HumanCommGpAssign

Assignment Topic:
Assignment 2: Case Analysis Report (Case 2)
Program: AA Bilingual Comm Studies (Korean & Chinese), AA Bilingual Comm Studies (Japanese and Chinese)
Course: Human Communication in Society
Course Code: CGE 24402
Tutorial Group: TB3 (Monday)
Tutor: Candace FU

Student Name: Lai Lee Fan, Huen Po Chun, Leung Po Yan
Student Number: 53102811, 53100878, 53106256
Contact number: 53454149, 61902386, 91507448

Submission Date: April 27, 2014

Plagiarism Declaration
I/We hereby declare that the work contained in this assignment is my/own own original work and has not previously in its entirety or in part been submitted to any college or university.
I/We have not allowed and will not allow anyone to copy my work with the intention of passing it off as his or her own work.

Student name
Percentage contribution
Lai Lee Fan
33%
Leung Po Yan
33%
Huen Po Chun
33%

Signature: ___________________________________
Date: ______28-4-2014_____________________

1. According to the Global Aid’s policy, an employee must apply for annual leave three days before the leave commences. From an organizational point of view, what values can justify such requirement and what functions can this requirement serve? Do you think this policy or rule is reasonable? Explain your view.
According to the Global Aid’s employment policies, a full-time employee at the Executive Officer grade wishing to take annual leaves have to give a notice through the online absence request system at least three days prior to taking the absence. From an organizational point of view, the value of the Global Aid is to maintain the discipline of the employee in this organization. According to Olson (2009), rules benefit faculty members in several ways. First, fairness. The same consistency that serves as an administrative benefit leads to a greater level of equitable treatment of all department members. Second, equity. Rules protect people from the abuses of old-style cronyism. Decisions aren 't made capriciously, in smoke-filled rooms, and to the benefit of one person or group over another. We can see that, rules fair and equal to everyone in the organization. Rules able to maintain the discipline of the employee in this organization. The rules are to guarantee the normal work order in order to maintain the organization’s normal operation. Discipline is a team fighting for survival and protection, without the discipline, this team will be like a mess, lose the way to move forward. A corporate mission is simple that is to let the developed plan to become a reality, which is executed. But how to perform, it is a main problem. At this time, the indispensable discipline, discipline is a prerequisite to ensure the execution.
Rules are necessary in an international confederation and I think this rule is reasonable. As Global aid is an international confederation, it need a consistency rule in order to maintain the discipline of the employee. Standardize rules can maintain the organization’s normal operation. Organizational values set acceptable or expected norms or bounds of behavior for the individual members of the organization. Without organizational values, organization members will, by default, follow their individual value systems. These may or may not promote behavior that the organization finds desirable. Therefore, organizations establish values to provide their members guidelines for their behavior. Organizational values also provide the framework for the culture of the organization. Culture is the body of custom, ideas, assumptions, and institutional patterns transmitted from one generation to the next and are particularly powerful in determining individual behavior. It is "the collective programming of the mind." Any values that has the net result of potentially changing culture must be analyzed very carefully because it is very difficult to reverse those changes (Bell, n.d.).
If there was no rules, employees may follow their individual value systems. Thus, it may have different values in an organization. The organization may be in messed. For instance, if everyone just applied a sick leave one hour before leave the organization, so how about their work on hand? Delay the work or pass to another staff? If delayed, it may affect the organization’s operation. If pass to another staff immediately, it may increase the workload of other staff. Both would decrease the efficiency of the staff and the organization. As the Global Aid is an international confederation of 21 organization networked together in more than 90 countries, employee must apply for annual leave three days before the leave commences. If there are jobs cross-border cooperation, the employee who apply annual leave should deal with urgent tasks at hand, or pass other employees confessed agent early in order not bring trouble to other organization. Furthermore, the organization can take measure early such as ask another staff to take up the job in order to maintain the organization operate normally if the employee apply annual leave.
Moreover, most of the organization no matter small or international, they all required staff apply annual leave three days before the leave commences. It had become a norm in the society. A norm is a rule, standard, or pattern for action (from the Latin norma, a carpenter’s square or rule). Social norms are rules for conduct. The norms are the standards by reference to which behavior is judged and approved or disapproved. A norm in this sense is not a statistical average of actual behavior but rather a cultural (shared) definition of desirable behavior (Williams, 1968). Therefore, due to the organization can take measure early and it is a norm in the society, I think the policy of an employee must apply for annual leave three days before the leave commences is reasonable and logical.

