AUTHOR
Wassim MNIF

ABSTRACT

This study explores the ethical aspects of public e-marketplaces (EMPs) around trust. The ethical aspects of EMPs described in this paper are as follows: EMPs provide (a) a mechanism to evaluate trustworthiness of the participants, sellers and buyers, in a neutral way, (b) a technical platform for online trade with respect for different social norms and values, and (c) the ability and opportunity to compete with large companies and multinationals for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study is the first to deal with interrelationship between trust and cross-cultural issues in B-to-B EMPs. Previous studies have concentrated on examining trust in B-to-B EMP, ignoring the socio-cultural aspect.

The development of information and communications technology (ICT) has brought about a tremendous change in our lives, shifting our society from industrial to information-based one. In fact, one of the prominent results of this shift is the emergence of various types of e-commerce, including business-to-consumer (B-to-C), business -to-business (B-to-B), and consumer-to-consumer (C-to-C) e-commerce, with more weight for B-to-B e-commerce, which is by far the largest sector in terms of a turnover.

A survey of the literature in this field indicates that there remain some barriers, which hamper the development of online business and that ensuring trust in online trade is a critical factor for successful B-to-B e-commerce in general, especially for successful EMPs. In fact, the success of EMPs requires more than technical matters such as interoperability. EMPs should become a platform for online business trade as well as for evaluating trustworthiness of the participants. Accordingly, establishing trust or confidence between the participating buyers and sellers is a prerequisite for doing business in the digital environment.

The growing literature on online trade suggests a variety of useful remedies for developing trust including institution- and technology-based control mechanisms. However, issues and phenomena concerning trust in online commerce in EMPs are so complex to understand because of their global nature that in-depth, careful examination of online trust from a socio-cultural perspective is required in order to develop and implement effective, reliable measures to ensure trust in online trade in EMPs.

EMPs are central market space open for many buyers and sellers. Transactions made in EMPs are called ‘spot-sourcing’ in case that matches of buyers and sellers, whether they know each other or not, for transactions are made. On the other hand, when a transaction involves creating a network of suppliers, i.e., partnership based on a long-term contract in which partners know each other, such a transaction is called ‘systematic sourcing‘. For both types of sourcing, trust is needed in order to realize transactions and sustain the business relationship. Furthermore, establishing trust in EMPs would create and increase their liquidity; in other words, the number of buyers and sellers participating in those EMPs is expected to increase. This function of trust is notable in terms of business, because liquidity creation is one of the most important factors of successful EMPs.

The neutral governance provided by EMPs could bring about fair conditions of trade to the participants. Here, fair conditions mean that a participant trades in EMP under the conditions whose desirability in terms of business activities positively correlates with the trust of the participant. According to Mayer et al. (1995) and Sako and Helper (1998), trust in EMPs consists of the three dimensions of competence, integrity and benevolence. This paper deals with the last two dimensions with a special focus on benevolence dimension.

In addition, considering the global nature of EMPs and relationships among participants in EMPs, this study explores the trust-building mechanisms in B-to-B EMPs through a cross-cultural analysis and tries to provide a global concept of trust in the digital economy.

The well-known view that globalisation is a double-edged sword with positive effects on rich or developed countries and negative impacts on developing ones and the fact that usually businesses ignore the differences in cultures, religions and languages pertaining to the involved countries suggests the need for examination of the role of EMPs at the global level. In fact, EMPs tend to target SMEs, to which EMPs provide the ability to compete equally with their large and global counterparts. Hence, this paper tries to examine the function of EMPs that offers global governance for participating buyers and sellers. EMPs can help buyers and sellers achieve their common purpose, fair trade, by providing them with transparent information about the trade attributes and conditions and with secure communication and dispute resolution system.

ABSTRACT

Mayer, R., Davis, C., James, H. (1995), “An Integrative Model of Organization Trust”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20, No. 3.

Sako, M., and S. Helper (1998), “Determinants of Trust in Supplier Relations: Evidence from Automotive in Japan and the United States”, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 34, pp. 387-417.

