AUTHOR
Kiyoshi Murata and Yohko Orito

ABSTRACT

Based on the recognition that information and communication technology (ICT) was becoming a key enabler of successful business systems as well as safe and affluent societies, in Japan, the Strategic Headquarters for the Promotion of an Advanced Information and Telecommunications Network Society (IT Strategic Headquarters) was established within the Cabinet in January 2001. They developed a policy called “e-Japan Strategy” which was aimed at adapting the nation to the rapid and drastic changes in socio-economic structure caused by the utilisation of ICT and at creating an advanced information and telecommunication network society. The promotion of e-Japan Strategy and its subsequent policies resulted in the highly advanced broadband network infrastructure throughout the nation. In order to contribute to the e-Japan strategies, in 2006, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) adopted “u-Japan Policy” aimed at creating the ubiquitous network society where seamless network access would be realised by the integration of wired and wireless networks and people would enjoy high quality services provided by the ubiquitous network systems.

In the e-Japan strategies as well as u-Japan Policy, development of ICT professionals or nurturing of advanced ICT human resources such as software engineers, digital content creators, project managers, chief information officers, ICT mentors and ICT researchers has consistently been positioned as a top priority issue, mainly because a serious shortage of such human resources in the present and future information society has been expected. The Japanese business community has supported this governmental view; in December 2007 Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), for example, issued a policy proposal that recommended setting up the National Centre for cultivating advanced ICT human resources.

Considering that a number of people are going to be employed as advanced ICT human resources or ICT professionals and activities undertaken by them have and will have considerable influence over the information society, their development of a professional outlook and attitude is an urgent issue in order to create and maintain a safe and reliable society. However, there exist challenges for establishing ICT professionalism in Japan. They can be classified broadly into the following three categories: (a) working environments of ICT professionals, (b) business practices in Japanese ICT industry and (c) Japanese education systems.

(a) Working environments of ICT professionals

Since the bubble economy burst in the early 90’s, many Japanese companies have tried to reduce personnel cost and, accordingly, working environments, in general, have become worse in terms of labour conditions such as pay and labour time. The number of full time workers is decreasing and, in contrast, the number of dispatched workers and contract-based workers is increasing.

The working environments of ICT professionals in Japan are no exception; they are often described as 3Ks, which is the acronym for the Japanese words of Kitsui (hard work), Kyuryo ga yasui (low pay) and Kaere-nai (hard to go back home). Karoshi (fatigue death) has become a huge social issue; in March 2002, for example, a 28-year-old man who worked for Fujitsu died from overfatigue. His overtime work reached 159 hours in the last one month before his death.

ICT professionals’ bad labour conditions are so notorious that young Japanese people tend to hesitate to become ICT professionals. Thus, it is difficult for the Japanese ICT industry to secure good human resources. Japanese ICT professionals cannot be proud of their profession and, therefore, development of professionalism is hard for them.

(b) Business practices in Japanese ICT industry

Business practices in Japanese ICT industry aggravate the poor labour conditions of ICT professionals. “Man month” is still used as a usual measure to estimate development cost of information systems. This way of cost calculation was originally adopted in manufacturing industry and is not necessarily fit for estimating cost of products of human intellectual activities such as software. The unrealistic way of cost estimation often result in unreasonably set due date of implementation of information systems and turning ICT professionals into blue-collar workers. Terms and conditions of a contract for development and implementation of information systems are sometimes recognised as Tatemae (what is described for the sake of courteousness or respectability) in Japan and scope creep is nothing unusual.

Recently, “disguised contract for work” have become a serious social issue in Japan; contract-based workers are forced to work for their client companies as if they were workers dispatched to the companies. However, this sort of illegal employment has been commonplace in the Japanese ICT industry. Actually, many Japanese ICT professionals don’t recognise disguised contract for work is illegal and multiple contracts for work are also commonplace. This business practice tends to make ICT workers programming machines.

(c) Education system

The Japanese government as well as the Japanese business community has repeatedly emphasised the importance of developing ICT engineers of high moral character. In fact, a lot of engineering universities have launched a course of lectures on professional and engineering ethics. However, the fierce competition to pass entrance exams to topnotch universities has distorted the Japanese primary, secondary and advanced education and knowledge about philosophy as well as ethics has already been not necessary to enter the universities. Such knowledge is also unnecessary for students to graduate from their universities. Many people tend to consider that technology is not related to ethics. In these circumstances, it is very difficult to encourage students to study about engineering and professional ethics and to develop a professional outlook. It symbolises this Japanese situation that neither philosopher nor ethicist is a member of Study Group on ICT Human Resources, which is a panel in MIC to discuss development of ICT professionals.

