Which Social, Ethical and Legal Issues are most important to particular employers in the IT industry,

and what strategies and plans do they propose to address these.

The continuous growth of the IT industry can sometimes create issues for companies working within
the sector. Social, Ethical and Legal issues all need to be addressed within a company and
precautionary measures taken to ensure that these issues do not create problems for the company
or for its employees. Employers will create plans and strategies to address, Social, Ethical and Legal
issues that could and are faced within the industry. This publication will look into different IT
industry employers and why it is important to their company to include counteractive measure
when looking at Social, Ethical and Legal issues.

The 3 companies

The electronics company, Sony has a strong mission statement emphasising

their views on how Social, Ethical and Legal Issues are of great importance
to them. Sony's views on these issues are listed on their website along with
a 'Sony Group Code of Conduct' and a means for alarmed employees to
voice any concerns.

Apple is a very well known company, which was founded on April 1st 1976 by
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Now, in 2015, Apple is a part of
most people lives with ages ranging from 3 to 103 in the form of an iPad, iPod,
iPhone or Mac. We see this company as a successful business who create
beautiful products. But what goes on in the background? What is it really like
inside 'the core'? Where are these products made? Are they destroying the
environment?

EasyJet was one of the first and most well known budget airlines within the UK. Set up by Stelios
Haji-Ioannou and members of his family, the airline was designed to offer low budget flights to UK
and European customers. The company saw itself hit media headlines over many issues, customer
mistreatment, staff mistreatment, lack of safety and the overwhelming lack of concern for their
impact on the environment. Although a airline company, the use of the IT
sector within EasyJet is a large part of the company (Koenigsberg, Muller &
Vilcassim, 2008). Their annual reports highlight the importance to them as
a company to take into account Social, Ethical and Legal issues.

Social Issues
In recent news events related to Sony, questions arise whether they are as
moral as they publicly state. Some of these concerns are related to gender
discrimination. Sony was recently a
victim to being hacked, lots of their
private and confidential data was leaked to file sharing
websites. Some of the data contained financial records along
with employees salaries. "A spreadsheet containing the salaries
including the companys top executives" (Fusion, 2014) was
shared and reported on in different news articles.
Stating how 17 of Sonys employees earning an annual rate of
over 1 million USD of which 1 is female they are all predominantly Caucasian. "The upper pay
echelon of Sony Pictures is 94 percent male, and 88 percent white" (Fusion, 2014). This would be
deemed as a breach of BCS Code of Conduct in relation to public interest. Referring to the BCS
"Conduct your professional activities without discrimination on the grounds of sex, nationality,
colour, race, ethnic origin". The BCS Code of Conduct outlines many of the same values to Sony's
mission statement, which is evidence to how they are not strictly abiding to it.
For years now there have been reports on how the manufacturing company Foxconn treats their
employees in china. Sony is not alone in using Foxconn for their production; numerous other
technology companies also use them. Foxconn has
become renowned for having tough working
conditions but according to one article Sony have
taken a new approach by having student internships
work on the production for Sony's PlayStation and not
getting paid for their work (Tech in Asia, 2013).
According to Sony's mission statement, "Sony is
working with its suppliers to address issues related to
human rights, labour conditions, health and safety, and
environmental" (Sony.net, 2015). Yet there are repeated new stories showing cases of poor working
conditions within their factories or out-sourcing partnerships.

When it comes to apple and social issues such as the environment, there isn't really
anything to complain about, Apples data centres use 100% renewable energy, and a few
of their factories that make the products use 100% clean energy. Comparing this to 2006
and 2011, they finished last in the green peace ranking system, and now they are ranked as one of
the highest, so as a company, they have improved drastically, and they are still improving. Apple
gives employees Christmas presents, which would boost the moral in the workplace, and shows a
level of respect from the higher power. This year they gave out personalised in case backpacks with
an apple logo on it. These usually retail for $60, but on the other hand, Google gave its employees
new smart watches, which retail for around $169 dollars, but I think both of these cases were only
in America and I don't think anyone in the UK received any of these gifts.

One of the main issues social issues with technology that EasyJet faced and
counteracted was the slow checking in process at airports. Their customers faced
long delays and waits before being able to check in luggage onto their flight, with many customers
choosing to next time fly with a different airline causing EasyJets profits to plummet. The issue was,
after debate, fixed. The social issue, aided by the use of technology resolved many customers
problem. EasyJet were able to replace check in desks to bag drop desks only, meaning online pre
flight check in was offered to passengers. Despite the somewhat complexity check in now seemed to
some customers, the use of technology has allowed for more faster, energy and staff efficient
working (Telegraph, 2013).