AUTHOR
Ananda Mitra

ABSTRACT

The paper uses data from blogs maintained by people of Indian origin to demonstrate that the process of entering a blogsphere can help to re-create in cybernetic space, the original real space left behind producing the phenomenon of “glocalization” where the global and the local can dwell together. It is increasingly the case that many people who would call themselves “Indian” or “of Indian origin” dwells in an emerging synthetic cybernetic space that is produced at the intersection of real geographic space and virtual cyberspace. Thus, Indians in New York spend time visiting virtual temples and Indians in Delhi spend time in call centers virtually living in the USA. In this paper, the focus will be on considering the way in which Indians in the global real space are spending increasingly more time in localized cybernetic space. This is done by using theories related to the new technologies and relating them to the understanding of diaspora – the condition of place-less-ness – that is increasingly a common phenomenon. The specific technology being considered is the use of Web logs, or blogs, which is one of the fastest growing phenomenon on the Internet at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

This is possible by beginning with the premise that the Internet can be considered as a discursive “space” which is composed of numerous discourses that are strung together with the use of a rhizomatic network of computers that are constantly being scaled up. As a result, there are millions of web pages that contain almost infinite number of texts and they remain hyperlinked together creating a discursive infrastructure whose physical location is nearly impossible to pinpoint and map, but whose presence is felt the moment one accesses the discourse using a networked computer. Blogs are increasingly a significant component of this discursive space. As I have discussed in the paper presented in Ethicomp 2004, a reader entering this discursive space may find it a comforting place because it produces a safe place (Mitra, 2004). Here the reader can enter into a dialog through the use of blogs. Like other components of the Internet, the blog offers the opportunity for people to use their own voice, through the texts and discourse they create, to produce the identity of the blogger who is located in the “glocal” space. Eventually, the readers of blogs move into the space created by the blogger when they read a blog. To many readers finding this space is particularly critical because the spaces created by the blogs could be ones that the reader was once familiar with but has perhaps become distant from, for instance, through a process of migration. Thus, I would argue that blogs can play a crucial role in the diasporic experience where people find themselves moving away from familiar places and having to live in new places. In such cases, blogs can help to recreate the space that has been relinquished.

Evidence for this can be found in blogs maintained by people of Indian origin. There are several reasons for selecting to work with people of Indian origin. First, in most cases, people from India who are blogging are most likely to use the lingua franca of the Internet – English. Next, like many other developing countries, India is witnessing an increasing warming of relationship with the West. This has resulted in larger number of people from India traveling globally. Some travel away as immigrants albeit with close ties with India while others could be sojourners who are only away for long enough to develop an yearning for home and the desire to remain connected to India during their time away from home. The movement of people is creating the emergent Indian diaspora for whom the need to remain connected is particularly critical.

Often technologies such as the blog can help to alleviate some of those challenges by offering a space where people can find the voices of others who either represent similar anxieties or offer tales of a familiar real place that can often be comforting. The new technology of the blog has made this peculiarly possible because, unlike Web pages that are often institutionally maintained, blogs represent personal voices of people who are speaking for themselves as opposed to being spoken for by others. Thus the voices that create the spaces are accentuated with personal and ideological overtones that can provide a very special image of a place which the readers might never find in Web pages or other forums. Furthermore, the blogs not only represent the voices of the speakers who are creating the discourse of the blog, but these voices often are connected with many other voices that appear together. Indeed it is this network of voices made up of many bloggers, as well as those who respond to blogs that creates the sense of place that the readers can enter. These voices are also unlike e-mails and instant messages since blogs send the personal message to a large and anonymous audience unlike the personal message systems that have a limited and known audience.

This paper examines a series of blogs and shows how the discursive process is used by people of Indian origin to voice themselves and thus create a sense of place. The blogs are drawn from many different sources and are written by people who are physically in India as well as by people who are outside the country. A narrative analysis is used to show the different ways in which the blogs create senses of space, identity and nationality.

