Faculty of Management Sciences

Fall 2020

Assignment 2
Business Ethics: BUS202

Name: Abdelrahman Amin

Submitted to: Dr: Nihal Elshimy

Assignment 2:
“In the work place, a reciprocal obligation implies that while an
employee has an obligation to respect the goals and property of the
employer, the employer has a reciprocal obligation to respect the
employee’s right of privacy.”

My Opinion Employees have clear and specific rights to privacy in the workplace, but
these rights are balanced against their employers' privileges to monitor their business
operations. If you're an employee who believes that your employer may have overstepped
legal boundaries in connection with your privacy rights, or if you just have questions
about your right to privacy in the workplace An employee's right to privacy in the
workplace is an increasingly controversial legal problem nowadays because the employee
wants to feel free and private while the employer wants to have control over the
employee to reach the corporation’s goals. Nowadays Employers have strong
surveillance over their employees they give them no privacy by watching their personal
computers and emails especially in an age of increased reliance on computers and
electronic mail to do business this gives them power. Technology has enabled employers
to monitor virtually all workplace communications made by employees using computers
including use of the Internet and company e-mail. (Haney,2017) While employees may
feel that this monitoring is a violation of their privacy rights, it is usually allowed under
the law. . Employee privacy rights are the rules that limit how extensively an employer
can search an employee's possessions or person; monitor their actions, speech, or
correspondence; and know about their personal lives, especially but not exclusively in
the workplace. Employee privacy rights are the rules that limit how extensively an
employer can search an employee's possessions or person; monitor their actions, speech,
or correspondence; and know about their personal lives, especially but not exclusively in
the workplace , an employer has to provide a safe environment for the employee to work
in and give them a sense of privacy. Privacy should be understood and respected by both
parties for the employees definition of privacy differs from that of employee; the
Employer wants to protect his own interests and goals while the employee wants to feel
private in the workplace and to be free with their personal affairs. (Everett,2006)
Unethical surveillance by watching the employee’s personals computer or personal blogs
should be prohibited because no one should feel watched or unsafe in the workplace.
 Refrences:
 Haney, S., Machanavajjhala, A., Abowd, J. M., Graham, M.,
Kutzbach, M., & Vilhuber, L. (2017, May). Utility cost of formal
privacy for releasing national employer-employee statistics.
In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on
Management of Data (pp. 1339-1354).
 Everett, A. M., Wong, Y. Y., & Paynter, J. (2006). Balancing
employee and employer rights: an international comparison of e-mail
privacy in the workplace. Journal of Individual Employment
Rights, 11(4).