In this paper, the authors will examine these challenges for developing ICT professionalism in Japan and propose basic ideas on how to resolve them. The notion of “eco-ethica” (Imamichi, 1990) will be added to our examination and proposal.

AUTHOR
Ananda Mitra

ABSTRACT

The advent of inexpensive and reliable Internet- and satellite-based telephone technology allows private enterprise in the US and Western Europe to transfer a significant part of their phone service operations to India and China. Reliable data on the number of call-center employees and Western entities using them are lacking, but back-office companies in India are currently estimated to export approximately $3.6 billion worth of services annually.

Outsourcing has two significant outcomes. First, a new class of employees is developing in India. Some data suggest that typical Indian call-center employees are urban, evenly distributed between men and women, usually in their 20s, with annual salaries ranging from $4000-$6000; 90% are college graduates or postgraduates. They usually do not remain in the business very long; call-centers experience employee turnover at a rate of 75%-100% every year.

Second, given the need for real-time direct interaction, the workers’ conditions must match those of customers, and they must have a cultural orientation similar to the customers’. Like people who have to move from one country to another to find employment, the technological diaspora produces a sense of displacement and other kinds of stress.

The conceptual framework of the study described here is derived by looking at the call-center work experience through the lens of diaspora studies. There are many important and striking similarities between the experiences of the traditionally diasporic and those working in call-centers. Typically, the diasporic condition has been considered to be a political, social and cultural issue and the scholarship has considered the diasporic effect on how a person negotiates an identity. In the case of call-center workers that identity negotiation is only temporary since the diasporic experience is not all encompassing. The diasporic experience of the call-center worker is an incomplete process because the interaction, and all the cultural baggage of the interaction, is interrupted the moment the person is off the phone and has walked out from the Westernized environment of the call-center into the early morning streets of Bangalore. In some ways this results in the call-center worker having to shape themselves and their environments in different ways so the duality of their existence can be managed.

The need for this duality is related to the fact that the successful operation of call-centers in India depends on the cultural competence and morale of the phone operators, who virtually work outside their country, while living in it. This leads to the following research questions:

1. What are the critical acculturation processes that call-center employees experience?
2. What are the critical effects of acculturation strategies?

This paper reports on some of the research question using the data from a study that was conducted as a series of focus group meetings in Delhi in the summer of 2007. The information gathered from the focus group meetings are reported here and the information from the focus groups was also used to conduct a questionnaire using a Web-based data collection method.

The focus group members indicated several different methods that were utilized by the call center industry to try and train the employees to mimic the cultural attributes of the customers. These methods include pronunciation training, changing the names of the call center employees to Western-sounding names, some amount of “cultural training” to familiarize them with the customs and practices of the customers and the call center employees would be encouraged to familiarize themselves with the popular media products of the West.

The findings also suggest that working in call centers lead to a set of issues related to the everyday life of the workers. There was general agreement that some of the main effects include a sense of separation from the general social milieu because of the “graveyard shift” working hours, development of a sense of community among call center employees because of the similarities in life-style and a general sense of disapproval among family, friends and neighbors about the nature of the work partly as well as behavioral problems particularly related to increased use of tobacco and alcohol.

The finding from this study indicate that a sub-culture of people is developing within India who feel disconnected from their actual place of dwelling because of the requirements of their place of work. Many of the issues pointed out by the participants are reminiscent of what migrant workers would experience as they went through the diasporic condition of living and working in a place that was not their own. In the case of the call center employee the matter is complicated by the fact that there is no movement of the people and there is no immersion in the culture in which they work. The acculturation has to happen in a surrogate manner with the use of trainers. This makes the issue of training particularly critical for these employees. Simultaneously, the call center workers have to negotiate a dual identity where their everyday practices need to be balanced between the expectations of the culture of where they live and the culture where they work. Loss of this balance could result in harmful behavior which is evident in the increased incidence of substance abuse.

These issues need a more broad-based examination. As such, a questionnaire was developed to do Web-based data collection from a large cross-section of call center employees. That data obtained from the questionnaires would throw more light on the way in which there could be variations in perception and behavior based on demographic attributes of the call center employees. It is important to continue to collect that data to have a better sense of the quality of life of the employers and to develop specific interventions to ensure that the employers are better able to cope with their e-diasporic experience.

