Moon Lighting and Ethics

Recently, IT sector of India has broken with the debate w.r.t. moonlighting, which has been triggered by the comment of Wipro Chairman.  He called ‘moonlighting’ as cheating and considered it unethical for Employees.

What does Moonlighting means?

• The practice of working for one organisation while also taking up extra responsibilities and jobs, typically without the employer's knowledge, is referred to as
• It is called so side employment is typically performed at night or on the weekends.

Legality of Moonlighting in India

• Yes, it is legal, subjected to restrictions by the Institution of employment and depends upon the employer conditions.
• A person can work more than one job in India without breaking the law. However, a person with a similar set of jobs could give rise to concerns about a violation of confidentiality because many employers include such restrictions in their employment agreements in addition to prohibitions against holding down multiple jobs.
• Contractual provisions: Moonlighting could be considered cheating if an employee’s contract calls for non-compete and single employment, which is the situation with the majority of conventional employment contracts.

Criteria to Judge the ethics related to moonlighting

Ethical dilemmas for different Stakeholders

Every company’s ethical dilemmas may be unique to their industry or company; however, other types of ethical issues affect all types of businesses.

• For IT sector, ethical dilemmas are to be focused because they pay more to their employees and possess contract relationship for a period of time.
• For other private institutions, ethical concerns must be addressed with wisdom so to reduce the impact of moonlighting.
• For Public institutions, Moonlighting is unethical for government institutions as it is restricted by the government agencies for their employees to work outside the organisation or for another institution.

Factors responsible for Moonlighting

Techniques to be adopted by Institutions to resolve ethical dilemmas

• Ethical relativism: It refers to multinational corporations doing business in a country by strictly adhering to its culture or ethics.
• For example, if bribery is a culture or ethics of doing business in a specific host country, multinational corporations must adhere to the local culture or ethics in order to survive.
• Ethical relativism may assist multinational companies in surviving in the host country's market without barriers, but it also has drawbacks.
• Ethical universalism: It refers to a set of ethical standards that apply to all countries.
• Ethical universalism has an advantage because it is seen as having a higher moral responsibility because corporations are said to be more ethical and stricter in following human rights.
• In terms of disadvantages, in some cases, it may lead to a form of cultural imperialism, in which multinational corporations believe that a certain country's culture is immoral and inferior.