Chapter 4

Ethical and Social Issues

in Information Systems

4.1 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• What ethical, social, and political issues are raised

by information systems?

• What specific principles for conduct can be used to

guide ethical decisions?

• Why do contemporary information systems

technology and the Internet pose challenges to the
protection of individual privacy and intellectual
property?
• How have information systems affected laws for
establishing accountability and liability and the
quality of everyday life?
4.2 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

The Dark Side of Big Data

• Challenge:
• Opportunities from new technology to manage
more efficiently
• Underdeveloped ethical and legal environment
• Solutions:
• Develop big data strategy
• Develop privacy and fairness criteria
• Use data mining to develop predictions

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 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

The Dark Side of Big Data

• Big databases and data mining technologies

can be helpful to business firms, but they
can also harm individuals

• Demonstrates IT’s role in generating ethical

issues

4.5 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

The Dark Side of Big Data

4.6 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

• Information systems and ethics

• 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

4.8 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

The Relationship Among Ethical, Social, Political

Issues in an Information Society
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.

Figure 4.1
4.10 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

Five Moral Dimensions of the Information Age

1. Information rights and obligations

2. Property rights and obligations
3. Accountability and control
4. System quality
5. Quality of life

4.11 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

Key Technology Trends That Raise Ethical Issues

• Doubling of computer power
• More organizations depend on computer systems for critical
operations

• Rapidly declining data storage costs

• Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on
individuals

• Networking advances and the Internet

• Copying data from one location to another and accessing
personal data from remote locations are much easier

4.12 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

Key Technology Trends That Raise Ethical Issues

• Advances in data analysis techniques
• Profiling
• Combining data from multiple sources to create dossiers of
detailed information on individuals
• Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)
• Combining data from multiple sources to find obscure
hidden connections that might help identify criminals or
terrorists
• Mobile device growth
• Tracking of individual cell phones

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 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

• Ethical analysis: A five-step process

1. Identify and clearly describe the facts.

2. Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the

higher-order values involved.

3. Identify the stakeholders.

4. Identify the options that you can reasonably take.

5. Identify the potential consequences of your

options.
4.15 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

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

• Basic concepts for ethical analysis

• Responsibility:
• Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions
• Accountability:
• Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties
• Liability:
• Permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to them
• Due process:
• Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to
higher authorities

4.16 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose

challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

• Internet Challenges to Privacy:

• Cookies
• Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor’s hard drive.
• Identify visitor’s browser and track visits to site.
• Super cookies (Flash cookies)
• Web beacons (Web bugs)
• Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages
• Monitor who is reading e-mail message or visiting site
• Spyware
• Surreptitiously installed on user’s computer
• May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads
• Google services and behavioral targeting

4.27 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose

challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

How Cookies Identify Web Visitors

Cookies are
written by a Web
site on a visitor’s
hard drive. When
the visitor returns
to that Web site,
the Web server
requests the ID
number from the
cookie and uses it
to access the data
stored by that
server on that
visitor. The Web
site can then use
these data to
display
personalized
information.

Figure 4.3

4.28 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose

challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

• Technical solutions
• E-mail encryption
• Anonymous browsing tools
• Cookie prevention and management
• Browser features
• “Private” browsing
• “Do not track” feature
• For the most part, these solutions fail in to
prevent users from being tracked from site to site

4.30 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Why do contemporary information systems technology and the Internet pose

challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property?

• Challenges to intellectual property rights

• Digital media different from physical media (e.g.,
books)
• Ease of replication
• Ease of transmission (networks, Internet)
• Ease of alteration
• Difficulty in classifying software
• Compactness
• Difficulties in establishing uniqueness
• Closed environments (Amazon, Kindle)
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
4.32 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

How have information systems affected laws for establishing accountability

and liability and the quality of everyday life?

• System quality: data quality and system

errors
• What is an acceptable, technologically feasible
level of system quality?
• Flawless software is economically unfeasible.

• Three principal sources of poor system

performance:
• Software bugs, errors
• Hardware or facility failures
• Poor input data quality (most common source of business
system failure)
4.34 Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall
 Essentials of Management Information Systems
Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

How have information systems affected laws for establishing accountability

and liability and the quality of everyday life?

• Computer crime and abuse

• Computer crime: commission of illegal acts through use of
compute or against a computer system—computer may be
object or instrument of crime
• Computer abuse: unethical acts, not illegal
• Spam: high costs for businesses in dealing with spam

• Employment:
• Reengineering work resulting in lost jobs

• Equity and access—the digital divide:

• Certain ethnic and income groups in the United States less
likely to have computers or Internet access

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