Published August 2002

Hidden-camera dilemma
an issue of business ethics

Q. As the vice president of a data collection and storage company, we rely heavily on computers and servers. Recently, we’ve noticed someone has been stealing microprocessors and memory chips from company computers. My solution is to install hidden video cameras to catch the perpetrator. The human resource director insists we must tell our employees they will be monitored. Who’s right?

A. Cynics like to joke that business ethics is an oxymoron. With almost daily revelations of accounting frauds permeating corporate America, the cynics may be winning the argument.

While 90 percent of the nation’s largest corporations have formal ethics statements, company credos or value statements, evidence of ethical corporate purity continues to be soiled by people more motivated by greed, power lust, competition or, even, job survival than doing what’s right.

Ethics equates to values. A cherished value in business, in work and in our personal lives is honesty.

Sadly, by several measures, Boy Scout honesty appears as rare in today’s business world as good vending machine coffee. According to the Ethics Officer Association:

• Nearly half (48 percent) of 1,300 workers polled in 1997 said they had engaged in one or more unethical and/or illegal actions.
• A similar percentage (41) of 1,700 workers told The (Indianapolis-based) Walker Group that they were “aware” of some unethical or illegal conduct at work. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) said they were uncomfortable reporting the transgressions.
• In 1999, more than half (54 percent) of 747 human resource professionals said they had observed illegal or unethical behaviors in their organization, according to the Society for Human Resource Management and the Ethics Resource Center.

All this occurs, ironically, as Americans yearn for a morally strong work environment. The most sought-after quality in managers is honesty and integrity, repeated management surveys indicate.

The most effective ethics statements reflect a company’s respect for others, such as employees, customers and investors, and state that the company’s primary responsibility is to act in their best interests, according to Notre Dame marketing professor Patrick E. Murphy, who specializes in business ethics studies. They also are specifically tailored to the company’s operations, fully communicated and promoted, revised at least every two years and rigidly enforced.

Why do I approach your question from the standpoint of ethics? It’s because you face a typical ethical business dilemma. If your company has such an ethics statement, then you have no other recourse than to inform your employees that their workplace will be monitored by video cameras 24/7 due to thefts taking place at the company. The goal is to stop the thefts, not “catch” the perpetrator.

Installing hidden cameras is an exercise fraught with danger. If discovered, the hidden cameras would immediately jettison employee morale. The cameras might also uncover other disciplinary behaviors that would require disclosure of your corporate spying to the entire work force.

Companies that live by their ethics statements are not the ones that have been caught in the latest wave of accounting scandals. They are the ones that have maintained an ongoing spirit of trust with their employees, vendors and customers.

Ethics should not be an oxymoron in business; it should be a requirement.

Eric Zoeckler operates a marketing communications firm, The Scribe, and writes “Taming the Workplace,” a column that appears Mondays in The Herald. He encourages your questions or comments by e-mail to mrscribe@aol.com.

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