Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

4-1 What ethical, social, and political issues are raised by information systems?

The major instances of failed ethical and legal judgement were not mainly by the information
systems department, but the information system is usually the cause of fraud. Ethics are the
principles of right or wrong that will affect how a person acts or the behaviour of that person.
Information systems can raise a new ethical problem for individuals and societies because of
the change in the social environment and threaten existing distributions of power, money,
rights, and obligations. Ethical issues in information system rise because o the internet and e-
commerce but having these platforms could be beneficial.
Ethical, social, and political issues are interconnected with one another. Social and political
debate is the main problem that might arise as a manager of information systems. There are
five moral dimensions of the information age:
1. Information rights and obligations: information rights
2. Property rights and obligations: protecting intellectual property rights in a digital
society.
3. Accountability and control: held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual
and collective information and property rights
4. System quality: standards of data and system quality
5. Quality of life: values preserved in an information and knowledge-based society
Advances in data analysis techniques for large data pools are another technological trend that
heightens ethical concerns because companies and government agencies can find out highly
detailed personal information about individuals.

4-2 What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions?
Ethical choices are made by people who are responsible for the action they take. Responsibility
is key for ethical action. Accountability is a mechanism placed to determine who is in action
and response. There are five steps for ethical analysis:
1. Identify and describe facts clearly:
2. Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the highest-order values:
3. Identify the stakeholders
4. Identify the options that you can take
5. Identify the consequences of your options

It would be helpful to consider ethical principles:

1. Golden Rule: Putting yourself in 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: Based on the action we took, can the
organization or society survive
3. Slippery slope rule: Our action may be small at first, but it may be big in the future.
4. Utilitarian principle: you can prioritize values in rank order and understand the
consequences of various courses of action.
 5. Risk aversion principle: Some actions have extremely high failure costs of very low
probability
6. Ethical no-free-lunch rule: value what someone has done.

4-3 Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose
challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?
Everyone has privacy, which is the claim of an individual to be left alone without surveillance.
Information technology and systems threaten individual lawsuits to privacy by making the
invasion of privacy cheap, profitable, and effective. In the US, privacy is protected by First
Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and association. Another hand, in Europe,
privacy protection is much more stringent than in the United States. Customers need to provide
their informed consent before any company can legally use their data. They have the right to
access that information, correct it, and request that no further data be collected.
There are internet challenges to privacy, such as cookies. Cookies are text files placed on a
computer hard drive when a user visits websites and are used to identify the visitor’s web
browser software and track visits to the website. Next are web beacons which are tiny software
programs that keep a record of users’ online clickstreams. Their job is to report data to the
owner of the tracking files. Spyware is used to send banner ads and other unsolicited material
to the user. These are tools used to track the activities of website visitors closely.

Property rights need to be followed, which are called intellectual property. Intellectual property
is defined as tangible and intangible products of the mind created by individuals or
corporations. Copyright is a legal grant that protects creators of intellectual property from
having their work copied by others. Patents are licenses granting a right or title for a set period.
Trademarks are marks, symbols, and images used to differentiate products in the marketplace.
Trade secrets are Any intellectual work product used for business purposes.

4-4 How have information systems affected laws for establishing accountability and
liability and the quality of everyday life?
New information technologies challenge existing liability laws and social practices for holding
individuals and institutions accountable for harm done to others. Computer systems have some
negative impacts, especially when there are errors. Three principal sources of poor system
performance are:
1. Software bugs and errors.
2. Natural or other causes cause hardware or facility failures.
3. Poor input data quality.
By having computers, certain people might lose their jobs. For example, the growth of e-
commerce has led to a decline in retail sales jobs but an increase in jobs for warehouse workers,
supervisors, and delivery work. Not only that but there are gaps in the use of computers between
the social class. Higher-income families in each ethnic group are still more likely to have home
computers and broadband Internet access than lower-income families in the same group.
Computers can also create health and cognitive problems such as repetitive stress injury,
computer vision syndrome, and the inability to think clearly and perform complex tasks.