Suppose there are two large, competing telecommunication firms in your city. The

Question

Suppose there are two large, competing telecommunication firms in your city. The companies are hostile to each other. You have worked for one of the companies for five years in a position that gives you access to company trade secrets. You are now interviewing for a job with the other company that would be a substantial step-up in your career. During the interview, you get the impression that the company expects you to share your knowledge, including the trade secrets, if they hire you. What are the ethical issues involved? What are the legal issues? Are they the same as the ethical issues?

You have signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of your condition of employment with your current company. Does this change the ethics involved? Suppose the first company fired you, would the ethics involved change?

Explanation / Answer

There are certain ethical issues involved during the interview as below :

1. Loyality : Employee should be loyal enough to share any trade secret to its current organization.

2. Moral Resposibility : Here employee's moral responsibility towards its current organization will come into picture while sharing any information which is not supposed to share with rivals.

Legal Issues : Here there are obvious legal issues involved as employees must have signed NDA form (non-disclosure) to prevent any sharing of information. Below can be few legal issues for any breach of confidentiality :

ermination

The first and most obvious result of a breach of confidentiality is termination. Even if you have an employment contract, it is likely that a breach of confidentiality also constitutes a breach of your employment contract. In almost all circumstances, an employer will be well within his legal rights to fire you if you breach the employer's confidentiality.

Lawsuit Damages

An employer can also sue an employee for breach of confidentiality, and if successful at trial, the employer can obtain monetary damages from the employee. This means the employee will have to pay money to the employer, especially if the employee's breach caused identifiable monetary damage to the employer. For example, if the employee shares confidential information with a competitor, the employer may be able to prove loss of market share and revenue, which the employee would then have to pay as damages to the employer. In some cases, an employer may even be able to obtain punitive damages against the employee.

No Legal issues are certainly different from ethical issues as ethical issues are more into marality of employees and cant be dragged into law suit while lagal issues are handled only by law governing team.

Ethics are taught to employees inherently so that they work in organizations more effectively towards organizational goals so NDA aggrement do not mould their moral responsibilities (ethics).

Lastly if your first company fires you then ethics should not be change as moral character should not change for any organizational behavior and should be firm.

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