Social media is a network that constitutes of interactive computer-mediated technologies that work together seamlessly to ensure that there is uninterrupted communication, exchange, and transfer of ideas and other forms of expression from one individual to another (Coles 12). Users can engage with social media through personal and public devices such as phones, computers, and tablets. Social media is traditionally known for communication and social interactions. However, it has slowly turned into a platform for e-commerce. Today’s businesses have moved to the Internet, and companies are finding it more affordable and convenient for their operations and clients. Both big and small businesses are using social media to build and create brand awareness for the market. Moreover, it is used to promote new and existing products for sales and information about their existence and their effectiveness.
Social media has also proven to be very affordable and reliable when reaching clients and making sales. Therefore, this has made it easy for new enterprises since they do not need to overspend on communication and create brand awareness. Apart from marketing and fast communication, it also offers space for businesses in that, today, most businesses are run online. A new business does not need to have an actual location where people can walk in and out; instead, a website or social media page is created, and all photos of products are uploaded (Pourkhani et al. 224). Here customers can browse and ask questions about the product until they are convinced and ready to purchase. It benefits the business by saving for space and the clients in terms of time and money that could have been spent commuting to and from the store.
Today, social media is no longer considered an option, but a necessity that every business is looking forward to making it big in the market should adopt. Clients need to feel part of the brand; they want to trust, have a relationship, communicate, and interact with on a human level. Creating this human connection is the most crucial aspect of social media and essential for the growth of a business.
Ethics is one of the most important aspects of a business; any misdemeanour could cause losses in sales and numerous lawsuits. Organisations have fallen victim to using social media more personally than it is for business. Therefore, this has caused instances where members make inappropriate comments and inappropriately using the company’s platform (Shafiq 297). Such irresponsible behaviour is enough to ruin a company’s credibility and create an integrity risk. For instance, when an employee fails to respond responsibly and respectfully to a client’s comment concerning a product, they risk losing potential buyers for the product; hence, the product may end up failing.
Secondly, social media provides a cheap way for businesses to launch their operations. However, when employees or other members are involved in unethical behaviour, negative impacts may be experienced (Hunter 345). Some information should not be put out in public for public consumption; however, in cases where the employees are not well trained, some information can jeopardise the company’s integrity and business. Thirdly, in social media, news travels faster, and feedback is received almost instantly. It has encouraged companies to work towards letting out as many ideas as they can to their market. That has brought about the issue of plagiarism and stealing ideas between companies knowingly and unknowingly. For example, media houses that are known to release breaking news may be caught up in a position where they use an image that has been used by another media house without giving proper credit or a statement of shared ownership. It may cause a loss of credibility and integrity to the clients because of the client’s feeling that their organisation should be original in terms of ideas. A lawsuit may also come up even though this does not happen regularly in the media industry, specifically in such cases.
Organisations employ social media teams to ensure that social media activities are handled. However, these teams should learn all the organisation’s ethical boundaries and train other employees on the appropriate ways to use social media to prevent lawsuits and other losses (White n.p.). The organisation should hold training sessions to put every member on board to avoid poor representation of the company. In some cases, this training also extends to executive members of an organisation that directly represent the institution. These members are taught how to conduct their social media presence not to shed a negative light on the company.
In some cases, these ethical issues may not directly cause lawsuits, fines, and possible losses of licenses but may cause failures in sales, existing clients, potential clients, and the brand image. That is enough to put an enterprise out of business, no matter the size or influence. It is because clients are the greatest asset of a business because of their ability to facilitate growth.
As stated earlier, social media is the most efficient tool for brands to establish their brand and market their goods and services for existing and potential clients. However, there are laws, regulations, and codes that govern both individuals and organisational use of social media. The restrictions that are the central point for all the regulations fall under copyright and trademark elements. Copyright is referred to the legal right of an owner over their intellectual property. In simpler terms, only the copy owner or the person they have authorised has exclusive right to make their productions with the work (Houle 10). Trademark, on the other hand, is a well-known phrase, word, or symbol that represents a specific product and also lawfully distinguished it from other similar products in the market. It is a sign that identifies a product to a particular company.
In social media, the regulations for usage are that any company publishing their production should ensure that their copy is not similar to other copies in terms of design, phrases, and words. If this is the case, it should be pulled down or some modifications to ensure an apparent distinguishing factor from the other product. Without this, a company is a risk of suffering lawsuits. Another law is that a company or individual should not use photos with another company’s logo or trademarks, especially when they do not have any authorisation.
The copyright law requires that before publishing a company or business publishes a message; they should confirm its origin. It is specifically important because, since the normalisation of social media for business and the swiftness of sending messages, a need has been created for the companies to publish more messages to increase traffic in their pages hence drive more sales and customers (Beliveau 565). Another law is that one should obtain permission before just using another person’s work. Furthermore, there should be no posts that specifically encourage followers to infringe the right of others. Lastly, when using these works, one should check to confirm whether the work’s license covers the specific activity they want to use it for.
Part II
All the odds limited is an equipment hiring company that was first launched in 2017. This company is known to higher equipment for different services. It offers film production equipment, such as film cameras, and all other equipment for the film production job. Apart from the equipment it also offers the services, such as weddings and other important occasions requiring production. It is a diverse company that provides event planning services and is equipped with all the knowledge and professionals one could require. Over the years, the company has been identified as the most profitable due to its rapid growth and expansion. It is also considered one that values its employees and its clients in terms of fulfilling their needs in its region.
