Essentials of Management Information Systems Fourteenth Edition

Essentials of Management Information Systems

Fourteenth Edition

Chapter 4

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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Learning Objectives

4.1 What ethical, social, and political issues are raised by information systems?

4.2 What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions?

4.3 Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

4.4 How have information systems affected laws for establishing accountability, liability, and the quality of everyday life?

4.5 How will M I S help my career?

This chapter examines the ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems. It can be useful to ask students to help you put together a list of these issues categorized into ethical, social, and political columns.

Video Cases

Case 1: What Net Neutrality Means for You

Case 2: Facebook and Google Privacy: What Privacy?

Case 3: United States v. Terrorism: Data Mining for Terrorists and Innocents

Instructional Video: Viktor Mayer Schönberger on the Right to Be Forgotten

Are Cars Becoming Big Brother on Wheels? (1 of 2)

Problem

Vehicle and driver monitoring systems

Opportunities from new technology

Undeveloped legal environment

Solutions

Increases safety

Increases efficiency

Creates need for new privacy protection laws and policies

Are Cars Becoming Big Brother on Wheels? (2 of 2)

Illustrates an IT-created ethical dilemma

Privacy vs. other values

Lack of meaningful privacy laws

What Ethical, Social, and Political Issues are Raised by Information Systems? (1 of 2)

Recent cases of failed ethical judgment in business

Volkswagen AG, Wells Fargo, General Motors, Takata Corporation

In many, information systems used to bury decisions from public scrutiny

Ethics

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

There are numerous examples of business ethical failures to ask students about. You could ask how information systems or their absence might have been related to the 2008-2009 financial crisis in the United States, the investment banks that suffered heavy losses, and individuals who were able to defraud investors of millions. What role did IS have in this crisis? In several large-scale financial crimes, systems were used to fool investors, regulators, and investigators, and hide an underlying crime.

What Ethical, Social, and Political Issues are Raised by Information Systems? (2 of 2)

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

Ask students to describe some of the ethical dilemmas that are presented by information systems and new developments in technology. Privacy is an important issue—mention the opening case again. Also explain that the business models of Google, Facebook, and many other sites depend on getting users to give up their personal information so it can be used to market and sell them products.

A Model for Thinking About Ethical, Social, and Political Issues

Society as a calm pond

I T 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

Can students provide any examples of how IT has challenged some area of ethics, social life, or legal arrangements? Posting of hate messages, and photos to embarrass people, are a few examples.

Figure 4.1 The Relationship Between Ethical, Social, and Political Issues in an Information Society

Figure 4.1, Page 119.

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.

Explain to students that the graphic displays the five moral dimensions listed in the caption. Consider online P2P bit torrent shared music as an example of how a new technology has ethical, social, and eventually political (legal) ramifications. If music can be ripped off, why pay any money for it? Why should anyone care about record labels or artists’ income?

Long Description:

The diagram illustrates four circles located one inside the other. The innermost circle is labeled “Information Technology and Systems.” The other circles are further divided into five parts denoting the five moral dimensions of information technology and systems as, “Information Rights and Obligations,” “Property Rights and Obligations,” “System Quality,” “Quality of Life,” and “Accountability and Control.” On moving from the innermost circle to the outermost circle, the parts denoting information and property rights and obligations are together labeled as “Ethical Issues,” “Social Issues,” and “Political Issues.” On moving from the innermost circle to the outermost circle, the part denoting quality of life is labeled as “Individual,” “Society,” and “Polity.”

Five Moral Dimensions of the Information Age

Information rights and obligations

Property rights and obligations

Accountability and control

System quality

Quality of life

Give examples of each of the five major issues. For example, an issue dealing with information rights might be: what rights do individuals possess with respect to themselves? What do they have a right to protect? An issue dealing with quality of life might be: what values should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society? An issue dealing with system quality might be: what standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?

Key Technology Trends That Raise Ethical Issues

Computing power doubles every 18 months

Data storage costs rapidly decline

Data analysis advances

Networking advances

Mobile device growth impact

Which of these trends do students believe might have the most adverse consequences? Why do they feel this way? Do the positives outweigh the negatives for all four issues? Why or why not?

Advances in Data Analysis Techniques

Profiling

Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of detailed information on individuals

Nonobvious relationship awareness (N O R A )

Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists

Online profiling is one of the most controversial computer-related ethical, social, and political issues today. Although it is used fairly extensively on the Internet, it is also used by insurance firms, health insurance firms, casinos, and of course national authorities aro

Essentials of Management Information Systems Fourteenth Edition

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