In my perception, Michael's boss is involved in unethical practices to maximize benefits for his company. His strategy is to earn money by hook or by crook. Having a firm focus on profitability or might be because of limited knowledge about business ethics he is involved in unethical practices. Breaching data from someone’s system or database is an illegal and unethical action which cannot be justified as right and ethical action by any means. According to the concepts and theories of business ethics, organizations cannot use wrong and unethical means to take advantage in the market. Influencing the operations of competitor companies in a negative way by the use of power and authority is unethical (Gupta, 2018). Excluding this, his action was also unethical because he thought about his profit only rather than thinking about the reputation and business of the company. He put the company's reputation at stake while taking a decision of breaching or stealing data from the database system of the competitor without their knowledge. 

           According to the ethical theories, giving preference to the personal benefit or benefit of a limited group of people is unethical when the alternative option could provide benefit to the largest number of people. In other words, to make ethical decisions benefits of the community should be given preferences on the benefits of a single person. Similarly, in the case of a company, corporate management should give preference to the advantages of customers rather than only seeking benefits and advantages for owners or investors. Thus decisions can be considered as an ethical decision under utilitarianism theory of ethics. Secondly, even if we accept that he obtained data with the assistance of a person or colleague however still that action cannot be justified as ethical action. His action would have a negative impact on the reputation of the company because the information they obtained by the wrong means was quite sensitive and confidential. they were not in the position to claim that all information available to them was provided by the competitors to them as such information cannot be easily accessed and organizations do not share such confidential information with stakeholders or competitor companies. Based on the above discussed ethical theories and evidence of his illegal action we cannot justify him as an ethical person. Indeed, his unethical action is enough to prove that he had undertaken unethical conduct which can cause him to face legal consequences (Mill, 2017).      

References of Ethical and Unethical practices of Michael’s Boss 

Clarkson, K. W., Miller, R. L., & Cross, F. B. (2010). Business Law: Text and Cases: Legal, Ethical, Global, and Corporate Environment. Cengage Learning.

Gupta, A. (2018). THE EVOLUTION OF FRAUD: ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS IN THE AGE OF LARGE-SCALE DATA BREACHES AND WIDESPREAD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS DEPLOYMENT. International Telecommunication Union Journal, 1(2), 0-7.

Mill, J. S. (2017). Utilitarianism. Coventry House Publishing.

Scarre, G. (2002). Utilitarianism. Routledge. Retrieved 2019