Some of the core values in this company are to create a safe working environment for its team by ensuring to take all safety measures and reliable insurance covers in case of any accidents. The company also focuses on creating a meaningful and long-lasting relationship with customers, potential clients, stakeholders, and investors. The company is sure of its security in its operations and a competitive edge in the market. Even though it is an equipment hiring company, its core value is to encourage innovation. That is because innovation is in this age; the only way to encourage development and progress in any business. Lastly, the company seeks to stimulate teamwork and ensure that there is input from every team member for higher results.
A company needs to be involved in the affairs of the community there are based in. A company should establish some of the menaces of society and give a helping hand. That is its corporate social responsibility. All the odds company’s environment is surrounded by drug-related cases where many school dropouts have turned into drug addicts and peddlers. It has turned the nature of the environment by corrupting the morals of the youth. The company, therefore, has taken part in helping some of the members by taking them to rehabilitation centres for help. Other activities the company is involved in are offering some of their equipment and services, sometimes for free and other times at a discount to community events. The company, therefore, uses social media to spread the word about some of the corporate social responsibility agendas to its community.
An ethical dilemma is when the answer is not black and white and does not have an easy answer. In such situations, both sides of the argument might be correct. These dilemmas mostly happen when there is a toxic working environment. For instance, it is the duty of one to report to their boss about some of the personal issues that may interfere with their work; however, it is another thing when the boss is known to conduct acts ions against the job’s ethical guidelines (Arnold et al. 223). Failing to give a report may impact the company’s productivity, and at the same time, failing to highlight the boss’s behaviour may jeopardise the position of the company in the market and hence one’s job position. All the odds company has faced several of these controversies to a point where it has affected the growth and production.
Unethical leadership has been one of the issues that have and are still affecting the company. The company leadership had a series of issues regarding posting advertisements and content concerning the products and services. In most cases, what has been advertised is very different from what the customers receive. For instance, a wedding shooting package may be exaggerated, and some of the prices altered; though, when a client riches out, the price changes. It has caused issues with clients and has led to a loss of potential clients. When using social media for advertising, a company should ensure that they do not distort a message or alter it for their advantage. If this is done, clients will reduce due to loss of trust in the company.
Leadership is expected to be firm and direct the team in the direction of the goals that have been set for the company. However, if the leadership system is not established, a toxic working environment is created. In the industry, leaders who see no problem in manipulating sales, taking bribes, and taking advantage of employees will see no problem interfering with the Enterprise’s business and revenue activities. This change will create a toxic environment in the workplace, and even if new employees are hired, then there is a chance of them joining the culture. All the odds company has had a bad internal reputation for the toxic culture. However, the trend changed when the leadership was changed, and some of the employees changed—couched and exposed to training sessions to obtain knowledge and understand the importance of the new cultural change.
Part III
The existing codes and laws are right to change the organisational cultures and change ethical dilemmas. However, this also depends on the regulations and rules that have been put in place for the employees and governing the business aspect so that the codes can be followed. Moreover, there should be enough training for existing and new employees. Regulating the industry might be a bit complicated to handle and uphold. That is because it is easy to cross the line and infringe on individual and company rights of freedom and conduct activities on their social media platforms.
Codes for using social media are mainly to ensure that all users enjoy their rights and freedom of expression, preventing them from infringing others’ rights. However, the government and law enforcement have a duty to ensure that they monitor the Internet to identify criminal activities and any illegal activities acted upon. In my opinion, the trademark and copyright laws are strict enough but only rely on protecting content creators and copy owners but not clients and consumers of the content.
More stringent laws should be created that care about consumers’ well-being; for example, most of the time, scammers and other businesses take advantage of clients by over advertising or promoting their products when the product they give does not meet the standards. After a sale has been made, company support does not respond even if a client complains about a service. It is a loss for clients and social media users in general. For scammers, clients send money for products or services that are never delivered. Due to these reasons, therefore, the government should set measures such as collaborating with social media owners so that such activities can be tracked and scammer’s accounts monitored despite the activity risking individuals’ privacy.
6
As stated in the module, ethical theories are critical because they are a form of a standard that helps justify the decisions we make as individuals and at a company level. The theories are categorised into normative, metaethics, and applied theories (O’Mathúna et al. 108). Normative theories tell one what they should do and why they should act in a way even though their decisions may be viewed as against or above the theory. Metaethics deals with learning the ethical theories in question. The interest here is to deal with moral and ethical theories. Lastly, the applied ethics explain why we use normative theories to the specific issue.
The normative theories comprise utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, egoism, natural law, among many others. Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that supports happiness and actions that do not cause harm and opposes those that bring unhappiness and cause harm. Its main objective is to make society better for a while. This theory helps in that it helps in identifying those regulations that are not working towards making all users happy and establishing those that protect the well-being of all users. The deontology theory runs with the idea that an action’s morality is based on whether the action is wrong or right, depending on the specific rules. Therefore, the regulations to guide the usage of social media for business are the measures of whether an action is right or wrong. It helps to put the actions in place to ensure that they do not affect the business.
Virtue ethics deal with the values of the mind, characters, and a sense of honesty. Here the virtues are evaluated and defined together with the other problems while focusing on their consequences. Egoism is the moral thought that states that agents work in their self-interests. It means that all the actions are acted upon depending on the interests of an individual. This theory also explains how individuals and companies will always want to perform acts depending on whether it suits them and their business dynamics (Magelssen et al. 29). Lastly, natural law is the law that is mainly based on human nature that can be inferred independently from positive law. According to this law, all humans have rights conferred by nature, reason, and God. Therefore, it explains that every user has a right to use and benefit from the internet resource. And everyone is entitled to the privacy of their data without fear that they face the risks of being exposed. This theory helps to understand every human being has a right to use the Internet despite their intention or status.