AUTHOR
Luisa Massari

ABSTRACT

Collaboration and socialization among users have introduced a new dimension into the Web. This dimension has led to the development of new technologies and advanced services typically used in the framework of the so called Web 2.0. Online social networks are based on the interactions between the users and the community. Users participate explicitly to the Web not only as consumers of the contents centrally uploaded by the providers, but also as producers, reviewers and editors of contents that allow them to share and enrich their experiences. Users can upload new contents, update existing contents and access content provided by other users, observing the “Terms of Use Agreement”. Moreover, the social relationships within Web sites lead to the development of complex links that go beyond simple links between Web pages.

A lot of social network sites has been launched with both professional (e.g., LinkedIn) and non-professional (e.g. MySpace, Orkut, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook) orientations. Unlike most professional sites, non-professional ones typically feature users’ interests. By means of social network sites, a user can display his/her preferences to an audience of friends, co-workers, and Web public. User is able to produce personal content (e.g., textual information, photos, audios, videos) and access content provided by other users. Web 2.0 can hence be defined as the combination of tools, technologies and social trends, which drive the creation and sharing of content on the Internet.

The paper presents a preliminary study of MySpace, one of the most popular social network sites, which has the highest number of subscriptions with respect to other social network sites. MySpace provides many features, such as blogs, user groups, social network structure, and highly customizable user profiles, traditionally provided to online communities.

Users subscribe to the community, upload content (photos, videos) and make it available to the others, set up contacts and participate in groups. When subscribing to MySpace, users provide their profiles, that is, information about themselves. A profile allows the users to express their tastes, demographic details and cultural interests, and to write about themselves in free text. Hence, a profile contains user’s preferences and interests, links to other profiles, comments and discussions coming from other users. Characterization of user profiles is indeed a crucial topic in understanding relationships, connections and interactions among users, and deriving from user profile characteristics hints about social interactions.

The objective of the study presented in the paper is to characterize the users of MySpace. The analysis relies on measurements collected by monitoring the MySpace web site; the monitoring of the profiles last for a period of three months and a million of user profiles has been captured.

In the first phase of the study, the profiles are parsed in order to extract the parameters which accurately characterize user profiles. These parameters provide details about users (e.g., age, location, job, cultural interests), about their popularity within the online community (e.g., number of friends, number of comments made by other users, number of times the profile has been viewed by other users), and about their activity (e.g., date of the last access to the site, number of downloaded videos, audios, and photos, subscriptions to groups). Indeed, it is important to note that, after their subscriptions, users might update their profiles and the related content.

Once parameters characterizing profiles have been defined, basic statistics are computed. Examples are mean and frequency distribution of age, of number of friends and group membership, frequency distribution of cultural interests, average number of audio and video in the profile.

Then, statistical techniques are applied in order to find relationships among the parameters. As an example, the existence of correlations among age, number of friends, date of last access, and number of objects in the profile is investigated. The age of a user could influence the number of his/her friends and the interactions with the community. Moreover, it is also important to discover if the date of the last access is related to the richness of the profile, that is, if a user which frequently accesses the site, also actively participates to the community by updating personal information and interacting with the social network features.

This study provides a general description of the users of MySpace. A deeper analysis is aimed at identifying similarities among users’ profiles. The objective of this analysis is the identification of classes of “occasional” users, that is, users which rarely participate to the community, versus “active” users, that is, users which intensely use social networking features to enrich their experience and expand their contacts. Other classes of users’ profiles, reflecting different social behaviors, are investigated.

This study provides the characterization of the profiles of MySpace, but the methodology can be extended and applied to any social networking site. This characterization helps in understanding the structure of the network of social relationships existing among users.

AUTHOR
Maslin Masrom and Zuraini Ismail

ABSTRACT

Many colleges and higher educational institutions have become heavily dependent on computers and information systems for educational purposes. That exposes them to some ethical issues such as unauthorized access and use of computer systems, software piracy and information privacy. This study examines the influence of demographic factors on computer science students’ ethical awareness for computer-use and security. This study also outlines a framework to investigate demographic factors and ethical awareness. Based on an empirical survey of 144 students it was found that certain demographic factors, namely age and education level influence students’ ethical awareness for computer use and security. Other factors such as gender and hours of computer use per week were found to have no influence. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.

INTRODUCTION

Information and communication technology (ICT) are drastically changing our daily life. It is introducing changes that create ethical issues for the information society to debate and resolve, yet we are critically short of ethical and intellectual resources with which to comprehend and confront these changes. The pace of change often disrupts the operable norms and values. Thus, ethical issues are increasingly starting to be known as important aspects of information systems.

