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Ethical Responsibility of Business Professionals

As a business professional, you have a responsibility to promote ethical

use of information technology in the work place, whether you have

managerial responsibility or not, you should accept the ethical

responsibilities that come with your work activities.

That includes properly performing your rule as a vital human resource in

the business systems you help develop & use in your organization.

As a Manager,

it will be your responsibility to make decisions about business activities

and the use of information technologies which may have an ethical

dimension that must be considered.

For example,

Should you electronically monitor your employee’s work activities &

electronic mail?

Should you let employees use their work computers for private business

or take home copies of s/w for their personal use ? etc.

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There are a few examples of the types of decisions you will have to

make that have a controversial ethical dimension.

Technological Ethics:

Another important ethical dimension deals specifically with the ethics of

the use of any form of technology.

Ethical Principles to help evaluate the

Potential harms or risks of the

Use of new technologies

Proportionality :

The good achieved by the technology must out weigh the harm/risk.

Moreover, there must be no alternative that achieves the same or

comparable benefit with less harm or risk.

Informed consent :

Those affected by the technology should understand & accept the

risks.

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Justice :

The benefit & burdens of the technology should be distributed

fairly. Those who benefit should bear their fair share of the risks &

those who do not benefit should not suffer a significant increase in risk.

Minimized Risk:

Even if judged acceptable by the other 3 guidelines, the

technology must be implemented so as to avoid all unnecessary risk.

These principles can serve as basic ethical requirements that co.,

should meet to help ensure the ethical implementation of Information

Technology & Information systems in business.

Computer Crime:

Cyber crime is becoming one of the Net’s growth businesses. Today,

criminals are doing everything from dealing intellectual property &

committing fraud to unleashing viruses & committing acts of cyber

terrorism.

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Computer crime is a growing threat to society caused by the criminals

who are taking advantage of the widespread use & vulnerability of

computers & the Internet & other networks.

Cyber crime is defined by the Association of IT professional as

including

1) The unauthorized use, access, modification & destruction of

hardware, software, data or network resources.

2) The unauthorized release of information

3) The unauthorized copying of s/w.

4) Denying an end user access to his / her own H/w, S/w data or

network resource &

5) Using or conspiring to use computer or network resource to

illegally obtain information or tangible property.

Hacking:

Cyber ethics have at their fingertips a dozen dangerous look, from

“Scans” that ferret out weakness in website S/w program to “Sniffer”

that match password

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Hacking in computer is the obsessive use of computer or the

unauthorized access & use of networked computer systems.

One of the issues in hacking is what to do about a hacker, who commit

only electronic breaking & entering that is, gets access to a computer

system, ready some files, but neither steals nor damages, anything. This

situation & common computer crime cases that are prosecuted.

Hackers can monitor e-mail, web serves access of file transfers to

extract passwords of steal network files or to plant data that will cause a

system to welcome intruders

Telnet, an internet tool for interactive use of remote computer can help

hackers discourse information to plan other attacks. Hackers have use

telnet to access a computers e-mail part.

Thats why internet security measures like encryption & firewall, as

discussed once, to vital to the access of electronic commerce & other e-

business application.

Examples of common hacking tactics to assault co., through the

Internet & other networks

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1. Logic Bombs: As instruction is a computer program that

triggers a malicious act.

2. Password crackers: S/w that can guess password

Cyber Theft: Many computer crimes involve the theft of money. In

the majority of cases, they are “inside job” that involves unauthorized

network entry of fraudulent alteration of computer data base to cover the

task of the employees involved.

In most cases, the scope of financial losses is much larger than the

incidents reported. Most co., don’t reveal that they have been target or

victims of the computer crime. They fear scaring off customer &

provoking complaints by share holders.

Unauthorized use at work:

The unauthorized use of computer system & network can be called “

times & resource theft”

A common example is unauthorized use of co., owned computer

network by employee. This may range from doing Pvt., counseling or

personal finances, or playing video games. Network monitoring S/w

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called sniffer, is frequently used to monitor network traffic to evaluate

network capacity, as well as reveal evidence of improper use.

