Shed Light On The Ethical Dimension Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Shed Light On The Ethical Dimension. Answer: Introduction Common-based peer production can be described as a socio-economic system of production that is appearing under the environment that is networked digitally. The hallmark of the socio-economic system enabled by the technical uses of internet can be seen as an alliance among the large corporations that are at times range from the order of hundreds to thousands; who work together effectively to share knowledge, information and cultural goods without depending on the managerial hierarchy or on the market pricing in order to coordinate their shared enterprise. It is seen that there are presence of various reasons to understand the unique production system that that has made some effective software, unique technologies for the betterment of the system (Levitt 2017). The purpose of this essay is to shed light on the ethical dimension rather than focusing on the functional dimension. It is seen that Deliverwoo and Uber are two such platform based peer production system and in recent times the platform economies are growing significantly. Discussion Deliveroo is a business organization that has been seen to get accusations regarding unethical actions and the management of the business organization stated that the delivery boys of the institution should be seen as independent workers as they should be treated as self-employed individuals as they get paid in a commission basis. The business model of Deliveroo is a platform based peer production that is similar to the business operation of Uber. The management of Deliveroo and Uber pays thousands of people on a commission basis for Delivering products or driving for the clients and thus they tried to avoid the allegations. It is a matter of fact that the provided guidance to the organization Deliveroo made their own employes getting confused regarding the roles and responsibility of the riders who are responsible to deliver the goods to the clients of the company. These guidelines were given to the organization in order to check and satisfy the dos and the donts of the business org anization. These are clearly unethical actions taken by the management to save the brand-value of the company and as a result of these, the image of the company got lowered and the reputation of the organization got ruined (Levitt 2017). The business organization had also got accusations regarding poor working environment and hostile actions of the male employees on the female employees. Facing this immensely significant challenge the HR department did not take a proper action. However when the news became public, the management of the organization arranged an investigation and took actions against 20 employees who were accused of disrupting the working ambience of the business organization (The Conversation, 2018). In a press meet the management of Uber disclosed the identities of the employees who were terminated by the management in order to cleanse the image of the brand. The management initially thought that by improving the public relation they will be able to get away with the allegation s they have received in recent times (Constantiou, Marton and Tuunainen 2017). Apart from these there are several accusations against the organization regarding the drivers behavioral issues towards the clients of the organization. The management of Uber needs to be aware of the fact that the management needs to spend a fortune to improve the situation and to improve the safety features for both the clients and the drivers working under the organization to improve the situation. In this case it is seen that there is a strong resemblance in the way of expansion of the businesses of Amazon and Uber as they both earned their dominance in the market by rapid investing and providing service at a significantly cheap rate than the other competitors of the market (Graham and Woodcock 2018). It is a matter of fact that the business operations of Uber does not involve the above mentioned costs and rather introduced some new establishment costs in the relatively new market of the organizations operation (The Conversation, 2018). It is seen that Ubers rate of development in the previous financial year was nearing 12 million US dollars that has been raised from various types of investors be it individuals or the institutions lie banks. It can be said that the payment structure for the riders should be in a form of the digital invoice rather than the pay slips. This list that contains dos and the donts are already provided to the employees of the organization and can certainly claim to initiate legal actions against the organization of the distinction between the riders and the employees who are directly under the payroll of the company is not cleared (Butler, 2018). The permanent employees in this case certainly can demand more employment rights and various benefits that may include minimum wage and holidays, sick leaves with full payment and many others. It has been seen that approximately 20 riders filed complaints against the organizations that the organizations does not consider them as the employees of the organizations and on the other hand the management of the organization placed their view stating that those individuals were only commission based self-employed people (Constantiou, Marton and Tuunainen 2017 ). It has been seen that at a time almost 200 riders of Deliveroo protested to get the status of employees of the organization as it is compulsory for them to wear uniforms during their shift and gets fixed rate for delivering the products. These are the gray areas of unethical actions taken by the managements of organizations like Uber and Deliveroo. It is to be mentioned that the operations of the companies based on the platform based peer production system like Uber and Deliveroo can be analyzed by the application of the principles of several ethical theories. Ethical theories provide guidance about making ethically correct decisions and also aim to analyze whether the operations of individuals or companies alike are in line with ethical principles. The theory of Utilitarianism states that while taking an ethical decision, it has to be kept in mind that the consequences of such decision must produce the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people (Lazari-Radek and Singer 2017). The theory of Utilitarianism also states that the actions of individuals and organizations must ensure to maximize the god over the bad. Utilitarianism considers the best decision to be the one which yields the greatest net benefit. It is to be stated that while assessing the benefits the stake holders are to be taken into consideration. To calculate the Utility the consequences of each of the individuals acts are to be taken into consideration and the ultimately the summation of the consequences are to be considered (Barrow 2015). In case of the company Uber the primary stake holders are the drivers and the customers who are the most essential elements of their business. However, Ubers decision to ignore the needs of the drivers and providing safety