MIS ch04 2024

4/15/2024
Management Information Systems:

Managing the Digital Firm
Sixteenth Edition
Chapter 4
Ethical and Social

Issues in Information
Systems
Copyright © 2020, 2018, 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Learning Objectives
4.1 What ethical and social issues are raised by IS?
4.2 What principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical

decisions?
4.3 Why do IS technology and the Internet pose challenges to

the protection of individual privacy and intellectual
property?
4.4 How have IS affected laws for establishing accountability,

liability, and the quality of everyday life?
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What is Ethics ?
– Principles of right and wrong people use to make choices
to guide their behaviors
– Ethics is about individual choice: When faced with

alternative courses of action, what is the correct moral
choice?
– Right and Wrong change over time, place…
Ethics and Technology

• Technology can be a double-edged sword: it can be used to achieve social
progress, but also to commit crimes and threaten social values.
• The rapid advancement of technology, particularly in areas such as data

analytics, artificial intelligence, and biometrics, has raised new privacy
concerns. The following are some examples:
• Example: Amazon's AI recruiting Software was found to be biased against

women. The algorithm was trained on resumes submitted over a ten-year
period, which were mostly from men. As a result, the system learned to
penalize resumes containing terms associated with women, such as
female-centric activities. This led to gender discrimination in the hiring
process.
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• Some Car Insurance companies collect and analyze data about people
driving habits. Lower insurance rates are then given to those who don’t
drive late at night and don’t spend much time in their cars, thus
discriminating against poorer people who are more likely to work a late
shift and to have longer commutes to work.
• Some insurance companies determine health insurance rates based on

predictions of people life expectancy using data about buying habits,
personal and family medical histories, etc.
• Blockchain technology, which is difficult to regulate or monitor, could be

used to receive payments for illegal activities.
• Advances in Data Analysis Techniques
– Online profiling: using data gathered from an individual's online

behavior and activity to create a profile that can be used for various
purposes. Online profiling is one of the most controversial computer-
related ethical issues today.
– Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA): Combining data from

multiple sources using data analysis and AI to identify hidden
connections. NORA is often used in fields such as law enforcement,
national security, and marketing to help identify patterns and make
connections that might not be apparent to human analysts.
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Figure 4.1 Nonobvious Relationship

Awareness (NORA)
Moral dimensions of the digital age

• ICT development raise new ethical, social, and political issues and
challenges.
• Social and political institutions cannot respond overnight to new issues. It

may take years to develop protocols, laws…
• These issues have 4 moral dimensions:
1. Information rights and obligations

2. Property rights and obligations
3. System quality
4. Quality of life
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Moral dimensions of the digital age
1. Information rights: The collection, use, sharing and protecting of personal

information in the digital age raise concerns about privacy. People may be
unaware of the extent to which their data is being collected and how it is being
used.
2. Property rights: Protecting the rights of content creators while promoting

innovation and creativity is a key ethical challenge.
3. Accountability and control: Who will be held accountable and liable for the
harm done because of IT related decisions and actions ?
4. System quality: Which ethical considerations should accompany the design and
implementation of IT. This includes issues such as system reliability, accuracy,
security, usability, and accessibility
Responsibility, Accountability, and Liability

• Addressing ethical concerns related to IT requires a holistic approach that
encompasses several key components:
• Responsibility: Stakeholders involved in the development and use of IT

must recognize their responsibilities. This means being aware of the
potential ethical implications of IT and striving to mitigate risks and harms.
• Accountability: It refers to holding individuals and organizations

answerable for their IT related decisions and actions. This includes
ensuring transparency in decision-making, disclosing potential biases or
limitations, and establishing mechanisms for auditing IT performance
• Liability: The legal obligation to make compensation for IT related harm or

damage.
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IT related Ethical Dilemmas

• Dilemma: One set of interests pitted against another. Right and wrong are
not clearly defined.
• Examples:
– Monitoring employees activity on internet: company right to

maximize productivity VERSUS violation of employees privacy.
– Revealing data breaches compromising customer’s personal

information: transparency and accountability VERSUS reputational
damage and legal liabilities.
– Content moderation for social media platforms: principles of free

speech and platform neutrality VERSUS the need to combat hate
speech, misinformation, and harmful content.
Ethical Analysis Process

