Lab Activity 6

Information systems raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for:

• Intense social change, threatening existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations

• New kinds of crime

• Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors

• Requires understanding of ethics to make choices in legally gray areas

Principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors is ?

• Leadership

• Ethics

• Feelings

• Friendship

What can you elaborate about this figure

• Society as a calm pond. A model for thinking about ethical, social, and political Issues.

• IT as rock dropped in pond, creating ripples of new situations not covered by old rules.

• Social and political institutions cannot respond overnight to these ripples—it may take years to develop etiquette, expectations, laws.

• Requires understanding of ethics to make choices in legally gray areas

Five moral dimensions of the information age:

• Information rights and obligations

• Quality of life

• System quality

• Accountability and control

• Property rights and obligations

Key technology trends that raise ethical issues

• More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations.

• Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on individuals.

• Copying data from one location to another and accessing personal data from remote locations are much easier.

• Mobile device growth by tracking of individual cell phones

Basic concepts for ethical analysis

• Due process:

• Responsibility

• Accountability

• Liability

Five-step ethical analysis

• Identify and clearly describe the facts.

• Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved.

• Identify the stakeholders.

• Identify the options that you can reasonably take.

• Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions

Responsibility:

Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions

• True

• False

Liability:

Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties

• True

• False

Due process:

Laws are well-known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities

• True

• False