DeanTeamSandpiper26
QUESTION 1 Read the case below and answer questions that follow:…
QUESTION 1
Read the case below and answer questions that follow: Alice worked as a legal adviser in the foreign exchange division of a major bank. In that capacity she from time to time rejected foreign exchange transactions which clearly contravened the foreign exchange regulations that banks are subject to. One day in a meeting she realized that a number of transactions that she had rejected had been approved by the Finance Director of the Bank. Very upset by this news, she immediately brought these contraventions of the foreign exchange regulations to the attention of the compliance officer of the Bank. He promised to look into the matter. A few weeks later she inquired from the compliance officer what his investigations had revealed. He confirmed that the transactions indeed constituted a contravention of foreign exchange regulations, but asked her simply to accept these transactions as part of the way in which the bank did business. She learned that the CEO of the bank had also approved of the transactions. She took the matter further by contacting other senior managers in the bank. Their reactions were all similar: ‘Do not rock the boat. Simply accept the culture of the bank.’ Following her lack of success, she decided to contact the Minister of Finance in order to bring these contraventions to his attention. The Financial Director was outraged when he learned about her intention to report the incidents to the Minister of Finance. He viewed it as a breach of trust and a breach of the secrecy provisions that she had signed in her employment contract. Soon afterwards she transferred to another section. The transfer was an effective dismissal as no post existed for her in the new section. Suffering from the effects of stress, Alice left the bank three months later on the basis of ‘redundancy’ and with three months’ salary. She had to sign a secrecy undertaking and received a letter from the bank stating that she had voluntarily resigned.
i) What does Alice’s experience teach us about the fate of the individuals working in the organization? Give examples to illustrate your answer. (10 marks)
ii) The issue of confidentiality played a role in Alice’s case as she was considered to be in breach of the secrecy clause of her employment contract. Argue for or against this statement. (10 marks)
iii) When Alice brought the contraventions of the foreign exchange regulations to the attention of the compliance officer of the bank, he initially seemed to take her report seriously, but eventually withdrew his support when it became clear that Alice’s views were not finding favor with management.
a) What is your take on the compliance officer’s action? (5 marks)
b) Suppose you were in his position; would you have acted differently? (5 marks)
QUESTION 2
The security manager in the IT department of a company regularly monitors employees’ email communications for viruses and irregularities. In doing so, she has discovered a number of incidents which she considers as inappropriate use of the company’s email facilities. These include excessive amounts of private messages, messages with either a sexist or racist slant, and use of email to conduct private business. In each of these cases, she has reported the incidents to the manager of the employee involved. Some employees were outraged when they discovered that the security manager was monitoring the content of their e-mails. They insisted that the security manager had no right to infringe upon their email communications. Email messages should be considered private in the same way as telephone conversations are, they claimed.
a) Should security managers be allowed to monitor the content of email messages? (5 marks)
b) Can employees claim that their emails are private when they use company equipment to send them? (2 marks)
c) How could this abuse of electronic communication be addressed in a code of ethics? (3 marks)
