Business Ethics - Blockchain Technology

1. Mention five current megatrends and the ethical challenges of each megatrend.

1. Blockchain technology : The advanced technology solution focused on the authentication, storage and protection of the data with decentralized database approach. Every data stored into the peer to peer ledger. The record (block) is self-managed and didn’t manage by one entity (centralized approach

Ethical Challenge :

Blockchain efficiency in terms of payment platform and also issuing digital asset has been threatening the financial institution like bank

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) : The AI will be able to learn in almost the same way as humans do. Along the increase power in data processing, the AI has improve a lot and start to undertake the human function.

Ethical challenge :

• Lack of interaction between people

With the AI, the interaction between people will be minimized as the interaction will only happened between human and the computer (AI)

• Increase the unemployment

The function of human as the worker will replace by AI machine, there will be many unemployment as the companies would use the AI rather than human.

1. Energy Revolution, the movement to renewable energy

Ethical challenge :

• Lack of supply

The renewable energy needs time to be developed in order to supply and substitute the brown energy. The effort itself will took a huge cost of energy production to reached the desirable output. Many people still think that the renewable energy are costly and the society till now still prefer to use something cheaper.

1. Health Innovation / Medical Technology : Medical/pharmaceutical research will vastly develop using the technology to find the new cure of disease. Digital technology will play a huge part in terms of the data harvesting and data analysis to be used by the scientist and doctor to make better diagnosis

Ethical challenge :

• Increased medical cost

The use of technology can lead to higher cost due to the huge amount of money that previously being use to develop the R&D for the new medicine, new medical methods etc.

1. E-Commerce

Ethical Challenge:

• Negative impact on the traditional sales

In the rise of e-commerce, the traditional/conventional sales were badly affected. As the society has moved the habit and prefer to do the transaction via internet rather than go to the physical store. In the long run, the traditional market will be eliminated

1. Explain why it is difficult for people to solve “the dirty-hands problem”, and what principles should be adhered when it comes to solve the problem.

There’s always a dilemma in solving the dirty hands problem. The dirty hands problem itself explain that we can’t satisfy all the involved parties without getting our hands dirty or in other way, there will be 2 sides or even more opinion/ conflict of interest happened during the implementation. Dirty hands problem oftenly involve the morality and political ethics of the decision maker, because in this perpective, both of the actions taken will make the hands “dirty”.

Principles to solve the problem :

From my opinion, the utilitarianism (result-based) approach should be adhered, the principles as follows :

• Value the pleasure

This principle means that the value of pleasure is the most important thing to consider. How the action is taken by calculating the net of benefits and harms, the decision will be measured by the pleasure/benefit result over the pain/harms. The consequences happened should be beneficial

• Be objective and thing about the result which will bring positive effect and satisfy the society interest rather than individual interest
• Treat other equally, avoid the bias judgment

1. Name three basic concepts of business ethics and explain them.

• Utilitarian approach :

Utilitarian approach means that every act in business implementation must be assessed based on the consequences. In other way, the business act has to consider the benefit and cost which mean that the decision that will be made is the decision with the most beneficial outcomes for others and also with the consideration of the lowest cost that will occurred. This approach focused on which ethical actions/alternatives that will increase the good value among the stakeholder and limiting the harm that happen to the minimum amount and finally led to the best overall consequences

• Individual rights approach :

Individual rights approach focused on the rights of all the individual which have to be respected. This approach believes that every action/decision has to respect everyone rights to achieve the goal. Morality is a must. The action will be avoided if it’s considered to cause violation of individual rights

• Justice approach :

For this approach, all the individual have the equal position to take the action/decision and to act equally without having any kind of favouritism or discrimination and the moral decisions must be based on the equity and fairness. The most common implementation of this approach in business is when the business owner treat all their buyers both retail buyers or wholesale buyers equally

1. In an ethical situation, what should a decision maker do?

a. Gather the facts about the situation to get a better understanding of the ethical issue in the related situation

b. Identify the parties which involved in the situation

c. Point out the problems from the situation and a make a list of actions that should be taken to solve the problems

d. Think wisely about all the possible consequences (both good and bad consequences) of the actions, put themselves in the stakeholder’s shoes to imagine the impact from both perpective

Don’t forget to consider the short term and long term impact of the action

e. Create/formulate the steps to realizing the appropriate decision or action that should be taken based the analysis above. Make a strong justification for the decision taken to make sure that the involved parties understand and can managed their expectation

f. Do the intuition and integrity check for the decided action, is it against their value or not

g. Implement the action and also prepare the alternative actions to answer to the potential challenges that may arise after the implementation of the action.