• Ethical analysis is the process of examining and evaluating an ethical issue
or dilemma in a structured and systematic way. It is five-steps process:
1. Identify and clearly describe the facts: Find out who did what to
whom, and where, when, and how
2. Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order

values involved (e.g., honesty, privacy, intellectual property, integrity).
3. Identify the stakeholders: players who have an interest in the

outcome
4. Identify the options that you can reasonably take.
5. Identify the potential consequences: Some options may be ethically

correct but disastrous from other points of view
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Ethical Principles (1 of 2)
• Once ethical analysis is complete, several ethical principles can be
considered to guide decision-making.
1. Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. Kant’s Categorical Imperative: we should act from a sense of duty and

respecting the dignity of people. Decisions are evaluated based on
whether they stick to moral principles that can be consistently applied to
everyone, regardless of personal interests or consequences.
3. Descartes’ Slippery Slope Rule: certain actions, when initiated, may set
off a chain of events or precedents that can lead to progressively worse
outcomes over time.
Ethical Principles (2 of 2)
• Utilitarian Principle: Take the option that produces the greatest good for
the greatest number of people.
• Risk Aversion Principle: Take the action that produces the least harm or
cost, even if it may not have the highest potential for benefit or gain.
• “No Free Lunch” Rule
– Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by
someone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise. This means
that if someone creates or acquires something, he have legal
ownership over it, and others are not allowed to use or dispose of it
without his permission.
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How IS affected Information Rights ?

✓ Individuals have the right to control the collection, use, and disclosure of
their personal information.
✓ IT threaten individual claims to privacy by making the invasion of privacy

cheap, profitable, and effective.
• Fair Information Practices (FIP) is a framework that serves as the basis

for privacy laws and regulations in many countries. FIP outlines principles
and guidelines for the collection, use, disclosure, and protection of
personal information by organizations, governments, and other entities.
The framework aims to ensure that individuals' privacy rights are
respected and that their personal data is handled in a fair, transparent,
and responsible manner.
Internet challenges to privacy
• Internet challenges to privacy arise from various tools used to track online
behavior. Some common tools for tracking online behavior include:
✓ Cookies: small files stored on a user's device by websites to track

browsing activity, remember user preferences, and deliver targeted ads.
✓ Web beacons: small, invisible images that are embedded in web pages or
emails. They provide information about user behavior to third parties
without the user's knowledge or consent.
✓ Spyware: a malicious software that monitor a user's computer activities

without their knowledge or consent (tracking web browsing habits, stealing
personal information, monitoring keystrokes…)
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Technical solutions to protect privacy

• Besides legislations, technical solutions to protect privacy include:
– Secure Email Services such as ProtonMail, Tutanota, and Hushmail

offer end-to-end encryption
– Anonymity tools such as VPN, proxy servers, etc.
– Anti-spyware tools
– Built-in Browser features such as “Incognito mode”; “Do not track”

options; “No downloads”; “Mask location”; “disable extensions”
• Even after selecting the Do Not Track option, websites are not legally
obligated to honor their visitors’ requests not to be tracked.
• Overall, technical solutions have failed to protect users from being tracked
from one site to another
How IS affected Property Rights ?
• Creators and owners of information have the right to control the use and
distribution of their intellectual property. Others have the obligation to
respect these rights and obtain proper authorization before using or
reproducing protected information.
• Intellectual property is protected in four main ways:
– Copyright: image, writing or a musical composition
– Patents: grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind

an invention (device or a process) for 20 years
– Trademarks: logo or name
– Trade secret: algorithm, formula, software…

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How IS affected Property Rights ?

