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Business Ethic

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Question 1: Discuss vicarious liability and cyber-liability Vicarious liability is the principle of law that holds one party liable for the acts or inactions of another (Beyer, 2006). The concept means that a party maybe held responsible for injury or damage even when he or she was not actively involved in the incident. Under the specific type of fault required or complicity rule, vicarious liability will only be found if the employer authorized or ratified the conduct or the manner in which the particular task was performed or empowered the employee for example by making him or her a manager or recklessly hired or retained an employee that was unfit for the particular job. The existence of vicarious liability can be justified on both legal or policy grounds and organizational management grounds. There are reasons for the application of vicarious liability in legal or policy. First reason is the wrongful act of the employee are so closely related to their duties that they can be properly and fairly regarded as being within the course of employment. Second there is the business risk rationale, that it is an inevitable part of commercial life that agents and employees may act beyond their authority and instructions causing damage to a third party. Employers have calculated and accepted this risk thus incurring legal liability. Given that an employer generally benefits from the work undertaken by its employees it is not unreasonable that it also bear any losses that those activities cause (Lockwood,2011).

In the common law test for vicarious liability, the employer is responsible for acts actually authorized by him and also for acts which he has not authorized, provided they are so closely connected with the acts which he has authorized that they may rightly be regarded as modes although improper modes of doing them (Lockwood,2011). However, the employer

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