The Waterbee Toy Company Analysis
Unit 5 Paper- The Waterbee Toy Company Analysis
Waterbee Toy Company began designing and manufacturing wooden water toys in 1906. By the late 1990 's Waterbee had evolved its wooden toy business into other categories such as action figures, musical instruments and even electronics. Waterbee had recently seen sales grow very quickly but staffing levels had actually decreased by nearly 50%. This meant employees were spending more and more time in the office. With the advent of the internet and the search and email functions that came with it, Waterbee was put into a position that was very common among employers during that time; it needed to re-look at its privacy policies and decide whether or not employees could use the internet for personal use. And if Waterbee did allow it, it needed to decide if and how it would regulate the personal usage. Many ethical and privacy issues factored into the decision making, and Waterbee realized there were consequences to whatever decisions they made. The internet 's rapid spread and growth in popularity among the public meant that people were using it for communication and education in their everyday lives. As employees spent more time at the office, the demand to use the internet for personal use was growing. Though the official company policy was that internet usage must be for business purpose, the decision was made to step back from that policy and let employees use search and email functions for personal use. Waterbee chose to monitor employees usage, but the results after the first week were surprising. For example, one employee spent an entire day on playboy.com. This employee did not work in his own office, which meant other employees could see his monitor. The Security team, faced with taking action on a number of employees, and complicated by legal issues, then advised HR to stop monitoring usage. HR, however, stuck to the orignal plan and took action on the employees who misused the Internet. Firstly, ethical
Waterbee Toy Company began designing and manufacturing wooden water toys in 1906. By the late 1990 's Waterbee had evolved its wooden toy business into other categories such as action figures, musical instruments and even electronics. Waterbee had recently seen sales grow very quickly but staffing levels had actually decreased by nearly 50%. This meant employees were spending more and more time in the office. With the advent of the internet and the search and email functions that came with it, Waterbee was put into a position that was very common among employers during that time; it needed to re-look at its privacy policies and decide whether or not employees could use the internet for personal use. And if Waterbee did allow it, it needed to decide if and how it would regulate the personal usage. Many ethical and privacy issues factored into the decision making, and Waterbee realized there were consequences to whatever decisions they made. The internet 's rapid spread and growth in popularity among the public meant that people were using it for communication and education in their everyday lives. As employees spent more time at the office, the demand to use the internet for personal use was growing. Though the official company policy was that internet usage must be for business purpose, the decision was made to step back from that policy and let employees use search and email functions for personal use. Waterbee chose to monitor employees usage, but the results after the first week were surprising. For example, one employee spent an entire day on playboy.com. This employee did not work in his own office, which meant other employees could see his monitor. The Security team, faced with taking action on a number of employees, and complicated by legal issues, then advised HR to stop monitoring usage. HR, however, stuck to the orignal plan and took action on the employees who misused the Internet. Firstly, ethical
References: Goodpaster, Kenneth E. Nash, Laura L. 1998. Waterbee Toy Company. Policies and Persons: A Casebook in Business Ethics. McGraw Hill. Valji, Hassan. 1998. Waterbee Toy Company Should Monitoring Occur? http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199911/15_newsroom_privacy/01_catlinb_workplace/waterbee1.shtml