The information society

Ethics and morality

Issues

• business ethics
  • monopolies
  • self-regulation
  • salaries
• specific issues for IT/IS
• communities and netiquette
• privacy

Business ethics

• long-term profitabilty
• monopoly
• consumer power
• environmentalism
• resistance

Ethical business

Monopoly

• US anti-trust legislation
• classic case of Standard Oil, broken up by US courts in 1911
• rulings and settlements on:
  • AT&T
  • IBM
  • Microsoft
• UK Monopolies and Mergers Commission
• European Union

Standard Oil

• had restrained and monopolised trade through control of pipelines
• made contracts with competitors in restraint of trade
• engaged in unfair competition, for example, cutting prices to suppress competition
• engaged in espionage against rivals
• eliminated competition between its divisions in the USA
• earned enormous and unreasonable profits as a result of its monopoly

• Rupert Murdoch (US citizen)
• UK printed media
  • Times, Today and Sun
  • Sunday Times and New of the World
• broadcasting
  • terrestrial, cable and satellite
  • Fox TV, Sky TV, Star TV
• strategic alliances with others
• danger of monopoly

Consumerism

• Ralph Nader the people’s champion
• legislation through the 1970s and 1980s to protect the interests of consumers
• driven also by litigation

Environmentalism

• acid rain
• deforestation
• global warming
• ozone depletion

• SS Braer at Shetland Islands(1993)
• Exxon Valdez (1989)
• Chernobyl (1986)
• Bhopal (1984)
• Three Mile Island (1979)
• Seveso (1976)

Businesses

• most are aware of the importance of the environment
• some are taking actions:
  • cosmetic or public relations
  • specific initiatives
• a few are incorporating it into their business strategy

Polluter pays

Hard to enforce for historic damage

Stakeholders

• suppliers
• customers
• employers
• shareholders
• lenders (banks, etc)

Ethical investments

• no exploitation of Third World
• no cruelty to animals
• avoidance of products, such as:
  • tobacco
  • alcoholic beverages
  • drugs
  • guns
  • pornography

Corporate governance

• ethics deeply bound up in corporate culture
• organisation as a whole
• IT department

IT/IS issues

• mis-use of information
• inadequate reliability of software
• intellectual property issues
• professional self-regulation

Self-regulation

• Association for Computing Machinery (USA)
• British Computer Society (UK)
• Institution of Electrical Engineers (UK)

Is the comptuer industry too corrupt?

• hacking
• illegal copying of software

Communities

Bottleneck

• the traditional bottleneck was in newspaper production or in broadcasting
• censorship opportunity is now gone!!!
• so very much harder to control
• could be impossible

The Internet

• pornography
• violence
• political subversion

• technically
• given exponential growth

Netiquette

• behaviour on the Internet
• flame wars
• emoticons
• non-commercial spirit (diminishing)

Universal service

• once merely POTS
• now a plethora of services
• should universal service evolve?
• if, who pays?
  • telephone companies
  • government from social funds
  • nobody

No telephone

• relatively small percentage of population
• a few by choice
• rather more by inability to pay
  • urban not rural poor
  • preference for entertainment

Vulnerability

• air traffic control
• fly-by-wire planes
• telecommunications network
• electronic transaction processing

Conclusions

• changing communities
• changing means of access
• rate of change is much faster than that at which society can adapt

• individuals
• groups
• organisations
• societies

Readings

Business Ethics