1. Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Week 04
Chapter 4:
Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

2. Assess how information systems have affected everyday life.
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Analyze the relationships among ethical, social, and political issues that are raised by information systems.
Identify the main moral dimensions of an information society and specific principles for conduct that can be used to guide ethical decisions.
Evaluate the impact of contemporary information systems and the Internet on the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property.
Assess how information systems have affected everyday life.

3. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Does Location Tracking Threaten Privacy?
Problem: New opportunities from new technology and need for greater security.
Solutions: Redesigning business processes and products to support location monitoring increases sales and security.
Deploying GPS and RFID tracking devices with a location tracking database enables location monitoring.
Demonstrates IT’s role in creating new opportunities for improved business performance
Illustrates how technology can be a double-edged sword by providing benefits such as increased sales and security while compromising privacy.

4. Information systems were instrumental in many of frauds.
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
Ethics : principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors.
Information systems were instrumental in many of frauds.
In many cases, the perpetrators of the crimes artfully used financial reporting information systems to bury their decisions from public scrutiny in the vain hope they would never be caught.

5. Recent examples of failed ethical judgment by managers:
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
Recent examples of failed ethical judgment by managers:
Enron: Top three executives convicted for misstating earnings using illegal accounting schemes and making false representations to shareholders. Bankruptcy declared in 2001.
WorldCom : second-largest US telecommunications firm. Chief executive convicted for improperly inflating revenue by billions using illegal accounting methods. Bankruptcy declared in July 2002 with $ 41 billion in debts.

6. Recent examples of failed ethical judgment by managers (cont.):
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
Recent examples of failed ethical judgment by managers (cont.):
Brocade Communications: CEO convicted for backdating stock options and concealing millions of dollars of compensation expenses from shareholders.
Parmalat : Ten executives in Italy’s eighth-largest industrial group convicted for misstating more than $5 billion in revenues, earnings, and assets over several years.
Bristol-Myers Squibb : Pharmaceutical firm agreed to pay a fine of $150 million for misstating its revenues by $ 1.5 billions, and inflating its stock value.

7. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
IT can be used to achieve social progress, but it can also be used to commit crimes and threaten cherished social values.
Ethical issues have been given new urgency by the rise of the Internet and e-commerce: the appropriate use of customer information, the protection of personal privacy and the protection of intellectual property.

8. Establishing accountability for the consequences of IS
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Ethical Issues Raised by Informations Systems
Establishing accountability for the consequences of IS
Setting standards to safeguard system quality that protects the safety of the individual and society
Preserving values and institutions considered essential to the quality of life in an information society.

9. A model for thinking about ethical, social, and political issues
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
A model for thinking about ethical, social, and political issues
Five moral dimensions of the information age
Information rights and obligations
Property rights and obligations
Accountability and control
System quality
Quality of life
Key technology trends that raise ethical issues

10. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
The Relationship Between Ethical, Social, and Political Issues in an Information Society
Figure 4-1
The introduction of new information technology has a ripple effect, raising new ethical, social, and political issues that must be dealt with on the individual, social, and political levels. These issues have five moral dimensions: information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, system quality, quality of life, and accountability and control.

11. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Technology Trends that Raise Ethical Issues
1. Trend: Computing power doubles every 18 months
Impact: More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations.
2. Trend: Data storage costs rapidly
Impact: Organizations can easily maintain detailed databased on individuals.
3. Trend: Data analysis advances
Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on individuals to develop detailed profiles of individual behavior.
4. Trend: Networking advances & the Internet
Copying data from one location to another and accessing personal data from remote locations are much easier.

12. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Five moral dimensions of the information age
1. Information rights and obligations
The rights that individuals & organizations have with respect to information that pertains to themselves.
2. Property rights and obligations
The rights that individuals & organizations have with respect to property in a digital society.
3. Accountability and control
The mechanisms for assessing responsibility for decisions made and actions taken.
4. System quality
Standards of data & system quality that should protect individual rights & the safety of society.
5. Quality of life
Values that should be preserved in an information & knowledge-based society?

13. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
Data for Sale
Read the Interactive Session: Management, and then discuss the following questions:
Do data brokers pose an ethical dilemma? Explain your answer.
What are the problems caused by the proliferation of data brokers? What management, organization, and technology factors are responsible for these problems?
How effective are existing solutions to these problems?
Should the U.S. federal government regulate private data brokers? Why or why not? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

14. Basic concepts: responsibility, accountability, liability
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Ethics in an Information Society
Basic concepts: responsibility, accountability, liability
Ethical analysis
Candidate ethical principles
Professional codes of conduct
Some real-world ethical dilemmas

15. Basic concepts: Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Ethics in an Information Society
Basic concepts:
Responsibility: a key element of ethical action, means you accept the potential costs, duties & obligations for the decisions you make.
Accountability: a feature of systems & social institutions, means that mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action, who is responsible.
Liability: a feature of political systems in which body of laws is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems or organizations.

16. Identify & describe clearly the facts.
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Ethics in an Information Society
Ethical Analysis:
Identify & describe clearly the facts.
Define the conflict or dilemma & identify the higher-order values involved.
Identify the stakeholders
Identify the options that you can reasonably take
Identify the potential consequences of your options

17. Candidate Ethical Principles:
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Ethics in an Information Society
Candidate Ethical Principles:
Golden Rule: “Do unto other as you would have them do unto you”
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone”
Descartes’ rule of change: “If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all”
Utilitarian Principle: “Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value”

18. Candidate Ethical Principles (cont.)
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Ethics in an Information Society
Candidate Ethical Principles (cont.)
Risk Aversion Principle: “Take the action that produces the least harm or the least potential cost”
Ethical ‘no free lunch rule’ : “Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise. If something someone else has created is useful to you, it has value, and you should assume the creator wants compensation for this work.”

19. Information rights: Privacy and freedom in the Internet Age
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Information rights: Privacy and freedom in the Internet Age
The European directive on data protection
Internet challenges to privacy
Technical solutions
Property rights: Intellectual property
Trade secrets
Copyright
Patents
Challenges to intellectual property rights

20. How Cookies Identify Web Visitors
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
How Cookies Identify Web Visitors
Cookies are written by a Web site on a visitor’s hard drive. When the visitor returns to that Web site, the Web server requests the ID number from the cookie and uses it to access the data stored by that server on that visitor. The Web site can then use these data to display personalized information.
Figure 4-3

21. Accountability, liability, and control
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Accountability, liability, and control
Computer-related liability problems
System quality: Data quality and system errors
Quality of life: Equity, access, and boundaries
Balancing power: Center versus periphery
Rapidity of change: Reduced response time to competition
Maintaining boundaries: Family, work, and leisure
Dependence and vulnerability

22. Quality of life: Equity, access, and boundaries (cont’d)
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Quality of life: Equity, access, and boundaries (cont’d)
Computer crime and abuse
Employment: Trickle-down technology and reengineering job loss
Equity and access: Increasing racial and social class cleavages
Health risks: RSI, CVS, and Technostress

23. The Spamming Problem Management Information Systems Figure 4-5
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
The
Spamming Problem
Figure 4-5
This figure shows the major types of products and services hawked through spam messages and the industries that receive the most spam.

24. The Internet: Friend or Foe to Children?
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
The Internet: Friend or Foe to Children?
Read the Interactive Session: Organizations, and then discuss the following questions:
Does use of the Internet by children and teenagers pose an ethical dilemma? Why or why not?
Should parents restrict use of the Internet by children or teenagers? Why or why not?

25. What ethical, social and political issues are raised by IS ?
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Review Summary
What ethical, social and political issues are raised by IS ?
The main ethical, social, and political issues raised by IS center around information right and obligations, property rights & obligations, accountability & control, system quality, and quality of life.

26. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Review Summary
What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions ?
Six ethical principles for judging conduct include :
a. Golden Rule
b. Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
c. Descartes’ rule of change
d. Utilitarian Principle
e. Risk Aversion Principle
f. Ethical “no free lunch”
Those principles should be used in conjunction with an ethical analysis.

27. Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Review Summary
Why do contemporary IS technology and the Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property ?
Traditional copyright laws are insufficient to protect against software piracy because digital material can be copied so easily and transmitted to many different locations simultaneously over the Internet.

28. How have IS affected everyday life ?
Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
Review Summary
How have IS affected everyday life ?
Computer errors can cause serious harm to individuals & organizations.
Poor data quality is also responsible for disruptions and losses for businesses.
Jobs can be lost when computers replace workers or task become unnecessary in reengineered business processes.
Widespread use of computer increases opportunities for computer crime and computer abuse.
Computers can also create health problems, such as RSI, computer vision & technostress.