AUTHOR
Frank Stowell

ABSTRACT

Organisational information systems existed before computers were used to support them but the speed of change to working practices facilitated by information technology has created a kind of change not previously experienced. Whilst it can be argued that IT is affecting society no more than mechanisation affected society in the first Industrial Revolution, a fundamental difference is the speed at which change is taking place. %en technology is introduced to support information systems into an organisation (social or business) there is an impact upon individuals and groups as the boundaries of responsibility, authority and power are shifted by surrogate technology. An important consideration for the IS practitioner is how the appreciation and management of the situation can be translated into a process of learning.

Too often the development of the technology supported information systems is taken out of the hands of the user, or client, often with a less than satisfactory result. This paper deals with the issue of client control, aspects of organisational power and the effects upon the power structures of an organisation that technology may introduce are considered.

Suggestions about ways of managing change whilst enabling all those involved to control the development of their information systems are proposed. The paper includes an example from a manufacturing enterprise where a form of client-led development was used to develop an information system. The example also illustrates how the group dealt with the implication upon working practice and with the reorganisation of the department.

AUTHOR
Johannes Busse

ABSTRACT

Metaphors in everyday language reflect epistemic biases same as social and moral attitudes. This is also true for scientific language and especially computer science. Looking at the metaphors used to address computer’s role in human accounting gives hints to judge software design. Two complementary paradigms of Human Computer Interaction are compared.

AUTHOR
Jeroen van den Hoven

ABSTRACT

In computer ethics, as in other branches of applied ethics, the problem of the justification of moral judgements is still unresolved. I argue that the method which is referred to as “The Method of Wide Reflective Equilibrium” (WRE) offers the best solution to it. It does not fall victim to accepting the ‘false dilemma of case-based particularist and principle-based universalist approaches. WRE provides an adequate model of practical moral reasoning for computer ethics without any false pretenses of quasi-algorithmic procedures of moral decision making, but also without abandoning the regulative ideal of discursive public justification.

AUTHOR
Richard M Kamm

ABSTRACT

Outsourcing, as a mode of information technology structure, is commonly justified as a means of reducing administration and encouraging specialization. This in turn is held to contribute to a move in organizations from mechanistic bureaucracy to organic network by substituting a market for a hierarchical form of corporate governance. Its ethical foundations, as with other approaches to IT structures, can therefore be examined through political philosophy.

The ideas through which the implications of outsourcing are examined in this paper are those of Niccol’ Machiavelli. He was much exercised by an earlier form of market relationship in the provision of an essential service: the reliance of city states in the 16th Century on mercenaries for the defence of their borders. Machiavelli’s perspective was that, whatever the advantages of economy and flexibility that mercenaries were thought to provide, their employment was socially corrosive. Freelance service provision tended to generate an ethic of contractualism, in which rights and responsibilities are confined to clauses in written agreements at the expense of a sense of trust. Participation in the life of a community is restricted by the specialisation to which the use of mercenaries contributed.

The management of IT through a contractual relationship can similarly be seen as promoting an individualist and market-oriented ethic. In this respect it tends to undermine moves towards an organic form of organisation, even though it is associated with a reduction in formal bureaucracy.

AUTHOR
Simon Davies

ABSTRACT

The concept of Information Warfare (IW) has caught the imagination of military throughout the world. The idea that cyber-terrorists could employ powerful computer viruses to paralyse computer networks, organisations and economies has raised fundamental questions about the future direction of defence strategies. There is however, an important difference in the approach being taken in Europe and the United States in this field. In the US, the IW threat is being personalised as an external enemy with strategic objectives (Saddam Hussein in league with the CHAOS computer club). In Europe, the threat is generalised. European thinking on IW tends to concentrate more on the vulnerabilities in the relationship between information centres within the defending nation. The threat of virus attack parallels the internal security weaknesses within organisations – and these are as much internal human and structual problems as they are problems relating to a single external enem. This deifference goes to the heart of developing a retional IW defence policy. The US has failed to take a broad view of the IW battlefield because it has failed to question the Prime Directive of netwrked communcations – a goal which promotes speed, bandwidth and real-time connectivity at the expense of security. By externalising the threat, the US cannot easily see the danger from within. These internal threats are heightened because of the current mania for re-engineering of companies – a process which radically alters the culture and structure of organisations. Companies have re-organised and delayered, abolished departments in favour of profit centres, created short term employment contracts, internal markets, and opportunities for outsourcing. The result is a re-definition of the employee that finds little room for loyalty. In this context, the real IW threat is nurtured by organisations that have sacrificed employee security on an alter of efficiency.

AUTHOR
Andy Bissett

ABSTRACT

The ending of the Cold War is freeing economic and technical resources from the military arena to yield the so-called ‘peace dividend’. Consequently there will tend to be a shift of business away from the defence sector. This change promotes the possibility of a more ethical orientation to many information technologists’ work, and furthermore represents the chance to argue for more socially useful and responsible applications of computer technology.

This paper avoids moral debate concerning the engagement of information technology professionals in military work in favour of more pragmatic, commercial arguments. The scope for change is surveyed, and the paper outlines a three-phase strategy by which computing professionals can attempt to influence government policy and public opinion in support of a more ethical direction to our work.