Legal Issues

Sony has been involved in legal issues that relate to data breaches before, at
the beginning of 2014 they had to pay 15
million USD to settle legal claims
over alleged breaches of customer
data of 77 million users of its
PlayStation network (Gardner, 2015). This most recent
hack involves lots of private data ranging from, salary
negotiations, salaries of 6800 employees, social
security numbers for 3500 US staff and numerous
other confidential company documents. Many believe
this will have a detrimental effect on Sony with legal
cases, which will keep Sony in risk for years to come.

When it comes to the legal side of Apple, they are always in court with patent infringements
where a company uses Apples patents without their knowledge or approval. A very good
example of this is when Apple took Samsung to court in 2012 because Samsung used the same
method of implementing LTE into their tablets as Apple. Samsung then owed Apple $1.1billion.
Macworld. (2014). There was an issue with the factories in Asia where workers were forced to work
overtime all the time. Last year, 11 facilities were found to have employed underage workers, with
106 active cases and 70 historical cases. In this year's report, they were found to have 8 facilities
with a total of 8 active cases and around 12 historical cases, so this has dropped dramatically.

A company such as EasyJet have faced a wide range of high payout court cases in
the past, with consumers claiming money from them for long delays and over
charged flight tickets. Some legal issues faced by the company are deemed irresponsible by other
companies and have massive impacts on EasyJets business. Between 2008-2009 the company was
fined 60,000 for refusing on 3 separate occasions to allow disabled individuals onto the flight.
Claiming the passengers would be a 'safety risk', this move by the company arose when they had a
'no frills' policy and just offered fights to customers who wanted to get from point A to B. Since this,
the company have rid of their no thrills policy and although still offer cheap flights, are more
customer conscious (DailyMail, 2012).

Ethical Issues

There are numerous ways Sony is working towards being a more ethical
company. Back in 2008 they launched a program to encourage their employees
to be more environmentally friendly by offering them cash-back incentives.
Since its creation, over 300 employees have taken part saving just under 1
million litres of fuel and creating over 500,000 kWh of clean power
(Sonypictures.com, 2015). This is an example of where they have gone beyond what is legally
required of them and are trying to be more socially responsible and environmentally concerned.

Ethics are high on the agenda of Apple, both Apple and Facebook offer a perk to women
only which is "egg freezing". This means the companies will pay for women to freeze their
eggs (the fertility kind, not the supermarket kind!) until they are ready to become parents
due to work issues. This can cost in excess of over $10,000, this shows that Apple treat women
equally, but when it comes to race, Apple isn't as diverse as over 50% are white out of 98,000
employees, and when it comes to leaders, 72 percent are male, and 64% are white. Apple recently
had an issue with their security on icloud.com, where hackers used the brute force hacking method
to steal images from celebrities accounts, which is known as "the snappening". The brute force
method basically means taking an email address, and firing thousands of commonly used passwords
at that email address until it matches, Apple should have implemented a lockout counter, which
would lockout the hackers after a number of attempts. Since then, Apple have implemented this
feature.

Ethics is something EasyJet take very seriously, with staff of high authority and
power being sent for training in ethics and bribery. The company automatically reduce the risk of
any ethical problems with set rules and precautions in place to
allow prevention to any issues that may arise. Another high
ethical issue that is heavily looked into is the prevention of
discrimination. With their policy on discrimination covering all
possible options. Written in their annual report, it's stated that
EasyJet value diversity and inclusivity, thriving on the high
performance culture they expect from their employees,
regardless of their personal backgrounds or countries (EasyJet,
2014).

Within each of the industries discusses, there are important Social, Ethical and legal issues that make
all industries important to one another. This is because each aspect contain a consequence
especially if they are not followed correctly, and those consequences causes an organisation to
either be prosecuted or put out of business through law of The BCS Code of Conduct. From our
examples all three business strongly follow and consider Ethical issues the most important one as
neither one received any problems as of late. Although both Social and Legal issues are the two
areas in which all three businesses have had concerns and EasyJet being the only organisation out of
the three to find a solution to improve the areas. Whereas the Sony and Apple have managed to
face punishment of bad publicity or prosecution on not following both Social and Legal aspects of
the business. Going back to our earlier point of each area having some sort consequence or negative
affect on a business if not followed correctly.

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