Ethical Implications of Technological Advances on Business Communication

Abstract

Technological advances have enabled dramatic change in organizational design and communication as expressed through such actions as corporate downsizing and increased telecommuting. Technology fosters these changes because comput ers and telecommunication technology minimize the impact of time and place on organizational communication. However, with new technology channels for communication come new challenges to the ethical standards for social conduct. Many times, employees and other individual members of the electronic commu nications community do not use technology in the manner that its developers envisioned. In this paper, we explore ethical issues heightened by the use of technology as well as examining some of the means for managing these ethical concerns. We advance the argument that ethical problems are not inherent in technological advances. Instead, it is how human beings choose to use, appro priate, and interact with one another by incorporating these new tools that may lead to ethical dilemmas in business contexts.