References
1. Bell, W. F. (n.d.). The impact of policies on oragnizational values and culture. Retrieved from http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE99/Bell99.html
2. John W, Gardner, On Leadership (New York: The Free Press, 1990).
3. Joseph L. Soeters, "Value Orientation in Military Academies: A Thirteen Country Study," Armed Forces & Society, vol. 24, no. 1 (Fall 1997).
4. Olson, G. A. (2009, April 7). Why Rules Matter. Retrieved from The Chronic of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Rules-Matter/44803/
5. Williams, R. M. (1968). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. In e. David L. Sills, The Concept of Norms.
6. Robert J. Pilskaln, P. (2002). The Lincoln Library Guide to Sociology, Third Edition. Eastword Publications Development.

2. Using this case as an example, explain how email can be a handy communication tool for a person to slander a victim.
Email as a one-to-many communication tool (Kaplan, S., & Ashley, J. ,2003), work with high speed, able to spread message widely to crowd and can be used as a ‘written speech’. It is also characterized by high spreadability, high permanence, easy to hide the identity and low social presence. These factors make Email as a handy communication tool for a person to slander a victim in the case of Global Aid.
Email is highly spreadable. Spreadability shows how much do a medium can be able to let others know about certain incident and spread the message to other places. In this case, a number of company staffs received email sent from a personal email account. It is easy to increase popularity of email content among that group of people in short periods of time, follow by the discussion between individuals and rumor can also spread to large number of people quickly. Receivers read the email, may forward the email or inform others directly after they read the email. High spreadability of email can let the rumor circulated in the company quickly.
Permanence can be defined how a message can be stored easily permanently. The anonymous email sent to company members was digital permanence (Kendall, D.S., 2008), which can store in the server as long as the data is not completely deleted. In this case the email itself, with the target Brad, change him as a victim with the message describing his misbehavior done to A.C. Although the format or exact content of the original email might change while people forward the email or seems to be ‘disappeared’, people forgot the rumor about Brad. The email will still have the chance to resurface after a certain period. Even for a short period time, there still be chances for someone have made a copy of the email. Once the email sent away, it is hard to control other people’s action or to persuade them to delete the email. And most importantly, it is digital permanent. The high permanence of email will keep the incident fresh in people’s mind and continue the rumor in the company.
Another point shows why email is an easy tool is identity concealment, which the identity of the sender is not revealed. The email sent from a personal Yahoo email account. Furthermore, the short-name ‘A.C.’ matched with quite a number of worker’s initials in the company, these increase the difficulty to identify the exact sender through email address or name of the donor. The identity of sender is ambiguous, as well as cues about personality and role are absent in this incident, email can allow sender express the action done by Brad and her feelings anonymously. Even though the email’s allegation might be wrong, since the sender is hard to find out, the sender would claimed that he or she does not need to bear responsibility. This became a hidden threat in the future, once if anyone show this email out to the public again. Therefore, email hide the sender’s identity and easy to slander a victim in an indirect way.
Social presence, which explained by Newberry, B. (2001), as the degree of a person communicate with others and feel to be real in an environment. Email is low in social presence, there is no need to discuss a topic with others directly. In this case, people feel less ‘personal touch’ as they could not receive or observe other actions done by the sender through email, such as facial expression, body actions or tone. And because of these, the sender can easily slander the victim through written words, described the details of harassment done by Brad to her, while she could ignore the embarrassment caused if she told others directly. And sender who send out message were then not easily hold accountable.
Email is highly spreadable, receivers read the email, forward the email or inform others directly, spread the message to others instantaneously. Email is digital permanence, its high permanence characteristics keeps the incident fresh in people’s mind and continue the rumor in the company. Also, email can hide the sender’s identity with another indistinct identity, make email as an easy tool to slander a victim in an indirect way. Last but not least, email with low social presence can help the sender send out message with an indirect method. All these factors mentioned above explained why email can be a handy communication tool for a person to slander a victim in this case.

References:
1 Donath, J.S. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In P. Kollock & M. Smith (eds). Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge
2 Kaplan, S., & Ashley, J. (2003). Synchronous and asynchronous communication tools. Retrieved from http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/articledetail.cfm?itemnumber=13572
3 Kendall, D.S. (2008). Digital permanence - Part 1. Retrieved from http://www.powertolearn.com/
4 McCudden, M. (2012). Let’s stop saying viral. Retrieved from http://socialmediagroup.com/
5 Newberry, B. (2001). Media richness, social presence and technology supported communication activities in education. Retrieved from: http://learngen.org/Resources/
6 Suh, K.S. (1999). Impact of communication medium on task performance and satisfaction: an examination of media-richness theory. Information & Management