REFERENCES

Mitra, A. (2004). Towards finding a cybernetic safe place: Illustrations from People of Indian Origin. Proceedings of the Ethicomp 04.

AUTHOR
Steve McRobb

ABSTRACT

At ETHICOMP 2005, Orito and Murata presented a paper that argued cogently for a different interpretation of the social meaning of privacy in a Japanese cultural context. They stated that many Japanese use the imported word for privacy “without clearly understanding its meaning” (Orito and Murata, 2005). In traditional Japanese culture, it would be regarded as anti-social for an individual to assert that they had a right to personal privacy. Furthermore, explicit statements (such as those that Westerners might expect from an organisation’s privacy policy) are routinely avoided, the preference being for implied forms of communication that allow both parties to form an understanding of each other without the embarrassment of direct attribution or acknowledgement.

A considerable body of literature exists on investigations into privacy online. This analyses the issues of concern from several perspectives. The topic is important for individuals (as consumers, employees, students, citizens, and so on) and for organisations that aim to provide services through, or to obtain profit from, online interaction with individuals in one or more of these roles. As individuals, we must assess the risks of exposing our personal data before engaging in online behaviour that involves this. Businesses and other organisations must strike a balance between maximising the amount of useful information that is collected and antagonising those who are described by that information (or other organisations who in some way represent those individuals). Positive benefits may be extracted from information about the individuals who do business with an organisation. On the other hand, there may be great disadvantage in acquiring a reputation for being too intrusive, or being too irresponsible with the information collected.

But all the preceding statements are made from within the relatively homogenous perspective of the Western liberal democracies (taken here to include Australia and New Zealand, but not such countries as Japan or Malaysia where the cultural heritage is very different). True, there is diversity within this region, and certainly many differences of opinion about the importance of privacy, what the issues are and how they should be addressed. Nevertheless most organisations and citizens in this domain share, due to certain linguistic and cultural commonalities, assumptions that may not exist in non-Western cultures (as Orito and Murata assert). Or, if they exist at all, they may take very different forms.

Relatively little attention has yet been paid to the differing meanings, values and behaviours associated with privacy in societies whose cultural compass points elsewhere than the West. Jarvenpaa and Tractinsky (1999) conducted a comparative study of consumer trust related to Internet shopping in Australia, Finland and Israel. But these are essentially all liberal Western democracies with their roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Most who have studied the cross-cultural questions in a more truly global sense have concentrated on theoretical and conceptual analyses. Zakaria, Stanton and Sarkar-Barney (2003) present a theoretical framework for integrating cultural values and privacy issues. Their paper aims to apply the framework to the design and implementation of IT applications that will be culturally sensitive, but empirical testing still lay in its future.

Privacy is not only important for ICT-enabled activities, and some authors range far beyond this terrain. Reinforcing Orito and Murata, Makoto and Tamura (2005) compare the general Japanese concept of privacy with its Western equivalent, while Krisana (2005) does a similar job from a Thai point of view. Ritsuko (2002) examines popular styles of housing in Japan and England and concludes that they embody different, culturally specific attitudes towards privacy.

Some who have conducted empirical investigations focused only on a single culture. Shalhoub (2006) analyses the privacy policies of a number of organisations in an Arab context, but these are all drawn from states within the Gulf area. Other empirical studies make explicit cross-cultural comparisons but are unable to separate cultural factors from other environmental factors. For example, Choi and Lee (2003) and Park and Jun (2003) both report on quantitative, empirical studies that compared online shopping behaviour and attitudes in Korea and in the US. Neither study was able to demonstrate any clear causal link between culture and the observed differences in attitude and behaviour.

Of course, it is unsurprising that cross-cultural aspects of privacy online have received relatively little attention. The affluent professional middle classes of the developed world have been the principal drivers for the spread of the Internet and e-Commerce, and also the first adopters of new services and channels of communication. It has been chiefly among this group that new online behaviours and attitudes have first emerged. But this picture is changing rapidly as many citizens of the majority world rush to connect to the Internet. In any case, there is little excuse for the prevailing, self-obsessed Western focus to continue to dominate.

