15 Ethical Guidelines for Writing
Understanding Ethical Guidelines for Writing
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this chapter, you should be able to
- describe plagiarism and ways to avoid it;
- describe copyright and how to use others’ work ethically;
- describe the function of workplace codes of ethics and conduct, related to information access and record management;
- determine if a sample written summary of given source material would be considered plagiarism or not; and
- identify ethical violations in supplied scenarios related to written workplace documents.
Introduction
You love your new job working for a retailer of specialty athletic gear. As a member of the marketing team, you get the idea of writing some fake reviews on a popular online review portal to give your company and your team an edge. What’s the harm? No one will know. It’s not necessarily bad, because it’s not against the law. But would most people consider it the right thing to do?
Ethics is defined as “moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity” (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.). Ethical behaviour asks you to be concerned about what is inherently right or wrong in a given situation. The right thing to do may not always be obvious, and sometimes you have an ethical dilemma when there’s no clear answer.
To help in situations when you are trying to behave and communicate ethically, most organizations have guidelines in place to help people act in a way that is considered more right than wrong.
Plagiarism, “the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own,” (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.) is heavily frowned upon and typically carries big penalties. Effectively using sources and giving credit where credit is due is one way to avoid it.
Copyright, which you learned about briefly in the Foundations module chapter “A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words: Using Visuals” is a law that helps to stamp out plagiarism and other unauthorized uses of intellectual or creative property. Creative Commons builds upon copyright, enabling flexibility and openness through attribution and sharing while maintaining conditions that seek to prevent unauthorized use.
Because organizations contain so much information, there are often protocols in place to govern who has access to information and under what circumstances—unauthorized access is usually considered unethical. Similarly, records management principles and guidelines are also in place in most organizations, because employees need to take great care to ensure records and other personal or private company information is kept safe.
Codes of conduct are found within many organizations that give guidelines for ethical or proper behaviour.
Being able to balance the need for speed and clarity while staying ethically sound means one must cultivate the skill of writing respectfully. Words are powerful, especially in written documents. Respectful writing aims to balance courtesy, professiona