---
title: "Organizational technoethics"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_technoethics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:57.765531+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Technoethical challenges in medical organizations ===
Another area of organizational technoethics that has been becoming increasingly popular is in the field of medicine. Medical ethics are based on values and judgments in a practical clinical placement where six values are portrayed the most: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, dignity, truthfulness and honesty. Many of the issues in medical ethics are due to a lack of communication between the patients, family members, and health care team. An asset to medical ethics that has brought attention to its advantages and disadvantages are electronic medical records. This is a new way to update, organize and store patients' medical records in a database that can be accessible to other doctors by using the network.
An issue in organizational technoethics in the medical field that is an increasing matter is the privacy issue with electronic medical records. To start, some advantages of EMRs are that they can minimize errors, keep records safe in the database, it is cost efficient, translates into a better treatment for the patients and can even give some control over health records to the patients. On the other hand, EMRs have brought upon some disadvantages mainly around privacy issues. First, it threatens a patient's privacy. Having a patient's medical history recorded in the database loses the confidentiality between the doctor and patient since anyone who has access to the system is able to retrieve these files.
Moreover, some do not feel their medical records are safe in the database since others are able to get into personal files and potentially change medical records or misuse the information. A group of researchers conducted a study on the privacy issues raised by the use of EMRs. They concluded that all electronic systems around us have this one-to-many exchange such as the internet and email just like the EMR system. However, more clarity needs to be provided around patient consent and patient restrictions as well as confidentiality issues. With the issue of privacy at hand, many ethical questions have surfaced on whether this electronic system is safe or a hazard to patients due to the easy access and misuse of a patient's information.

=== Technoethics and surveillance ===
Organizational surveillance is becoming a reoccurring issue in the modern day workforce. Today's organizations are facing the ethical dilemma of privacy rights and meeting the societal demands of efficient productivity performances from employees. Organizations have restrictions on employees Web pages and have also implemented surveillance over workers email, Web browsing, and even video surveillance at the workplace. Surveillance has become a technoethical challenge because the rapid development of surveillance technologies. Surveillance is a prominent technoethical challenge because it threatens democracy, privacy, power, as well as brings various types of rights together. Surveillance is a technoethical challenge because it encompasses many ethical dilemmas made by new technology. Surveillance is a technoethical challenges because it threatens personal liberties. Surveillance is said to corrode interpersonal trust, which is essential for democratic governance. Citizens with access to new technologies are becoming more aware of the pervasiveness of these technologies. Surveillances has evolved from people called informers to technology. Citizens are now seen as consumers, and their preferences are monitored in order to feed citizens their preferences rather than serve them with broad perspective. This poses the question: Is it ethical to implement informational narrowcasting (only feeding citizens their preferences)? Surveillance also falls under many other categories and raises other ethical dilemmas. Another ethical dilemma would be: Should citizens be involved in the design process of technological policy on surveillance?
Surveillance can be ethical if states use it to protect national security and do not monitor citizens in the privacy of their bedroom and public washrooms. In 1998 " New surveillance" introduced by technological advances added to the degree of complexity and mobility, that society had not seen before. Surveillance has captured many areas of ethics and technology which translates into Technoethics. Surveillance has looked at power relationships in society, trust and autonomy, privacy, causes, authority as well as necessity, means, distance and social sorting. Technoethics refers to the systems approach taken to look at all of these issues surrounding dilemmas such as surveillance.
The branch of utilitarian ethical theories are "based on the assumption of the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people". Under this perspective of ethical theories, organizational surveillance for the workers does not bring happiness; "Workplace surveillance has consequences for employees, affecting employee well-being, work culture, productivity, creativity and motivation". According to this report, the results show that surveillance produces the exact opposite results in which surveillance was implemented for, to increase workplace productivity. With organizational surveillance creating a workplace environment where employees feel unmotivated and as a result productivity will decrease. If the productivity of employees lack than the organization may not experience the rate of growth and success as wanted by management and ultimately, will lead to an overall unhappiness for both parties, employees and the organization.
Another branch of ethical theories which can be applied is duty ethics. Duty ethics is "concerned with the obligations one has to others in society". Under this perspective, organizations have the obligation to provide services and goods to society. In order to produce services and goods for society, organizations must be efficient in productivity. As result of this need, organizations have implemented surveillance on employees in order to meet this obligation. Also, employees have the obligation to meet their own performance goals at the workplace, which align with the overall goals of the organization.

=== Organizational restrictions on Internet publishing ===