This paper represents one small step towards filling a gap in what we know about how the concept of privacy is understood, and can be misunderstood, across cultural boundaries. It will aim to do this by reporting on the progress of a planned empirical investigation into British attitudes towards privacy online compared with a country from a contrasting cultural tradition (it is hoped this will be Japan). To an extent, this will build on the continuing survey of privacy policies reported previously at ETHICOMP (in 2004 and 2005). But the aim here is to significantly extend the scope of this work and to examine whether, and how, privacy policies are differently perceived in two cultures that have different understandings of the very nature of privacy, and of its social value. The project is expected to require collaboration between investigators in the UK and Japan (or whichever country is ultimately selected for the comparison), and the collaborative arrangements have not been established at the time of writing. It is very likely the research will continue beyond the date of the conference, but available findings will be reported as fully as time permits. The paper will also discuss the practical and methodological issues encountered in setting up and conducting such a project.

AUTHOR
Karen Mather

ABSTRACT

When they claim professional status, ICT professionals implicitly acknowledge responsibility towards a range of different communities. For example, ICT professionals should ensure that their work does not harm their society at large, their user communities, their various clienteles, the ICT profession as a whole, and so on. It now appears that the emerging academic discipline of the Philosophy of Information and, in particular, the Floridian theory of Information Ethics, leads to the addition of yet another community to the list of ICT professionals’ stakeholders, and yet another dimension in which ICT professionals must move with care. This additional dimension embraces the whole information environment, the “infosphere”, together with its community of inhabitants, namely all entities that are constituted by information.

To be able to evaluate the Floridian view of Information Ethics, with its central proposition that minimal moral respect should be directed from human beings and other moral agents towards informational entities and the “infosphere”, it may be helpful to understand what that might mean, in a practical sense. The purpose of this essay is to explore the practical application of Information Ethics from the point of view of the ICT professional, after relaying the claims upon which Information Ethics is grounded.

Underlying this novel ethics of information is a new ontological perspective that is just as evolutionary for ethics as was the radical 1970s Naessian ontological view of humanity as inseparable from the natural environment. Callicott, a contemporary environmental philosopher, explains that Naess saw the natural environment as an extension of the human self, and thus inextricably valuable with the self. Similarly, Floridi sees humans as inseparably enmeshed in the information environment by virtue of an informational nature that is shared with every other entity in the universe.

However, this shared informational nature does not automatically establish a link from information to ethics. The step from ontology to normativity is a precarious one, as Hume’s is/ought dichotomy teaches. Nevertheless, others have claimed that it is logically valid to reason from what we believe to exist (what “is”) to what we hold to be valuable and thence on to what we ought to do. So, for Information Ethics plausibly to prescribe moral responsibility towards information, it must justify the claim that not only do all entities share an informational nature but also that this makes information valuable and therefore worthy of some basic normative attention. The intrinsic value of information could, perhaps, be derived from the same concept of axiological complementarity that Callicott employs to establish the intrinsic value of the natural environment. However, in the theory of Information Ethics, it is grounded on the claim that an entity’s information is its essence – information constitutes being, and being, as claimed by Spinoza, implies dignity. The dignity of existence is seen in Information Ethics as the basis for a moral claim for consideration, albeit minimal and overridable.

Other contemporary philosophers are contemplating the nature of information, at present. Notably for Computer Ethics, Bynum, in his recently unveiled theory of Flourishing Ethics, takes the line of thought that stretches from Weiner to Floridi in another new direction, proposing a dualistic, Aristotelian view, which sees information as eidos, the form that shapes ousia, the substance of matter or energy. The views of Bynum and Floridi are discussed in this essay, as part of the journey towards an understanding of the information environment and an ICT professional’s duties therein.

Since the work of Naess, environmental philosophers have examined many of the ethical questions which accompany the claim that an ecological entity is worthy of moral respect in its own right. Their principles, such as those developed to resolve conflict between responsibilities to various ecological wholes within the larger whole of the total natural environment, can also be applied in the information environment, for example, to justify allocating priority amongst conflicting demands for moral consideration in the work of the ICT professional.

