing principles extend to emerging concerns. In addition, by reiterating ethical principles that have provided guidance in resolving past ethical problems, it may help physicians to avert future problems. The Manual is not a substitute for the experience and integrity of individual physicians, but it may serve as a reminder of the shared obligations and duties of the medical profession. . . .

The Manual raises ethical issues and presents general guidelines. In applying these guidelines, physicians should consider the circumstances of the individual patient and use their best judgment. Physicians are morally and legally accountable, and the two may not be concordant. Physician participation in torture, for example, is legal in some countries but is never morally defensible. . . .

The law does not always establish positive duties (that is, what one should do) to the extent that professional ethics, especially medical ethics, does. Our current understanding of medical ethics is based on the principles from which positive duties emerge. These principles include beneficence, a duty to promote good and act in the best interest of the patient and the health of society, and nonmaleficence, the duty to do no harm to patients. Also included is respect for patient autonomy–the duty to protect and foster a patient’s free, uncoerced choices. From the principle of respect for autonomy are derived the rules for truth telling, disclosure, and informed consent. The relative weight granted to these principles and the conflicts among them often account for the ethical problems that physicians face. Physicians who will be challenged to resolve dilemmas must have such virtues as compassion, courage, and patience in all aspects of their practice.

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The technology is advancing faster than government officials, religiousleaders, and medical ethicists can keep up with, and therefore many of thethorny ethical issues are being played out in the courts.

– Dr. Barbara A. Debuono, New York state health commissioner, as quoted in The New York Times (29 April, 1998)