Information System and Professional Ethics

Information System and Professional Ethics

• Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Introduction

For businesses that use information systems, it's important to understand the importance of digital information; for example saleable digital data contained in music  and movies, intellectual property of product designs, information contained in email lists and other client information contained in the cloud. The delicacy of this information and the fear of hackers or illegal use  of the information brings up the need to be more security conscious. 

In the Uk, Tech and IT professionals have professional bodies such as the British chartered Institute of Information technology, Chartered Institute for Personnel Development and others  that have developed code of conducts that guide how Information Systems professionals  operate. This goes to show how much is at risk if an organisation’s confidential information is disclosed.  

Almost every worker in developed countries uses information systems for daily work  (Oz, 2004) and the development and implementation of these systems is the responsibility of Information system professionals this gives access and  puts enormous amounts of information in the hands of  Information systems professionals such as  analysts, tech support staff, web developers and others in this field.

(Oz, 2004) identifies that the welfare of the organisations and the people with whom they interact depends on the ethical conduct of these IS  professionals seeing as most software development projects fail because of unethical behaviour (Frantz, 1991; OZ, 1994). 

Importance of Ethics to IS professionals

IS professionals are more sensitive than other professionals to information technology (IT) related ethical issues (Oz, 2004).  The issues which include, confidentiality, social responsibility, of programmers and system analysts etch are what confronts society with a variety of ethical challenges

(Cohen and Cornwell,1989) carried out a study that reveals the importance of teaching ethics to Information systems professionals and it's necessity. A questionnaire was developed and given to respondents to query them towards their attitude towards software piracy, confidentiality of data, unauthorised use of computer equipment and plagiarism which they should answer True or False toor leave blank. . One of the questions read "I think it is okay to copy commercial software instead of buying it"

The results of this study showed that ethics are best learned if they are integrated into a teaching curriculum for Information Systems Students before they become professionals.

Organisational Culture and Professional Ethics
Steers 1977 analyses a relationship between Organisational Culture and Professional ethics. He defines\d Organisational commitment (OC)  as the relative strength of an individual  is the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organisation (Oz, 2004) and (Hunt, Wood and Chonko, 1989)  identifies a positive relationship between corporate ethical values and OC. (cited in Oz, 2004).

This goes to show that if an IS professional believes and accepts the organisations goals and values, is willing to go an extra mile towards achieving organisational goals and desires to keep being a member of the organisation, there is a high tendency to perform well ethically.

Furthermore, in order to measure the level of commitment of an IS professional to ethical values, researchers use on of these two methods; one is to describe a scenario of unethical behaviour and and ask the respondents to what degree they agree or to provide a scenario with an ethical delinma and ask them to respond with how they'll behave which agrees with (Cohen and Cornwell, 1989) study as discussed above.

This is further explained with The theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1985) proved the Theory of planned action (Ajzen, 1985) which says that people who report that they behaved or intend to behave in a certain manner actually go ahead to behave in that manner. This allows us to conclude that people behave ethically or unethically in their daily life if they agree with statements that reflect such character. (Oz, 2004).

But I quite disagree with this theory; having filled a couple of questionnaires myself and chosen the options that present me in the best light at the time even if the questionnaires are anonymous. Therefore, I think more research needs to be carried out to explore how to determine IS professionals level of commitment to ethical values rather than just take their statement for it.

In conclusion, while it cannot be fully determined the level of an individuals commitment to organisational values or ethics, it is good that Professional code of ethics for IS professionals have been set up by different bodies such as BCS, ACM, CIPS in the Uk to guide as to what is generally accepted as ethically right or wrong based on organisations standards.

References
Cohen, E. and Cornwell, L., 1989. A question of ethics: Developing information system ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 8(6), pp.431-437.

Oz, E. (2004). Organizational Commitment and Ethical Behavior: An Empirical Study of Information System Professionals. Journal of Business Ethics, 34(2), 137-142.