S/w Piracy:

Computer programs are valuable property & these are the subjects of

theft from computer system. However, unauthorized copying of S/w or

software piracy is also a major form of S/w theft.

Unauthorized copying is illegal because software is intellectual property

that is protected by copy right law & well licensing agreement.

For eg. In US, commercial S/w packages are protected by the computer

S/w piracy and counter feiting amendment to the federal copy right act.

The alternatives are “Share wave”, which allows you to make copies of

S/w for others & “Public domain S/w” which is not copy righted.

Piracy of intellectual property:-

S/w is the only property subject to computer based piracy. Other

intellectual property in the form of copy righted material, such as music,

videos, images, articles, books and other written works are especially

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vulnerable to copyright infringement, which most courts have deemed

illegal.

Digitized version can easily be captured by computer system and made

available for people to access to download at internet websites, or can be

readily disseminated by e-mail or attachments.

For eg. P2P file sharing S/w enables direct MP3 audio file transfer of

specified tracks of music between your PC and those of the other uses

on the internet.

Thus, such S/w creates a Peer – to- peer network of millions of internet

users who electronically trade digital version of copy righted or public

domain sevice stored on their PC’s hard drive.

Privacy Issues:-

It makes it technically & economically – feasible to collect, store,

integrate, interchange & retriever data & information quickly & easily.

The characteristic has an important beneficial effect on the efficiency &

effectiveness of computer based information system. However, the

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power of I.T. to store retrieve information can have a negative effect on

the “right to privacy” of every individual. Important privacy issues are

being debated in business & govt. an internet technologies accelerate the

ubiquity of global telecommunication connection in business & society.

Example :

1) Accruing individual’s Pvt., e-mail conversation & computer records

& collecting and sharing information about individuals gained from

their visits to internet websites and new groups (violation of

privacy)

2) Always knowing where a person & especially a mobile & paging

service becomes more closely associated with people rather than

place (computer monitoring )

3) Using customer information gained from many sources to market

additional business services (computer marketing)

4) Collecting telephone Nos., E-mail address, credit card Nos., & other

personal information to build individual customer profile

(unauthorized personal files)

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Business ethics: is concerned with the numerous ethical questions

that managers meet confront a part of their daily business decision

making.

Basic categories of ethical business issues, it has caused ethical

controversy in the areas of intellectual property rights, customer &

employee privacy, security of co., information and workplace safety.

Exercise of
Equity Rights Honesty process
corporate
Executive Corporate due Employee Product safety
salaries process conflict of environmental
comparable with employee health internet issue
product pricing screening Security of Co., disagreement
intellectual customer information corporate
privacy

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Property Rights Employee Inappropriate Contribution

Non Privacy Gfte advertising Social issues
competition Sexual content. Govt. raised by
agreement harassment contract issue. religious
affirmation Financial and organizations
action equal cash Mgt plant or facility
employment procedures clourers and
opportunity. questionable downsizing
Sharer holder business political action
interest practices in committee.
employment at foreign country Work place
will whistle – safety
blowing

The above table outlines some of the basic categories of ethical issues &

specific business practice that have serious ethical consequences.

Notice that the issues of intellectual property rights, customer &

employee privacy, security of co., records and work place safety are

highlighted because they have been major areas of ethical controversy in

I.T.

Internet privacy:

If you don’t take the proper precaution, any time you send an e-mail,

access a website, post a message to a new group, or use the internet for

banking and shopping. Whether you are online for business or pleasure,

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you’re vulnerable to anyone bent on collecting data about you without

your knowledge.

Fortunately, by using tool like encryption & anonymous remailers & by

being selective about the sites you visit and the information you provide

you can minimize, if not completely eliminate the risk of your piracy

being violated.

The internet is notorious for giving its users a feeling of anonymity,

when its actuality, they are highly visible & open to violation of their

privacy.

