The Ethical Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility at Facebook - Case Study Example

Corporate Social Responsibility Affiliation Introduction Organizations have a significant role in the development of environment and society because of the high demand for the product marketing of their services and products quality to their consumers. However, firms or corporations have the responsibility of practicing corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is a significant part of business as it get concerned with how the company tries to be beneficial to their stakeholder groups (Wong, 2014). Therefore, most companies run business with corporate social responsibility so as to keep both social and business environment sound. In decades, there have been diverse arguments over the corporate social responsibility (Tricker, 1998). The cases against the CSR concept begin with classical economic argument started by Freidman. Freidman holds that management has only one responsibility of maximizing the profits of the shareholders and the owner (Friedman, 1970). He argues that social issues are not a business concern and that the issues should get resolved by free market system unfettered workings. Additionally, the other argument is that business does not have equipment for handling social activities. On the other hand, the argument in favor of the corporate social resource begins with the belief of business’s long-term enlighten self-interest of being socially responsible. The point of view suggests that in order to have a healthy environment for the business in future, the managers should take action now for long-term viability. Additionally, the other argument is that the responsibility wards off the government regulations (Baron, 2013). Therefore, using different corporate social responsibility concepts, this paper will different corporate social responsibility in the two case studies and provide an ethical analysis in each of them. FACEBOOK Facebook definition is the online a social networking service that has its headquarters in California. The chief executive officer of the corporation is Mark Zuckerberg. As Facebook turns out to be more synonymous with experience on networks, its shareholders tend to earn more benefits. Facebook has been successful in gaining a greatest share of individual’s attention and time. The customer’s challenge in the coming years is to have that dominance of attention and time to convert into a bigger share for their wallets. Most of the shares they spend indirectly or directly on advertising (Wong, 2014). Being an international brand, the greatest ethical challenge that the company faces is online privacy. Online privacy relies on the self-regulation by the industry and individual company (Sneirson, 2007). Some of the web allows the user to choose data collection. Internet tracking browsing is also widespread. For instance, President Obama called for a bill of rights for the consumer privacy. Online privacy has several dimensions that govern Facebook performance. First, the online users are not supposed to sell personal data or share with advertisers. There is face recognition technology that permits users to identify or tag friends in photos. As a result, Facebook built an image profile database that automates online identification. Additionally, Facebook developed a new feature that allows users to control the personal information types that the application can access. Some of the privacy controls get also used to the user’s home page. As a result, the online privacy advocates praise for Facebook following the changes. Secondly, the online firm has a problem of having inappropriate data for the children. Children can easily access the online firm and get inappropriate information that is unethically according to their age. Due to this, Facebook has a safety advisory board for the privacy controls. It is as a result of the threat to expose children below 13 years which can easily get bullied, malware or serious threats from their online accounts. Therefore, Facebook has two children’s safety NGO’s to support the online firm financially. Following the two problems; personal and privacy data issue and inappropriate information for children, there are different questions that rise in terms of CSR, responsibility sharing, and morality. What should Facebook due to the public pressure? How far can the government intervene to protect privacy? Is face recognition service violating privacy? Every day many people are opening new accounts in the online firm for communication and advertising; thus, increasing pressure on Facebook management. As a result, Facebook management is supposed to understand people’s behavior and the extent that their moral standards get reflected by their behaviors. The main focus in understanding their behaviors should be on altruism, fairness, reciprocity, self-interest, moral reinforcement and audience effects (Drucker, 1984). The understanding involves how an individual treat or interacts with other people and the group setting that an individual makes a decision and how they differ from collective interests. Kantian Rights According to Kantian rights, the Facebook management has the property right; thus the controlling the extension of user’s privacy. In this case, the stakeholder enjoys the right of having their value maximized without benefiting the consumers in terms of profits. Therefore, having the Facebook management controlling every setting on Facebook, the people do not have the freedom to speech and control their privacy. As a result, the services are unfair since they only focus on profiting the stakeholders. The consistent rights should include freedom of speech and conscience. Facebook should have categorical imperative where a line gets drawn between the opportunity rights without discriminating. Individuals should be given means of pursuing the opportunity; thus, the management has the duty to provide the means. It is because most of the users spend time on Facebook but do not understand how they can make profits with the network. Thus, it is important to give the users opportunity to benefit from the services and have their freedom on how to manage their privacy. Therefore, in this case, Facebook management should have fairness, altruism and control the user’s self-interest. The management should be responsible for making a decision on how much money to keep and how much to contribute to the user. It is because individuals are spending most of their time in the social network and the services provided should also benefit