The application of other ecological principles is of interest as being relevant to the infosphere. An ecological approach to the information environment necessitates an understanding of the components of the environment and their interrelationships, as well as what may be said to be “good” for that environment. In the natural environment, for instance, stability is not the “good” that it might appear to be at first glance – to manage a natural environment well, the ecologist must facilitate and encourage continual change. Floridi suggests that in the information environment the opposite of good, evil, can be defined as entropy, and this needs further analysis, at least so that ICT professionals can recognize entropy, if they wish to comply with the Information Ethics’ prescription that they should avoid, prevent or remove entropy in the infosphere.

The essay concludes with a recommendation on how ICT professional codes of ethics might be amended to take account of a normative approach to information and the information environment.

AUTHOR
Michiko MATSUSHITA

ABSTRACT

Many under-developing countries have same problems; they need long time and huge cost for building up infrastructure, for example supply of water, electric power, transportation, or telephone. The ordinary route of economic development starts from preparation of infrastructure and production of light industries, and move to machine industry. Nowadays, the speed of progress of technology becomes faster and faster, then for the under-developing countries, catching up to the advanced nations becomes more and more difficult. It seems that the giving chase between under-developing countries and advanced never finish. Another hand, the new technology of computers, the Internet, or information communication technology (ICT) give the big chance to under-developing countries. ICT makes possible skip some steps of developing stairs without huge cost. People of under-developing countries can produce software products using small investment of personal computers and the Internet.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries of the world. The GDP of this country is about 240 US$. I had twice on-the-spot investigations in Kathmandu in 2003 and 2004. I inquired into 7 private software companies, the Computer Association of Nepal (CAN), Nepal Telecommunications Corporation (NTC), 1 private company of Internet service provider, Nepal Travel Bureau, 1 private travel company, Nepal National Library, 1 press, 1 medical center, 2 private universities, and 2 offices of the international organizations.

>From the first research, we can find the ICT situation in Kathmandu. In the urban area of capital city Kathmandu, we can use the Internet, e-mail, and mobile phones. Almost all the young people living in Kathmandu have e-mail address, and use personal computer and the Internet at the internet cafes in the town. In Kathmandu, the number of software companies continues to grow because of the influence from India that got the grate successes in IT industries. Recently some Japanese, American, or EU companies try to invest in Nepali software firms, seeking lower labor cost and the plentiful young work force. The IT related faculties of national and private universities have enriched their education programs, and the graduates. The IT environment of Kathmandu has been improved, but some problems remain in the joint project between Nepali companies and foreign ones. Indeed, the almost projects with European or American organizations ended in failure, but the projects with Japanese organizations continue and achieves the success.

Through the second investigation in 2004, we found some essence of the problems of Nepali companies working with foreign staffs or organizations in the international projects. There are 5 big problems in Nepali companies. The first problem is the inexperienced group work. Nepali people have a tendency to work individually in office. They look like artisans or craftsmen. In general, plural staffs of the same project have the contacts individually with the same customer and Nepali staffs don’t want to share the information about their project. Therefore, if some staff will change, the project will return to the start position. The second problem is neither document nor printing schedule. The details exist only in the brain of the each staff, and then no one knows the general situation of progress of the project. The third problem is no experience of management of over 40 persons. The usual private companies in Nepal have 2 or 5 core staffs. Almost all companies are small size and there is no middle manager. The fourth problem is the Nepali original culture, out of accord with international standard. They stick to personal way to work. Even the products of factory, the shape of each is different from others in delicate way. The fifth problem is the strong tendency of job-hopping in the cause of wages and low motivation for the work in the knowledge industries.