Of course, you can protect your privacy in several ways.

For eg: Sensitive e-mail can be protected by encryption of both e-mail

parties use compatible encryption S/w built into there e-mail program.

Finally, you can decline to several personal data & internet on online

service & website user profile to limit your exposure to electronic

whooping.

CHALLENGES IN WORKING CONDITIONS:

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It has eliminated monotonous tasks in the office & the factory that

formerly had to be performed by people.

For eg: word processing and desktop publishing make producing office

document a lot easier to do, while robot have taken over repetitive

welding and spray painting jobs in the automotive industry.

Thus, it can be said to upgrade the quality of work being it can upgrade

the quality of working conditions and the content of work activities.

It must be remembered that some jobs in IT data entry are quite

repetitive and routine.

Many automated operations are also criticized for relegrating people to

a “do-nothing” standby role, where workers spend most of their time

waiting for infrequent opportunities to push some buttons. Such effects

do have a determinate effect on the quality of work, but they must be

compared to the less burdensome & more creative jobs created by I.T.

CHALLENGES TO INDIVIDUALITY

A frequent criticism of information systems concerns their negative

effect in the individuality of people, computer based systems are

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criticized an impersonal systems that dehumanize & depersonalize

activities that have been computerized, since they eliminate the human

relationships present in non-computer systems.

Another aspect of the loss of individuality in the regimentation of the

individual that seems to be required by some computer based systems.

However, many business applications of IT are designed to minimize

depersonalization and regimentation

For eg: Many e-commerce systems are designed to stress

personalization & community features to encourage repeated visits to e-

commerce websites. Thus, the widespread use of the personal

computers & the Internet has dramatically improved the development of

people oriented & personalized information systems.

HEALTH ISSUES:

The use of IT in the work place raises a variety of health issues. Heavy

use of computer is reportedly causing health problems like job stress,

damaged arm and neck muscles etc.

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For eg: Computer monitoring in balanced as a major cause of computer

related job stress. Workers, unions & govt. officials criticize computer

monitoring as putting so much stress on employee that it leads to health

problems.

Some pregnant workers have reported miscarriages & fetal deformities

due to prolonged exposure to CRT’s at work.

However, several studies have failed to find conclusive evidence

concerning this problem, still, several problems recommend that female

workers minimize their use of CRTs during pregnancy.

Social Issues:-

As we have discussed in the beginning of the chapter, the internet &

other ITs can have many beneficial effects on society. We can use IT’s

to solve human & social problems such as medical diagnosis, govts.

Program planning etc.

For eg: Computers can help diagnose an illness, prescribe necessary

treatment & monitor the progress of hospital patients. Computer

assisted Instruction (CAI) and computer based training (CBT) enable

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interactive instruction tailored to the needs of students. Distance

learning is supported by telecommunications networks, video

conferencing, e-mail & other technologies.

IT’s can be used for crime control through various law enforcement

applications.

For eg: Computerized alarm systems allow police to identify & quickly

respond to evidences of criminal activity.

It should be obvious to you that many of the detrimental effects of IT

are caused by individuals or organization that are not accepting the

ethical responsibility for their actions. Like other powerful technologies,

IT possess the potential for great harm or pool for all human kind. If

managers, business professional & IS specialists accept their ethical

responsibilities, then IT can help make this world a better place for us.

ERGONOMICS:

Solutions to some of these health problems are based on the science of

“ergonomics “sometimes called “Human factor engineering”. The goal

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of this is to design healthy work environment that are safe, comfortable

& pleasant for people to work in, thus increasing employee morale &

productivity. Ergonomics stresses on the healthy design of work place

and even S/w package. other health issues may require ergonomics

solutions emphasis job design rather than work place design.

For eg: This may require policies providing for work breaks from heavy

use every hour, while limiting the CRT exposure of pregnant workers.

Ergonomic job design can also provide more variety in job tasks for

those workers who spend most of their work day at computer work

stations.

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