Legal & Ethical Issues

Many a times, business organizations face the dilemma of ethical decision making. It is said that "If a CIO says ‘I’ve never faced an ethical issue’, they’re not living in the real world." Ethical compliance in an organization presents a strong public image and also upholds the integrity and character of an organization. Some legal and ethical issues faced in IT outsourcing include:

· Legal perceptions in different countries. Legal perceptions are subjective from one nation to the other and the incertitude arisen when a dispute occurs would leave both parties in a fix. Association becomes easier to handle when parties have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the agreement, with all due respect to international law.

· Compromise of customer data. Confidential information security is the core concern of outsourcing ethics. Cases have been reported that customer data were taken from customer databases by third-party vendors and offered for sale on the black market.

· Exploitation of wages. Economists have heavily debated the ethical issue regarding the exploitation of wages in less developed countries. Some find it unethical to lay off domestic staff in favour of the cheap labour available in countries such as India, just to save on costs of the organization.

· Poor working environment. Ethical concerns over poor working environment and exploitative HR polices suggest that workers may have been overworked and not receiving the salaries promised by their employers.

· Vendor reliability. Trust is one of the most important and significant aspect of an outsourcing relationship with the vendor. There have been cases whereby staff of the vendor’s organization stole trade secrets, undisclosed contracts and invaluable intellectual property of the client’s organization. It is important to weigh the dependability of an organization before outsourcing to them. Organizations that implement strict employee credibility measures directly imply how serious they are in promoting good outsourcing ethics.

Sunday, January 18, 2009