Leaving a matter entirely in a Nepali staff’s hand is the main cause of failure of joint project between Nepali and foreign companies. In this case, the foreign staffs cannot control the whole project. After Nepali core staff leave the project or company, no one can continue the project. The other hand, the reason of success of Japanese organizations is out-and-out introduction of Japanese working style. For example, an office adopts Japanese working communication system “Hou-ren-sou”: to report, to inform and to consult always to the neighbors. In this office, if someone breaks this rule, the person must pay a penalty. Another company uses the reserve fund for retirement allowance: when the staff retires, the retirement money is paid. The amount of the retirement money is bigger than the total that the staff has saved every month.

Although some projects using Japanese style achieve success, these cases do not have prospects for the future. Because this way is just superficial imitation, and the Nepali organization itself do not grow up. There was a Japanese-Nepali joint software company where the Japanese director tried to educate the organization itself. We introduce this company and consider the probability of Nepali-foreign joint project in software industry.

AUTHOR
Noemi Manders-Huits, Paul Sollie

ABSTRACT

The development of information and communication technologies enables the expanding of our social and political lives/activities to a global level, e.g. one of tremendous networks such as Hyves and Second Life. These are Internet services to respectively maintain and create online friendships and to live a second, virtual life in a three dimensional online digital world, imagined, created and owned by its residents. The development of these online networks exceeds prior (natural) boundaries and enables global interaction on a large scale. The shifting of spatiotemporal relations also takes place at a more local or national level, for example in the case of e-democracy, where social and political activities are facilitated on the Internet and other information technology services.

In this paper we investigate whether there are tools or methodologies for evaluating or judging the development of these technologies from an ethical perspective. One of the most promising and upcoming methodologies for this is Value Sensitive Design (hereafter VSD). This approach envisages building human values into design throughout the design process. In the nineties VSD emerged, employing an integrative and iterative tripartite methodology, consisting of conceptual, empirical, and technical enquiries. Its central thesis holds that human values and ethical considerations do not stand apart from technology, but are fundamentally part of our technological practices. Technology, and not the least information and communication technologies, has had a rising impact on society. Technology may either support or undermine human values. For instance, information available on the Internet increases access to and use of information for many people, but it also might bring about infringements of privacy or the dissemination of incorrect and false information.

Implicitly, VSD seems to support the idea that what is the morally right thing to do from a normative perspective can be derived from public values. Consequently, VSD runs the risk of committing the naturalistic fallacy by reducing an ‘ought’ to an ‘is’. We will argue that what is lacking in VSD is a normative point of view for evaluating values and outcomes of social scientific research. A fundamental reflection is lacking within VSD upon the normative, ethical status of its approach. As a result, human values and ethical considerations can only be recognized and described in technological practices but cannot be criticized, let alone be shaped using VSD.

We will describe two examples of societal and political developments enabled through emerging and new information technologies, namely (1) Hyves/Second Life, and (2) e-democracy. With respect to the first we question what the consequences of these technologies are for the development of moral identities of contemporary individuals, e.g. whether a person’s online identity or behaviour can be coherently related to one’s offline or local identity and accountability. Moreover, we will attend to the question whether or not these new technologies can or should be regulated and on basis of what arguments. Next, we will address e-democracy, which entails the use of electronic communications and information technologies such as Internet and WiFi for enhancing democratic processes. We describe a number of possible applications of e-democracy, where we identify the normative implications of designing these applications in a certain way. We will argue that the design of e-democracy tools in particular and technology development in general is not neutral, but involves many decisions that have moral import. What becomes clear is that there are ethical considerations needed for judging and justifying decision-making in the design process.

Finally, we argue that although Value Sensitive Design is a useful approach for thinking about ethics and technology, it needs complementary ethical theory for evaluating technologies and justifying ethical requirements and constraints of their design and application, in order to be a useful methodology for ethics of technology. Normative considerations are required for judging technological development from an ethical perspective in order to prevent committing the naturalistic fallacy or running the risk of remaining merely descriptive. Following from our examples, it is clear that there is a lot to say in a normative sense about technological developments and their consequences for human lives. Therefore we need to focus on the next step in the development of VSD as a useful methodology for ethics of technology, namely the development of an ethical framework for this field.