Business Studies · Ch 5 — Emerging Modes of Business
Ethical fallouts
5.4.6
Ethical fallouts
e-business can raise serious ethical questions, particularly around privacy. The text illustrates this with Sabeena, who was shocked when her HR manager confronted her with a copy of a personal e-mail she had written to a friend — and threatened her over it. Nowadays companies use an 'electronic eye' to keep track of the computer files an employee uses, their e-mail account, the websites they visit and so on. Whether such surveillance is ethical is an open and troubling question.
Table 5.1 — Traditional business versus e-Business
| Basis of distinction | Traditional business | e-Business |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of formation | Difficult | Simple |
| Physical presence | Required | Not required |
| Locational requirements | Proximity to raw-material source or product market | None |
| Cost of setting up | High | Low (no physical facilities needed) |
| Operating cost | High, due to fixed charges of procurement, storage, production, marketing and distribution | Low, relying on a network of relationships rather than ownership of resources |
| Contact with suppliers and customers | Indirect, through intermediaries | Direct |
| Internal communication | Hierarchical (top → middle → lower → operatives) | Non-hierarchical, allowing direct vertical, horizontal and diagonal communication |
| Response time | Long | Instantaneous |
| Shape of organisation structure | Vertical / tall, due to chain of command | Horizontal / flat, due to directness of command |
| Business processes and cycle length | Sequential (purchase → production → marketing → sales); longer cycle | Simultaneous / concurrent processes; shorter cycle |
| Opportunity for interpersonal touch | Much more | Less |
| Physical pre-sampling of products | Much more | Less — but tremendous for digitable products (music, books, journals, software, videos can be pre-sampled) |