In recent years, along with the evolving nature of ICT applications, many studies have questioned whether today’s ICT user is responsible and ethical ICT user. Most of these studies have focused on smaller and larger business entities, IS professionals, educators and students. Computer security and ethics awareness associated with managing information systems is one of the popular topics of the current arena (North et al. 2006). As stated by the experts in the field of computer security, universities are among the least secure places in the universe (Foster, 2004; North et al., 2006). Among the causes of this problem is lack of student awareness of ethical of computer use and security.

Higher educational institutions must prepare students to deal with conflicting situations that they will face in their professional life. They should be cultured to adopt moral responsible and having ethical decision making.

In this paper we further investigate the effect of demographic factors on the ethical awareness for computer use and computer security. Our intention is to examine the influence of demographic factors on the ethical awareness of computer science students. In addressing this issue this paper is organized into seven sections. Following the introduction, the second section sketches out the conceptual background. Section three presents the research framework and hypotheses development. Section four discusses about the research methodology. Section five describes the data analysis. Section six presents the hypothesis testing and findings, and section seven draws the conclusion of study.

CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND

Computer ethics is concerned with a set of rules or principles used for moral decision making regarding computer technology and computer use (Pierce & Henry, 1996). Nowadays ethical issues are growing faster in colleges and higher educational institutions and creating unethical problems. These unethical problems are confronting students, staff, and faculties in the educational institutions.

Tung and Siva (2003) examined the relationship between student characteristics and level of ethics. The characteristics studied included competitiveness, personality type, age, gender, and major. They found there is no relationship between gender and level of ethics.

Most recently, Halawi and Karkoulian (2006) examined the full-time undergraduate business information systems students and full-time master’s students’ attitudes toward ethical issues in information systems. They found there is a difference in perception to ethical situations between undergraduate and graduate students as well as between females and males in certain ethical situations. North et al. (2006) surveyed perceptions about awareness of ethical computer use and security held by Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) students. The results of the survey indicated that a 14% to 24% violation of the code of ethics is not desirable and a 20% to 52% lack of awareness of computer security is highly risky.

It may be more important to address the issue of computer use and security as an attitude rather than a technology. The technology may vary between companies and vendors, but the attitudinal parameters can remain constant. If individuals, through awareness and knowledge, develop an ethical, moral attitude toward computer use and security, the transitions into the future will be much smoother. Computer use and security depends on shared responsibility for the ethics and integrity of the university campus community (Oblinger, 2003).

RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

Figure 1 below illustrates the research framework for the study.

The research hypotheses to be tested are as follows:

1. H1: Female computer science students are more concerned about ethical awareness for computer use and security than male computer science students.
2. H2: Older computer science students are more concerned about ethical awareness for computer use and security than younger computer science students
3. H3: Computer science undergraduate students are more concerned about ethical awareness for computer use and security than graduate students.
4. H4: Computer science students whose hours of computer use are high are more concerned about ethical awareness for computer use and security than computer science students whose hours of computer use are low.

METHODOLOGY

This study utilized North et al. (2006) survey instrument to operationalize the ethical awareness of computer use and security variables. Each item on the instrument described the ethical awareness for computer use and security variables that the subject could identify him or herself in agreement or disagreement. An interval scale of 1 to 6 was used with 1 representing strong disagreement and 6 representing strong agreement. The survey was confined to a higher education population.
Details will be discussed in the full paper.

DATA ANALYSIS

Data analysis will be presented in the full paper.

HYPOTHESIS TESTING AND FINDINGS

The results of the hypotheses are summarized in Table 4 below.

CONCLUSION

The results of this study indicates that age and education level have a definite influence on the ethical awareness (EA) for computer-use and security. Older computer science students were found to be less concerned about ethical awareness for computer use and security. The findings contradict the assertions found in the reviewed literature which stated that the older people are more sensitive to ethical awareness (Roberts, Anderson & Yanish, 1997; Tung & Siva, 2003).The more educated students were found to be more concerned about ethical awareness.

Details will be made available in the full paper.

AUTHOR
Antonio Marturano

ABSTRACT

In this paper I analyse the ethical implications of the two main competing methodologies in genomic research

I do not aim to provide another contribution from the mainstream legal and public policy perspective; rather I offer a novel approach in which I analyse and describe the patent-and-publish regime (the proprietary regime) led by biologist J. Craig Venter and the “open-source” methodologies led by biotechnology Nobel laureate John Sulston.

The “open-source methodologies” arose in biotechnology as an alternative to the patent-and-publish regime in the wake of the explosion in computer technology. Indeed, the tremendous increase in computer technology has generated a corresponding increase in the pace of genomics research.

I conclude this paper by arguing that while the patent-and-publish method is a transactional method based on the exchange of extrinsic goods (patents in exchange for research funds), the free and open-source methodology (FLOSS) is a transformational method based on a visionary ideal of science, which leads to prioritizing intrinsic goods in scientific research over extrinsic goods.

