Chapter 3

Ethical Issues
Ethics: the principles of right and wrong that individuals use to make choices that guide their
behavior.
➢ Deciding what is right or wrong is not always easy or clear cut (It is vague).
Code of Ethics: A collection of principles that are intended to guide decision making by
members of an organization.

Ethical Frameworks
1) Utilitarian Approach: an ethical action is the one that provides the most good or does
the least harm. The ethical action is the one that provides the greatest good for the
greatest number.
To analyze an issue:
• First: identify the various courses of action available to us.
• Second: we ask who will be affected by each action and what benefits or harms
will be derived from each.
• Third: we choose the action that will produce the greatest benefits and the least
harm.

Affected parries: (customers/ employees/ shareholders/ the community/ and the

environment)

2) Right Approach: An ethical action is the one that best protects and respects the moral
rights of affected people.

➢ Based on the principles that individuals have the right to choose what is beneficial for
them. According to philosophers of this approach, they believe that people are not objects
to be manipulated; it is a violation of human dignity to use people in ways they do not
freely choose.

Moral Rights:
• The right to what is agreed: We have a right to what has been promised by those
with whom we have freely entered into a contract or agreement.

• The right to the truth: We have a right to be told the truth and to be informed
about matters that significantly affect our choices.

• The right of privacy: We have the right to do, believe, and say whatever we
choose in our personal lives so long as we do not violate the rights of others.
 • The right not to be injured: We have the right not to be harmed or injured unless
we freely and knowingly do something to deserve punishment, or we freely and
knowingly choose to risk such injuries.

3) Fairness or Justice Approach: Ethical actions treat all human beings equally, or, if
unequally, then fairly, based on some defensible standard.
Example:
• Most people might believe it is fair to pay people higher salaries if they work
harder.
• if people contribute a greater amount to the firm.
• CEO salaries that are hundreds or thousands of times larger than those of other
employees.

4) Common good Approach: Highlights the interlocking relationships that underlie all
societies.
➢ This approach argues that respect and compassion for all is the basis for ethical actions.

▪ ensuring that (the social policies/ social systems/ institutions/ and environments)
on which we depend are beneficial to all.

Examples of goods common to all:

• Affordable health care
• Effective public safety
• Peace among nations
• A just legal system

Fundamental Tenets of Ethics:

1. Responsibility: means that you accept the consequences of your decisions and
actions.
➢ is a key element of ethical action. Responsibility means that you accept
(the potential costs/ duties/ and obligations) for the decisions you make.

2. Accountability: a determination of who is responsible for actions that were taken.

➢ It means that mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible

action, who is responsible. Systems and institutions in which it is
impossible to find out who took what action are inherently incapable of
ethical analysis or ethical action.

3. Liability: a legal concept meaning that individuals have the right to recover the
damages done to them by other individuals, organizations, or systems.
 ➢ extends the concept of responsibility further to the area of laws. 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 related feature of law-governed
societies and 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.

Improvement in IS are increasing number of ethical problems!!!

unethical is not necessarily illegal.

Privacy
1. Privacy Issues: is the right to be left alone and to be free of unreasonable personal
intrusions.
❖ Information Privacy: the right to determine when, and to what extent,
information about yourself can be gathered and/or communicated.

❖ Many countries have followed two rules fairly closely:

• The right of privacy is not absolute!. Privacy must be balanced against the
needs of society.
• The public’s right to know is superior to the individual’s right of privacy.

2. Accuracy Issues: involve the authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of information that is
collected and processed.
-Who is responsible for the reliability, authenticity, and accuracy of information?
-Who is accountable to errors in the information?

3. Property Issues: involve the ownership and value of information.

-Who owns information?
-Who owns the channels of distribution, and how should they be regulated?
-What is the fair price of information that is exchanged?

4. Accessibility Issues: revolve around who should have access to information and whether
they should have to pay for this access.
-What information does a person or organization have a right to obtain, with what
protection, and under what conditions?
-Who can access personal information in the files?
 -Does the person accessing personal information “need to know” the information that is
being accessed?

Threats to Privacy
❖ Data aggregators: companies that collect public data (real estate records/ telephone
numbers)
+ nonpublic data (social security numbers/ financial data/ police records/ motor vehicle
records) and integrate them to produce digital dossiers.

such as: LexisNexis (www.lexisnexis.com)

ChoicePoint (www.choicepoint.com )

Acxiom (www.acxiom.com )

are prominent examples of profilers.

❖ Digital dossiers: an electronic description of you and your habits.

❖ Profiling: use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create digital
dossiers of detailed information on individuals.

NORA (nonobvious relationship awareness): new data analysis technique for even more
powerful profiling.
Nora is a new data analysis technique for even more powerful profiling. So, it's about making
profiles about individuals.
The advantage:
1. collecting data from trusted sources (trusted databases).
2. It does not share your data with a third party without your permission (data accuracy).
3. (Customer transaction systems/ Human Resource system / incident/ and a wasted
system) are real data with high quality. So, the issue of the accuracy, privacy, and
accessibility is sorted out.
Nora sorts out the issue of who owns the data, who can access the data. And whether this data
should be shared with a third party or not, whether this data is accurate or not. That's why is the
most powerful profiling.

❖ Electronic Surveillance: The tracking of people’s activities, online or offline, with

the aid of computers.

➢ Cookies
 ➢ URL filtering

The company has the right to monitor the web browsing or emails of their employees.
Normally companies develop their own code of ethics, which will help them out too much
further employees to stay focus, improve their productivity, and discourage them from wasting
their time.
They even filter the URL, which means they will not allow them to browse any website, which
has nothing to do with work related purposes. They want them to stay focused. They want them
to be more productive.
They will block connections from any appropriate websites. That is the aim of this electronic
surveillance.

People believe that this is against their privacy. While companies believe that this will help
them out to motivate their employees be more productive and discouraging them from wasting
their time.

❖ Personal Information in Databases: Information about individuals is being kept in

many databases:

➢ Banks and financial institutions

➢ Utility companies
➢ Government agencies (Internal Revenue Service, your state, your
municipality)
➢ Credit reporting companies
➢ mortgage companies
➢ hospitals, schools, and universities.
➢ retail establishments.
➢ Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, and Flickr)

We should not reveal any information about ourselves unless it is necessary.

We should not reveal the nonpublic data.
We must ensure that this information will not be shared with a third party and the
information will not be misused.

Protecting Privacy
Privacy policies or privacy codes: an organization’s guidelines for protecting the privacy of its
customers, clients, and employees.

In many corporations: senior management has begun to understand that when they collect vast
amounts of personal information, they must protect it.

Opt-out Model:

informed consent permits the company to collect personal information until the customer
specifically requests that the data not be collected.

Opt-in Model

informed consent means that organizations are prohibited from collecting any personal
information unless the customer specifically authorizes it.

When information being collected at least you know for what purposes is going to be collected
and how it is going to be used in futures. And you have, of course to balance between these two.
Because hiding more information means, sometimes company will not know how to meet your
satisfactions.