Assignment 1

UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST

 

COLLEGE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

 

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS

 

MBA

 

BUS 809, MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

 

SUMMARYOF CHAPTER 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNDERSTANDING ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES RELATED TO SYSTEMS

 

Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors. Information systems raise new ethical questions for both individuals and societies because they create opportunities for intense social change, and thus threaten existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations. Information technology can be used to achieve social progress, to commit crimes and threaten cherished social values.

 

Internet and digital firm technologies make it easier than ever to assemble, integrate, and distribute information, improving the use of customer information, the protection of personal privacy, and the protection of intellectual property.

 

Ethical issues raised by information systems help establish accountability, setting standards to safeguard system quality that protects the safety of the individual and society.

 

As a Manager or employee, you will have to decide for yourself what proper legal and ethical conduct when it comes to Information Systems.

 

FIVE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF THE INFORMATION AGE

The major ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems

include the following moral dimensions:

 

1.         Information rights and obligations. What information rights do individuals and.organizations possess with respect to themselves? What can they protect?

 

2.         Property rights and obligations. How will traditional intellectual property rights be protected in a digital society in which tracing and accounting for ownership are difficult and ignoring such property rights is so easy?

3.         Accountability and control. Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?

4.         System quality. What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?

5.         Quality of life. What values should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society? Which institutions should we protect from violation? Which cultural values and practices are supported by the new information technology?

 

KEY TECHNOLOGY TRENDS THAT RAISE ETHICAL ISSUES

There are four key technological trends responsible for these ethical stresses and they are :

 

TREND IMPACT

Computing power doubles every 18 months, the impact is that more organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations.

Data storage costs rapidly, Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on individuals.

Data analysis advances, Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on individuals to develop detailed profiles of individual behavior

Networking advances, Copying data from one location to another and accessing personal data from remote

locations are much easier.

 

 

 

BASIC CONCEPTS: RESPONSIBILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY,

AND LIABILITY

Individuals are responsible for their ethical choices they make. Responsibilty, Accountability, Liability and due process are key elements of Ethical action.

 

Responsibility: Responsibility means that you accept the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions you make.

Accountability: means that mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action, and who is responsible. 

Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of laws is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations.

Due process is a process in which laws are known and understood, and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly.

 

ETHICAL ANALYSIS

Five-step process that help analyze ethical issues.

 

1. Identify and describe clearly the facts. Find out who did what to whom, and where, when, and how. In many instances, you will be surprised at the errors in the initially reported facts, and often you will find that simply getting the facts straight helps define the solution. It also helps to get the opposing parties involved in an ethical dilemma to agree on the facts.

                                      

2. Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved. Ethical, social, and political issues always reference higher values. The parties to a dispute all claim to be pursuing higher values.

Typically, an ethical issue involves a dilemma: two diametrically opposed courses of action that support worthwhile values.

 

3. Identify the stakeholders. Every ethical, social, and political issue has stakeholders: players in the game who have an interest in the outcome, who have invested in the situation, and usually who have vocal opinions. Find out the identity of these groups and what they want. This will be useful later when designing a solution.

 

4. Identify the options that you can reasonably take. You may find that none of the options satisfy all the interests involved, but that some options do a better job than others. Sometimes arriving at a good or ethical solution may not always be a balancing of consequences to stakeholders.

 

5. Identify the potential consequences of your options. Some options may be ethically correct but disastrous from other points of view. Other options may work in one instance but not in other similar instances. Always ask yourself, “What if choose this option consistently over time?”

 

 

CANDIDATE ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

 

1.     The Golden Rule:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  This means putting yourself into the place of others, and thinking of yourself as the object of the decision, can help you think about fairness in decision making.

 

2.     Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone. Ask yourself, “If everyone did this, could the organization, or society, survive?”

 

3.    Descartes ’rule of change .If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all

This is the slippery-slope rule: An action may bring about a small change now that is acceptable,    but if it is repeated, it would bring unacceptable changes in the long run. In the vernacular, it might be stated as “once started down a slippery path, you may not be able to stop.”

 

4. UtilitarianPrinciple: Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value.  This rule assumes you can prioritize values in a rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action.

 

5. Risk Aversion Principle Take the action that produces the least harm or the least potential cost. Some actions have extremely high failure costs of or extremely high failure costs of moderate probability(speeding and automobile accidents). Avoid these high-failure-cost actions, very low probability, paying greater attention to high-failure-cost potential of moderate to high probability.

 

6. Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise. (This is the ethical“no free lunch” rule.) If something someone else has created is useful to you, it has value, and you should assume the creator wants compensation for this work.

Actions that do not easily pass these rules deserve close attention and a great

deal of caution actual unethical behavior.

                                                                                                     

THE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS

There are five moral dimension ot information systems they are:

 

INFORMATION RIGHTS: PRIVACY AND FREEDOM IN THE INTERNET AGE

Information technology and systems threaten individual claims to privacy by making the invasion of privacy cheap, profitable, and effective.  Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state. 

 

PROPERTY RIGHTS: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Contemporary information systems have severely challenged existing laws and social practices that protect private intellectual property. Intellectual property is considered to be intangible property created by individuals or Web sites are posting their privacy policies for visitors to review. The TRUST eseal designates Web sites that have agreed to adhere to TRUSTe’s established privacy principles of disclosure, choice, access, and security.

 

SYSTEM QUALITY: DATA QUALITY AND SYSTEM ERRORS

This deals with questions like, What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?

QUALITY OF LIFE: EQUITY, ACCESS, AND BOUNDARIES

The negative social costs of introducing information technologies and systems are beginning to mount along with the power of the technology. Many of these negative social consequences are not violations of individual rights or property crimes. Nevertheless, these negative consequences can be extremely harmful to individuals, societies, and political institutions. Computers and information technologies potentially can destroy valuable elements of our culture and society even while they bring us benefits. If there is a balance of good and bad consequences of using information systems, who do we hold responsible for the bad consequences? Next, we briefly examine some of the negative social consequences of systems, considering individual, social, and political responses.