them. The management has ha the self-interest motive in many instances as it keeps all the money and allocates nothing to the Facebook users. Therefore, following the users behavior of spending most of the time in Facebook, it is fair for the Facebook management to allocate some profits to the users. It is seen that a conditional altruism takes account of the well-being of their customers on their past actions and their current situation as well. As a result, Facebook will heighten their social image due to fair account towards its users. Justice theory tends to explain how different people stand relative to one another on dimensions comprising, but not limited to liberties, rights, and consequences (Baron, 2013). In this case, Rawls’s justice theory of fairness is required. The theory emphasizes on equity of political and moral rights. There are three categories of the theory, compensatory, distributive and retributive that the government should consider as they regulate the Facebook services on privacy. The distributive justice is about the distribution of burdens and rewards of the social interactions (Drucker, 2002). The government should have Facebook impose duties that will have a just distribution of burdens and rewards. For instance, in case of any bullies there should be ways to compensate the burdens to the user. Additionally, the users privacy should be treated equally and making the advantaged people as well off as possible. The compensatory justice requires compensation for any injustice. The government should have laws for compensation of any privacy injustice by the firm to the user. Hence, the main Rawls’s theory that the government can apply is to have laws that will attend the least advantaged interest in their privacy without jeopardizing capital investment and information. Therefore, the government has the responsibility to impose a law that will equally promote social privacy (Baron, 2013). The face recognition may or may not be violating the user privacy. Business Roundtable base on the conception of responsibility to stakeholders. It provides a great conception of the firm’s responsibility and leaves the specifics to the management. It examines the public issues affecting the development and economic positions that seek to reflect sound social and economic principles (Drucker, 2001). It states that business is entitled to serve the interest of the public and the private profits. Thus, having a face recognition service may violate some of the public interest or expose their private profits. Therefore, Facebook should consider limiting the service to protect some of the public interests that may jeopardize their performances. According to Freidman, his economic theory along with morality conception base on liberty. He states that the business social responsibility is to maximize profits. He says that the managers responsibility who serve as owner’s agents of the firm is to maximize the shareholder value or the profits through engaging open and free competition through conforming the society basic rule. Therefore, from Freidman’s perspective, an organization or corporation is an individual’s voluntary association who join for a mutual purpose. The main purpose is the profit generation. Hence, having corporations pollute the environment without breaking the laws may be moral because they are maximizing their profits. A value-maximizing organization male philanthropic contribution as it strengthens the society that it operates (Baron, 2013, pp.676). Freidman adds that when such actions maximize shareholders value, they cease to be as social responsibility, and they become a component of profit maximization strategy. Utilitarianism According to Bentham and Stuart, Utilitarianism involves a consequential system where the firms action is moral if it results in good consequences compared to another alternative (Drucker, 1999). The Facebook face recognition service can be immoral according to their perspective. It is immoral because it creates insecurity to the user compared to using no face recognition service as an alternative. The consequences get evaluated in individuals affected preferences terms. Preferences aggregation is required because a certain action can result in individuals better off instead of another worse off. But, utilitarianism does not focus on the individual number which is made better off in majority vote sense. The one individual gain can outweigh the losses of hundreds. In this case, if the corporation gains more in having the face recognition service in Facebook and outweigh the fact that the many people getting affected by face recognition service. Hence, utilitarianism supports that it can be moral for a company to have the face recognition service even though it violates the user’s privacy as it benefits the firm through maximizing its profits. Additionally, the face recognition affects most users around the world. Therefore, there should be a way of how Facebook management and other shareholders can share the responsibility for reducing the privacy concerns. One of the way will be imposing dictator game where it will involve two participants; proposer and responder. In this case the proposer, Facebook manager, and other stakeholder will not be self-interested but instead they should be altruistic. The game should have a fairness consideration of sharing the endowment (Drucker, 1994). There should be social norms also that individuals and corporations will consider in allocating the endowment. Earning the endowment provides moral authority to the proposer in keeping what has been earned; they will not exploit the environment. Scholars have also determined that there is no transparency in most of the managerial settings where nature and people may affect the connection between outcomes and actions. Therefore, the governments of the involved countries should ensure that the corporation knows the exact implications of the environment pollution. Additionally, they should also provide alternatives that will minimize the environmental pollution. The Facebook management being the proposers, they should set rules that will govern the environment pollution and reward those that preserving the environment to some point. Conclusion The business cases on corporate service responsibility give a rational justification for CSR initiatives from a primarily corporate financial/economic perspective. The corporations focus mostly on maximizing its value or profit and thus cease to take the social responsibility (David, 2013). 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