Ethics in Employer-Employee Relationship

Ethics in Employer-Employee Relationship

The field of business ethics is very challenging. What makes it challenging is the fact that the conception of business ethics represent different ideas to different people (Warren, Justice, & Supreme, 2005). However, business ethics has, in most cases, been thought of as an area of acquiescence and the legal or ethical relationship involving the employee and the employer is governed and determined by some factors. The most controversial issue when it comes to the relationship between the employer and the employee is the ownership of intellectual property rights of knowledge, designs and ideas brought or invented by the employee in the course of the employment (Warren, Justice, & Supreme, 2005). With the help of ethical theories to analyze this case scenario, this paper will focus more on what happens to the knowledge, skills and designs of the employee when his or her employment relationship comes to an end.
The first question in this case scenario is whether the employee can take any part of his knowledge, design or code to another employer or start a business with the knowledge and skills. According to Sonderholm (2010), the law of ethics in business states that any design or knowledge acquired or obtained during employment is the property of the owner of the business and cannot be taken to another employer; the intellectual rights of such knowledge, skill or design do not belong to the employee but the employer. According to Thomas Hobbes’s Social Contract theory, a person’s ethical or moral behavior and obligation depend on the terms of a contract entered into by the parties (Waller, 2008).

In this regard, this rule is protected by the non-compete clause signed by each employee at the beginning of their employment contract (Sonderholm, 2010). Also, business relationships are dependent upon virtues. According to Plato’s virtue ethics, a virtuous person acts according to the personal agreement and is morally bound to the contract of employment (Waller, 2008). They should be able to act well even if it is totally difficult for them to do so. Thus according to the business agreement, the property belongs to the employer even if the employee created it.
The most important ethical or moral questions for this particular case scenario are whether the employee is legally obligated to the company for which he or she works and whether he or she is under ethical or moral obligation not to share or steal the property of the company without the company’s clear authorization. The most important moral or ethical principle to be considered in this case scenario is whether the employee disregards his or her obligation to his or her employer and takes the intellectual property of the owner or employer to profit a competing employer or start their own business. According to Kantian theory, behaving ethically is driven by reason (Beauchamp, Bowie, & Arnold, 2004). This means that ethical behavior is a matter of obligation to the rules set by the parties. In this case, the general rules demand that the intellectual property, in this case, belongs to and should only benefit the employer.
However, morally, this obligation to the employer seems unfair to the employee considering the fact that the original knowledge, idea or design comes from him. Jeremy Bentham defines what is “good” as pleasure or happiness. Thus, considering the effects of the employee’s personal actions and the effects of these types of actions is important (Beauchamp, Bowie, & Arnold, 2004). Here, we have to consider what makes the employee happy and whether his or her actions will give him or her pleasure. Since the ideas and knowledge come from the employee, applying them to his or her own business will definitely bring him or her pleasure; it is thus justifiable. Also, the best way to approach it is to ask what the words “in the course of employment or business” mean. The general rule is that the intellectual property rights of the ideas and designs that the employee comes up with during the period of his or her commitment to the employment agreement is the property of the person who employs him or her and must not be stolen or taken to another employment without the permission of the person who employs him or her. This is because the employee is compensated by the employer for all the inventory work they execute for the business (Murray, 2012). However, in cases where the employee or the inventor is not compensated or remunerated to come up with the intellectual property by the business or employer, but goes ahead and does so, then the rights to the intellectual property solely belongs to the creator (employee) (Murray, 2012). For instance, in this case, scenario, if the employee was not paid to come up with the ideas and designs by his or her employer, then he or she can take the knowledge and designs to another employer or start his or her own business with the knowledge and designs.
References
Beauchamp, T. L., Bowie, N. E., & Arnold, D. G. (Eds.). (2004). Ethical theory and business.
Murray, M. D. (2012). The Ethics of Intellectual Property: An Ethical Approach to Copyright and Right of Publicity Law Ethics Core Encyclopedia-National Center for Professional & Research Ethics. Available at SSRN 2013463.
Sonderholm, J. (2010). Ethical issues surrounding intellectual property rights.Philosophy Compass, 5(12), 1107-1115.
Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues. Pearson Longman.
Warren, E., Justice, C., & Supreme, U. (2005). Legal, Ethical, and Professional Issues in Information Security.