The tools necessary to deal with ethical dilemmas to analyse a case in terms of ethical concepts and

the various responsibilities of business executives were discussed. The case of ‘Building a backdoor
to the iPhone: An ethical dilemma’ was evaluated using various frameworks learnt throughout the
course and other possible courses of action were explored.

Hard moral choices are, at times, the inescapable burden of men and women in positions of power.
Joseph L. Badaracco discusses the moral responsibilities of executives in his paper titled ‘Business
Ethics: Four Spheres of Executive Responsibility’. Some important points mentioned in the paper are
as follows.

Moral claims arising from different spheres of responsibility often collide with each other. Four
questions that represent important voices in this long conversation are listed below.

© Copyright. UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved

 In February 2016, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer (CEO), challenged a US Federal Court
order directing Apple to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in a case involving
suspected international terrorism by providing the FBI with access to encrypted data on the
iPhone by creating a ‘backdoor’, providing access to the terrorist’s phone. However, this
compromised Apple’s position on protecting its customers’ digital privacy and security.

Executive management decisions are of two kinds.

Should Apple protect customer privacy and security? Or, should it cooperate with the US
government and law-enforcement agencies to unlock the terrorist’s iPhone, which would help
national security? These were a few of the dilemmas faced by Tim Cook. Also, the misuse of this
technology by both government and unscrupulous agents was a concern.

The primary responsibilities of Tim Cook and the question of the dilemma are addressed using
Badaracco’s Four Spheres of Commitment framework as shown below.

© Copyright. UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved

Badaracco’s Four-Question framework is used to understand how to resolve right-versus-right
dilemmas.

Alternative ways that Cook could have responded are as follows.

Apple’s decision met with a mixed response from its peers in the industry. Meanwhile, a poll
conducted by Morning Consult revealed that over half of voters who polled online favoured Apple
acceding to the US government’s demands to unlock the iPhone. However, the poll itself had
differing results based on political affiliations, age and income groups of those who polled.

© Copyright. UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved

 Meanwhile, FBI announced that it had successfully unlocked the terrorist’s iPhone with the help of
a ‘third party’ and withdrew its litigation against Apple. However, the debate regarding privacy
versus security continues.

Disclaimer: All content and material on the UpGrad website is copyrighted material, either belonging to
UpGrad or its bonafide contributors and is purely for the dissemination of education. You are permitted to
access print and download extracts from this site purely for your own education only and on the following
basis:

● You can download this document from the website for self-use only.
● Any copies of this document, in part or full, saved to disc or to any other storage medium may only be
used for subsequent, self-viewing purposes or to print an individual extract or copy for
non-commercial personal use only.
● Any further dissemination, distribution, reproduction, copying of the content of the document herein
or the uploading thereof on other websites or use of content for any other commercial/unauthorized
purposes in any way which could infringe the intellectual property rights of UpGrad or its contributors,
is strictly prohibited.
● No graphics, images or photographs from any accompanying text in this document will be used
separately for unauthorised purposes.
● No material in this document will be modified, adapted or altered in any way.
● No part of this document or UpGrad content may be reproduced or stored in any other web site or
included in any public or private electronic retrieval system or service without UpGrad’s prior written
permission.
● Any rights not expressly granted in these terms are reserved.

© Copyright. UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved