Advice from the Texas Instruments Ethics Office
These pages contain a selection of advice from The Ethics Office at Texas Instruments Corporation.
The advice is that of either TI Ethics Director Carl Skooglund, or Glenn Coleman, Manager of Ethics Communication and Education. The articles are distributed among TI employees via TNEWS. Each of the links below takes you to several related TI Ethics Office articles.
Ethical Responsibilities, Raising Issues, and Getting Help
- Help on Ethical Decisions
- Guidelines to determine ethical implications of decisions.
- Importance of Ethics
- Importance of ethical standards in a company.
See also Perceptions on the importance for the working community of raising issues of apparent wrong doing by others, not only to stop wrong doing but also to dispel suspicion.
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Responsibilities, Rights and Obligations vis a vis the Company
- Computer Games as an Example, Raising Issues About Apparent Wrongdoing
- Ethical implications of using computer equipment to play computer games.
- Company Resources Used for Personal Benefit
- Ethical implications of misuse of company assets such as copy machines and computer equipment for personal use.
- Ethical Issues in Company Travel
- Ethical issues of travel, expenditures allowed for business purposes and personal travel.
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Responsibilities, Rights and Obligations vis a vis Co-workers
- Diversity and Opportunity
- Ethical decision-making in employment and personnel, equal opportunity, fairness and conflict of interest.
- Favoritism in the Workplace
- Perception of favoritism, being treated fairly, and the importance of a valuing environment.
- Gossiping at Work
- Communication and the perception of ill-truths, rumors and the effects in the workplace.
- Individual Privacy
- Ethical issues of reasonable rights to privacy, monitoring of email, offensive communications, copying and sharing email information.
- Responsibilities as a Team Leader
- Discussion of the responsibilities of a leader that include: employee motivation, meeting expectations and creation of safe atmosphere of trust and mutual respect.
- Responsibilities as a Team Member
- Discussion of the responsibilities of a team member including obligation, trust, respect and communication.
- Sexual Harassment
- Ethics of providing an environment free of discrimination in all forms.
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Professional Ethics for Engineers
- Entertainment, Gifts-Avoiding Bribes and Conflict of Interest
- Ethical issues as they apply to gifts, entertainment and courtesy expenses.
- Signing Off on Engineering Documents
- Proper use of professional titles and ethical implications of misuse.
- Mischarging Time -- Financial Fraud
- Protection of company assets from theft, that include losses in time, equipment, productivity, improper use of expense accounts and work relationships.
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Intellectual Property
- Intellectual Property - Copyrights and Patents
- Ethical implications of illegal copying of software, copyright restrictions on written articles, and reverse engineering.
- Proprietary and Other Sensitive Information
- Improper use of electronic data processing resources that violate security requirements, information exchange with customers and suppliers, signing non-disclosure agreements.
- Software Piracy vs. Legal Copying
- Guidelines to protect against software piracy, ethical use of copied software, unlicensed software and use of questionable graphics.
- Software, Bringing Your Own to Work
- Ethical considerations and guidelines to use of personal software on company computers.
- Benchmarking and Reverse Engineering
- Ethical issues of competitive benchmarking, how information is requested without misrepresentation or deceite, reverse engineering to reveal design and function, consideration of legalities, violation of patent rights.
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Confidentiality
- Privacy, Confidentiality and Telephone Use
- Ethics of monitoring phone conversations, limited monitoring in the ordinary course of business, personal information disseminated via telephone.