FFAF is a large auditing firm with offices in all provinces and major metropolitan areas in South Africa. Given their wide geographical spread across the country, their email facilities not only provide an essential function in their internal communication, but have also proved to be very cost effective and efficient mode of communication. From an analysis of the email traffic flow in FFAF, it is also apparent that email communication is playing an ever-increase role in FFAF`s communication with client. A recent incident, however, cast a shadow over the use of email in the company. Recently Lindy, a junior accountant at FFAF, sent confidential information about one of FFAF`s clients in a personal email to a friend from her work email address (Lindy@FFAF.co.za). The friend, in turn, shared the content of the email with someone else. Eventually, the information came into the hands of a journalist, who wrote an article that embarrassed FFAF`s clients. The client was most upset and threatened to terminate its long-standing relationship with FFAF. Decisive action was taken and Lindy was fired for breaking the confidentiality clause of FFAF`s employment contract. The incident made it clear that although the use of email has obvious benefits for FFAF, it also exposes the firm to some risks. It was therefore decided that a proper risk analysis on email usage in FFAF would be done. The risk analysis revealed that Lindy`s abuse of the email facility was not an isolated incident. It was found that:

On average, employees send substantial number of personal email messages.

Sensitive and even confidential information is sent by email to unauthorized recipients.

Email messages with abusive racist and sexist content are distributed by employees.

FFAFs management is very concerned about the abuse of the companys email facility. They decide to take immediate and decisive action to prevent further abuse. They want to prevent further abuse by randomly monitoring the content of email messages. This will enable them not only to identify those employees who abuse the firms email, but also to take immediate disciplinary action against such that computers are the firms property and are therefore intended only for worked related emails. They also argue that it is their moral duty as managers to ensure that employees use the firms facilities to the firms benefits and not to the detriment of the firm. Some members of the firm are enraged when they learnt about managements decision to monitor the content of their email messages. They regard it as an invasion of their privacy. They believe that employees have a right to privacy and that management should respect that right. Furthermore, they believe that this decision by management will destroy the internal trust within FFAF. They are also concerned that the monitoring of email content will result in poorer communication both internally as well as with clients, since employees will shy away from email communication. From the above case study; it is apparent that a social and ethical dilemma has erupted at FFAF.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO:

Explain and apply the RIMS STRATEGY to resolve this dilemma in a manner that is sensitive to the moral concerns expressed by both parties. (20 marks)