• New technologies and digitalization brought new challenges to existing
laws that protect intellectual property. Before internet, copies of software,
books, or films had to be stored on physical media (paper, computer disk,
videotape), creating some hurdles to distribution. With internet, information
can be more widely reproduced and distributed.
• Digital media different from physical media:
– Ease of replication
– Ease of transmission (networks, Internet)
– Ease of alteration
– Compactness
– Difficulties in establishing uniqueness

How IT affected laws for establishing

accountability and liability?
• IT have changed the way businesses operate and interact with their
stakeholders, which has led to new legal issues related to accountability
and liability. These issues have emerged as a result of the vast amounts
of data that organizations store and the widespread use of digital
technologies.
• IT has also enabled the creation of new types of businesses, such as

those based on the sharing economy, crytptoccurency and online
marketplaces. These new business models have raised questions about
liability and responsibility for the actions of users on their platforms.
• Copyright © 2020, 2018, 2016 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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How IS affected laws for establishing

accountability and liability?
• When a software is part of a machine, and the machine hurts someone
physically or economically. Who is liable the producer of the software or
the manufacturer of the machine ? Should Facebook or Twitter be held
liable and accountable for the posting of pornographic material or racial
insults, or should they be held harmless against any liability for what
users post ?
• In general, it is very difficult to hold software producers liable as

softwares are considered to be like books, regardless of the physical or
economic harm that results. In the United States, with few exceptions,
websites are not held liable for content posted on their sites regardless of
whether it was placed there by the website owners or users.
How IS affected System Quality ?

• Developping a flawless software is almost impossible and economically
unfeasible as it involves constant testing and debugging, which can be
time-consuming and costly. Even after testing and debugging, new bugs
and vulnerabilities can arise.
• What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality?

Does it depend on the particular product? For example, distinguish
between software used by air traffic controllers and software used for word
processing.
• The gray area is that some system errors are foreseeable and correctable
only at very great expense, an expense so great that pursuing this level of
perfection is not feasible economically. So in gray areas, what should
organizations do?.
11

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4/15/2024

Management Information Systems:

Ethical and Social

4.2 What principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical

4.3 Why do IS technology and the Internet pose challenges to

4.4 How have IS affected laws for establishing accountability,

– Ethics is about individual choice: When faced with

– Right and Wrong change over time, place…

Ethics and Technology

• The rapid advancement of technology, particularly in areas such as data

• Example: Amazon's AI recruiting Software was found to be biased against

Ethics and Technology

• Some insurance companies determine health insurance rates based on

• Blockchain technology, which is difficult to regulate or monitor, could be

Ethics and Technology

• Advances in Data Analysis Techniques

– Online profiling: using data gathered from an individual's online

– Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA): Combining data from

Figure 4.1 Nonobvious Relationship

Moral dimensions of the digital age

• Social and political institutions cannot respond overnight to new issues. It

• These issues have 4 moral dimensions:

1. Information rights and obligations

Moral dimensions of the digital age

1. Information rights: The collection, use, sharing and protecting of personal

2. Property rights: Protecting the rights of content creators while promoting

Responsibility, Accountability, and Liability

• Responsibility: Stakeholders involved in the development and use of IT

• Accountability: It refers to holding individuals and organizations

• Liability: The legal obligation to make compensation for IT related harm or

IT related Ethical Dilemmas

– Monitoring employees activity on internet: company right to

– Revealing data breaches compromising customer’s personal

– Content moderation for social media platforms: principles of free

Ethical Analysis Process

2. Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order

3. Identify the stakeholders: players who have an interest in the

4. Identify the options that you can reasonably take.

5. Identify the potential consequences: Some options may be ethically

2. Kant’s Categorical Imperative: we should act from a sense of duty and

• “No Free Lunch” Rule

How IS affected Information Rights ?

✓ IT threaten individual claims to privacy by making the invasion of privacy

• Fair Information Practices (FIP) is a framework that serves as the basis

Internet challenges to privacy

✓ Cookies: small files stored on a user's device by websites to track

✓ Spyware: a malicious software that monitor a user's computer activities

Technical solutions to protect privacy

– Secure Email Services such as ProtonMail, Tutanota, and Hushmail

– Anonymity tools such as VPN, proxy servers, etc.

– Built-in Browser features such as “Incognito mode”; “Do not track”

How IS affected Property Rights ?

• Intellectual property is protected in four main ways:

– Copyright: image, writing or a musical composition

– Patents: grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind

– Trademarks: logo or name

– Trade secret: algorithm, formula, software…

How IS affected Property Rights ?

• Digital media different from physical media:

– Ease of transmission (networks, Internet)

– Difficulties in establishing uniqueness

How IT affected laws for establishing

• IT has also enabled the creation of new types of businesses, such as

How IS affected laws for establishing