to the customers in order to avoid the costs to be incurred in the process can be considered unethical. The business model of Uber only focuses on the growth of the company and emerging in new markets however such business model does not have any scope for allocating funds to ensure that the ethical standards of business is met as the company has been facing huge losses (Lownsbrough 2018). Recently Uber has been charged with the claims of sexual harassments from employees and customers alike which provide evidence that the companys policy does not comply with ethical standards. The company Deliveroo has also been posed with claims of couriers. The company Deliveroo does not acknowledge the couriers who are instrumental to the success of the company as employees of the company. The company Deliveroo has claimed the couriers, who make deliveries and takeaways as independent contractors to avoid providing th em with employment benefits like holiday pay, leaves. Thus it can be stated that actions of the company are not in line with the principles of Utilitarianism as the operations of the company have failed to provide maximum benefits for the stakeholders (Mulgan 2014). Another Ethical theory that can be applied to assess the operations of the companies is the theory of virtue ethics. It is to be mentioned that the theory of virtue ethics is considered to be the one of the three major approaches of normative ethics. It primarily focuses on the moral character and virtues as opposed to other approaches that focus on duties, roles and consequences of actions of individuals and organizations alike (Van Hooft 2014). Just like consequentialists primarily attend to consequences and deontologists attend to duties proponents of virtue ethics attend to virtues and moral values. According to this theory, it can be stated that virtue can be considered to be a trait of a persons character which is very well entrenched in the possessor and cannot be acquired over time (Annas 2015). Thus by the application of the theory of virtue ethics it can be stated that Ubers action of not adhering to the needs of the drivers and the safety of the passengers can be considere d to be in violation of the principles of the theory of virtue ethics. The business model of Uber only focuses on the growth and development of the company in new markets and ignores the need for complying with the social standards due to improper allocation of resources and funds. The act of gender discrimination in the workplace and the claims of sexual harassments of the customers provide evidence about the unethical practices in the aforementioned companies. The act of not recognizing the couriers as the employees of the company Deliveroo is also against the principles of the ethical theory of virtue ethics. It can be stated according to this theory that the couriers are persons who make the food deliveries and are the ones who are instrumental in the success of the company and not recognizing them as employees for the purpose avoiding paying them employment benefits. This is against the principles of virtue ethics. It is unethical to treat the couriers as individual contractors who have to wear uniforms during the work shift, are paid a fixed wage rate. The movements of the couriers are also tracked by the company and are subjected to performance review. Therefore it can be said that the couriers of the company perform all the functions of employees but are recognized as independent contractor. Deontology theories are a series of ethical theories that primarily focus on the duties of the individuals to evaluate actions as right or wrong (Letwin et al. 2016). The theories of deontology do not consider the consequences of the actions of individuals as opposed to the theories of consequencialism. It is to be mentioned that the moral status of an act is not to be judged by the consequences of the act but rather the intentions of the agent who is performing the act. According to the theories of deontology it can be stated that morality of an individual involves the respect for the rights of individuals by the performance of their corresponding duties (Bowen and Prescott2015). The operations of Uber can be considered to be unethical judging by the principles of the theories of deontology. Ubers business plan cannot afford to allocate funds for providing safety to customers and rights to the drivers. It is the duty of the company to comply with the ethical standards however; the companys business plan primarily focuses on the growth of the company in new markets. The company Deliveroo also has the responsibility to the couriers to acknowledge them as employees as the company benefits from them. However Deliveroo addresses them as merely self employed contractors so as to avoid paying them the minimum wage rate as prescribed by the government and other employment benefits. Conclusion Thus it can be said that It is seen that there are numerous issues that hails from the ways of business operations of organizations like Deliveroo and Uber; and those issues are especially regarding the actions of the organizations like whether those are ethical or not. The business operation of Uber is backed up by the immense ambition of the management of the organization. Recently it has been experienced various times that the organizations got involved in various scandals that include sexual harassments and efforts to suppressing the evidences of such crimes. These are clearly unethical actions taken by the management to save the brand-value of the company and as a result of these, the image of the company got lowered and the reputation of the organization got ruined. Further by the application of the three ethical theories it can be stated that the operations of the businesses are clearly unethical. Bibliography Annas, J., 2015. Applying virtue to ethics.Journal of Applied Philosophy,32(1), pp.1-14. Barrow, R., 2015.Utilitarianism: A contemporary statement. Routledge. Bowen, S.A. and Prescott, P., 2015. Kants contribution to the ethics of communication.Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics,12, pp.38-44. Butler, S. (2018).Deliveroo accused of 'creating vocabulary' to avoid calling couriers employees. [online] the Guardian. 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Retrieved 27 February 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/13/uber-practices-company-london-consumer-sumofus Mulgan, T., 2014.Understanding utilitarianism. Routledge. Solon, O. (2018).Uber fires more than 20 employees after sexual harassment investigation.the Guardian. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/06/uber-fires-employees-sexual-harassment-investigation Stanoevska-Slabeva, K., Lenz-Kesekamp, V. and Suter, V., 2017. Platforms and the Sharing Economy: An Analysis EU H2020 Research Project Ps2Share: Participation, Privacy, and Power in the Sharing Economy, 2017. The Conversation. (2018).Uber can't be ethical its business model won't allow it. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/uber-cant-be-ethical-its-business-model-wont-allow-it-85015 [Accessed 27 Feb. 2018]. Van Hooft, S., 2014.Understanding virtue ethics. Routledge.