AUTHOR
Salim Hilal Al-Mamari and Miguel Baptista Nunes

ABSTRACT

The advantages of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based Information Systems in organisations are well known, described and criticised in the literature. ICT enabled Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) systems have been rapidly adopted in developed countries since the beginning 1990s as one of the crucial business solutions for survival. The paradigm behind this type of approach is competition focused on the customer demand and needs. This paradigm shift from product-focused view to customer-focused view advocates that organisations need to consider first and foremost the needs of their customers. However, the adoption of such systems entails barriers and risk events that may hinder successful use of CRM. This paper focuses on understanding the barriers that ICT enabled CRM systems may pose from the perspective of the customers, that are supposed to be the main beneficiaries.

CRM systems are considered as part of the ‘front office’ systems since they aim at establishing and managing the relations between an institution and the customers. Moreover, as they represent a major source of revenue and an assurance of profitability for the organisation, it is expected that the customers are satisfied and retained for sustainable growth. In this respect customer satisfaction is crucial in adopting and using CRM. A loyal and satisfied customer can be the result of meeting the expectations of that customer through proper segmentation and matched services and products. This is achieved by capitalising, implementing and using CRM. A range of previous studies have been critically examined to provide background for the study and have resulted in the perception that CRM systems fail when the relationship with customers is not addressed adequately.

Despite the adopted philosophy of customer-focused view, many organisations have failed to glean the promised benefits of CRM and resolve inherited business problems. According to a number of studies reported in this paper, the rate of CRM failure ranges between 50-75% of adopting organisations. If this is true for in more developed countries, then the adoption of CRM in developing countries can be even more difficult and fraught with barriers, both of cultural and technological nature. In order for organisations to better deal with the factors inhibiting a lasting relationship between them and their customers this relationship can be created, maintained and enhanced across three main functionalities of CRM, namely operational, analytical and cooperative. However, studies are needed to examine customer satisfaction in this relationship. This paper aims at looking at this satisfaction, by identifying potential barriers posed by the use of ICT itself in a developing country such as Oman.

It is hoped that the awareness of these barriers related to customer-centric in the financial sector, particularly in commercial banks, may lead to improvement of services and enhance the links with customers, and hence, to successful adoption of CRM. Moreover, it is hoped that this can be done taking into account the specific context of Oman as a developing country.

Therefore, this paper discusses the barriers that may have impact on potential use of CRM in banking sector in Oman. The choice of study of CRM in Omani banks emerges from a preceding analysis of political, economic, social and technological factors or PEST analysis. The barriers identified of social and technological nature are the ones that have major impact on customer use of ICT-based systems. For the purposes of gaining insight into customers’ perceptions on CRM use, the study used structured questionnaire to survey 600 customers’ opinions of five banks in Oman. The study focuses on the region of Muscat as the most developed and striving area in Oman. In order to obtain higher rate of responses, the questionnaires were distributed among customers within branches of the five major banks. The questionnaire is divided into six sections which include: personal information, banking services, customers’ satisfaction, communication with customers, customers’ commitment, and customers’ information. Six hundred questionnaires were considered valid to be processed for analysis. The data collected was analysed using the SPSS statistical package that enabled the description of different and relevant variables. The barriers towards the use of CRM by banks’ customers are examined through the correlations between significant variables in these six sections of the questionnaires. Meaningful results of this quantitative data are then translated into a narrative that forms the theoretical proposition of this paper.

Therefore, this paper discusses the barriers that may have impact on potential use of CRM in banking sector in Oman. The choice of study of CRM in Omani banks emerges from a preceding analysis of political, economic, social and technological factors or PEST analysis. The barriers identified of social and technological nature are the ones that have major impact on customer use of ICT-based systems. For the purposes of gaining insight into customers’ perceptions on CRM use, the study used structured questionnaire to survey 600 customers’ opinions of five banks in Oman. The study focuses on the region of Muscat as the most developed and striving area in Oman. In order to obtain higher rate of responses, the questionnaires were distributed among customers within branches of the five major banks. The questionnaire is divided into six sections which include: personal information, banking services, customers’ satisfaction, communication with customers, customers’ commitment, and customers’ information. Six hundred questionnaires were considered valid to be processed for analysis. The data collected was analysed using the SPSS statistical package that enabled the description of different and relevant variables. The barriers towards the use of CRM by banks’ customers are examined through the correlations between significant variables in these six sections of the questionnaires. Meaningful results of this quantitative data are then translated into a narrative that forms the theoretical proposition of this paper