3. Michael Foss was not sure if he should tell the promotion selection committee that Brad was being complained by an anonymous e-mail of harassing another staff member. From the perspectives of utilitarianism and Kant’s deontological perspective, analyze which was a more ethical action – to tell or not to tell.
In this case, Michael Foss was not sure if he should tell the promotion selection committee that Brad was being complained by an anonymous e-mail of harassing another staff member. From the perspectives of utilitarianism and Immanuel Kant 's deontological perspectives, Michael should tell this to the promotion selection committee because it was a more ethical action.
Though Michael did not know whether Brad did the sexual harassment or not because he did not handle the informal complaining email, he should report this matter to the selection committee. Here were some reasons why he should report it. First, from the perspectives of utilitarianism, it was the most rational option to do so. By John Stuart Mill, the way he explained utilitarianism was like this "If you do something and it brings the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, do it; otherwise don 't." (On liberty and utilitarianism, 1992). Apply to this case, Michael could bring the greatest happiness to the greatest people if he tell it. Of course, no matter Brad did it or not, his image would be destroyed and it would affected him to get the position as a regional director. This was because if Michael told this matter to the selection committee, they would had a bad impression on him. Thus, they might not choose him to be the new regional director. This bad consequence would happened to Brad if Michael just told this matter to the committee but he did not do investigation to clarify what happened actually. But besides Brad, many people would got benefit once Michael told it. For example, AC who claimed she was sexually harassed by Brad and sent the email anonymously. She would be happy if Michael told it and Brad could not get the position of regional director. Additionally, the staff crew in various countries, the deprived families and children in the developing countries would be protected. This was because if really did the harassment, he might continue to do so in the other countries once he became the new regional director Therefore, in order to protect the most people, Michael should tell this matter to the selection committee though Brad might be sacrificed. Moreover, in Immanuel Kant 's deontological perspectives, Michael should tell it undoubtedly. By the categorical imperatives, telling the truth is our duties to others and we are using others as means to achieve our personal ends if we lie. (Lectures on ethics, 1997). In this case, the truth was that Michael received the email from AC and he knew that Brad might committed the sexual harassment. Thus, from a perspective of moral duty, he should tell the truth and the thing he knew to the selection committee. Otherwise, he would be irresponsible to his moral duty if he just hid the truth and did not tell what he knew to the committee. To add on, from a perspective of career duty, Michael should be responsible to report this matter. Michael, as a Chief Executive Officer of Global Aids which is an international confederation grounded in the belief of respect for human rights and to end poverty and injustice, he needed to tell what was happening to the committee. Global Aids is a confederation of 21 organizations in more than 90 countries. As a CEO of this confederation, he needed to manage this network well and make sure to be responsible to the 21 organizations. Every steps that he took, would affected 90 countries ' people. Therefore, he should be responsible to tell this matter to the selection committee no matter he investigated this or not so that the committee could choose the most suitable candidate to be the new regional director. Otherwise, if this rumor became bigger and bigger, the committee might finally know this matter. Thus, they might blame Michael did not tell this matter to them so that they could not have a suitable judgment on every single candidate. That would affected 90 countries ' people 's rights and benefits. Therefore, as a responsible CEO he should tell it to make sure the selection was going fairly because this was his duty.

Oppositely, some people might think that Michael should not tell it because he did not start the investigation and he did not know that Brad really committed the sexually harassment or not. But by the Global Aid 's policy against sexual harassment, he did not need to start investigating it because the email sent by AC was not a formal complaint. Therefore, he actually did not need to do the investigation since he was not required to do it formally. But as a CEO, he need to commit his moral duty to tell this matter. In conclusion, Michael should tell it to the committee no matter in a perspective of utilitarianism or deontology. It could bring the greatest protection to the most people 's right, including AC, the crew of the organization, the citizen of the developing countries and even the selection committee. This was his moral duty to do so and this was his duty as a CEO of Global Aids. Hence, though it was still a rumor because he had not start the investigation, he should tell this matter to the committee.

References:
1. Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873). On liberty and utilitarianism (1992). London: Everyman 's Library; Distributed by Random Century Group, 1992
2. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Lectures on ethics (1997). Edited by Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind; Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
3. Brandt, Richard B. Morality, utilitarianism, and rights (1992). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

References: 1. Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873). On liberty and utilitarianism (1992). London: Everyman 's Library; Distributed by Random Century Group, 1992 2. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Lectures on ethics (1997). Edited by Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind; Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 3. Brandt, Richard B. Morality, utilitarianism, and rights (1992). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.