AUTHOR
Goncalo Jorge Morais da Costa, Nuno Miguel Araujo da Silva

ABSTRACT

The goal of the paper to present is to investigate on the problem due to the creation and transmission of knowledge in organizations, given that, in spite of a great deal of discussion regarding knowledge management and the ethical dilemmas involving the same, the truth is that, if you try to analyze how extent the organizational knowledge is ethical, very interesting subjects can be presented, by chance in a philosophical sense. In fact, the pertinence of philosophy regarding management is advocated by countless authors.

The analysis in cause will be elaborated with the purpose to answer the presented subject in an exact way, although it subjects to strong bibliography conditions, because the existent academic production in knowledge management worries fundamentally with the technological analysis and their implications in management, forgetting in a clear way the subjects of ethical nature, as we may observe in the several existing creation and transmission knowledge models.

In a turbulent involving environment as we lived, in that the technological changes are happened to a hallucinating rhythm turning out products and processes obsolete, the competition among companies stands not only in the capacity to innovate, but also of maintaining ahead of the competitors, thanks to the use of resources, which can be tangible and intangible.

The resources of tangible nature are without a doubt important for the accomplishment of the daily activities of the organization, but are in fact the intangible resources and the human resources that deserve more attention today, being considered essential sources regarding the creation of value among organizations. It is in this category that we encounter knowledge. However, the resources of intangible nature present own specificities, as for instance: their identification and accountancy are hardly ever figured as easy, in addition, they present ethical and moral dilemmas, in dissociable that the tangible resources don’t present, generating for that a continuous and necessary discussion.

If we analyze the several definitions of knowledge management, as for instance, the one of Brelade & Harman: “knowledge management is the acquisition and use of resources to create an environment in which information is accessible to individuals and in which individuals acquire, share and use that information to develop their own knowledge and are encouraged and enabled to apply their knowledge for the benefit of the organisation”, we noticed the ethical and moral implications associated to the intangible resources immediately, that is, management and the collaborators present responsibilities in the elevation of knowledge in organizational terms, for that, it will be natural that those responsibilities incur equally in the ethical and moral domain.

For then to be possible to give a plausible answer to the problem in cause, for besides explaining what is knowledge management, the fundamental issue it will be to investigate the creation and transmission process in the organizational context and the ethical and moral dilemmas that emerge to managers and the workers.

As we know, there are arguably two types of approaches to the field of organizational learning and knowledge management: “knowledge while a process” that is focused in issues like the creation, use and recreation, as well as, in the dynamics associated to the process; and, “knowledge as product” that is focused in the form as it is shared, used and stored.

Both perspectives configure highly known analytical models, as it is, the case of Nonaka & Takeuchi´s model, the social interaction models or relational models advocated by Glaser, Weiss, Fiske, among other authors, however, as it is common sense, the degree of precision of any model that describe the real behaviour of the “systems” is directly proportional to our knowledge of the forces that are behind those systems. In practice, we tended to consider the factors whose effects are significant, despising the less relevant forces, especially when these they are intimately related with subjects of moral and ethical nature, as it is case.

However, we should not purge or to reject such models, on the contrary, we owed yes, to value them to the light of the great ethical and moral subjects that incur regarding the process of generation, creation and use of knowledge in organizational terms. Why? Firstly, with the purpose to “generate new knowledge” (in sense of new questions), and in second to try to give answer to the possibility of measuring to what extent the knowledge of an organization is in fact ethical.

Finally, we should enhance that, while “product” due to the human nature the knowledge management will constantly present new ethical and moral challenges, given the imperfection of the human species.

REFERENCES

[1] Bennet, D. & Bennet, A. (2004), The rise of the knowledge organization, IN HANDBOOK ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 1, New York: Springer.

[2] Bibard, L. (1999), La philosophie est-elle pertinente pour le management?, Revista Comportamento Organizacional & Gestão, 5, 1, 195-208.

[3] Boisot, M. (2002), The creation and sharing of knowledge, IN THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. New York: Oxford University Press.

[4] Brelade, S. & Harman, C. (2003), A practical guide to knowledge management, [S.l.]: Thorogood.

[5] Costa, G. & Silva, N. (2005), Failure in knowledge management: whose is the ethical responsibility?, Ethicomp 2005, Available in the Internet: http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2002/conferencepapers

[6] Feij, J. (1998), Work socialization of young people, IN HANDBOOK OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. New York: Hove: Psychology Press.

[7] Nicolau, I. (2005), A gestão do conhecimento como instrumento para a gestão competitiva, Revista Economia Global & Gestão, 2, 10, 21-44.

[8] Nikolaos, L. et al. (2005), Enabling the exploitation of tacit knowledge: open issues and opportunities, Ethicomp 2005, Available in the Internet: http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ethicomp/ethicomp2002/conferencepapers

[9] Nonaka, I. (2002), A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation, IN THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. New York: Oxford University Press.

[10] Nonaka, I., Toyama, R. & Byosiére, P. (2003), A theory of organizational knowledge creation: understanding the dynamic process of creating knowledge, IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE. New York: Oxford University Press.

[11] Rhen, A. (2002), Good times, bad times- the moral discourse of time and management, Revista Comportamento Organizacional & Gestão, 8, 1, 49-59.

[12] Sackett, P. & DeVore, C. (2001-2002), Counterproductive behaviours at work, IN HANDBOOK OF INDUSTRIAL, WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY, London: Sage

AUTHOR
Teresa Torres-Coronas,Ricard Monclús-Guitart, Arantxa Vidal-Blasco, Mario Arias-Oliva

ABSTRACT

Over the past several years there have been intensive discussions about the importance of intellectual capital –IC- within the business world. The management of IC is promoted as an important and necessary factor for organisational survival and maintenance of competitive strength. One of the main quests in the knowledge economy, especially among the accounting profession, is nothing less than to make the intangible tangible; to ideally have it all on tap and accounted for in strict financial terms. There is evidence that indicators of intellectual capital are leading indicators of future financial wealth.

There is also a growing criticism that the traditional balance sheet does not take account of those intangible factors that largely determine a company’s value and its growth prospects. The ‘unreported’ assets are on average 5-10 times those of the tangible assets. Furthermore several studies show that future growth is determined not by historical financial accounts but by factors such as management skills, innovation capability, brands and the collective know-how of the workforce. Consequently more organizations are starting to address the measurement and management of IC.

There are several different approaches to measuring IC. One category includes those that take an organization’s reported figures and adjust them to remove ‘anomalies’ of traditional accounting such as the EVA model. Other approach considers the various categories of IC, from which are developed various measures. Here, a starting point is to divide IC into several categories. A typical classification is as follows:

1. Human Capital – that in the minds of individuals: knowledge, competences, experience, know-how etc.
2. Structural Capital – “that which is left after employees go home for the night”: processes, information systems, databases etc.
3. Relationship (or Customer) Capital – customer relationships, brands, trademarks etc.

An expanded set of IC metrics opens up a major opportunity to apply new analytic tools for assessing organizational performance in the knowledge society:

• Organizations will be able to better estimate their performance in regard to knowledge assets.
• New kinds of IC indicators could improve the resource allocation decisions capital resources.
• Financial reports a balanced of physical as well as intangible assets.
• Intellectual capital metrics uncertainly could help business leaders and financial markets to better value “intangible assets” and predict outcomes with greater clarity.

In summary, each metric has to have a purpose. Treating IC metrics as simply a numbers game is worthless. Every user of IC measures needs to find useful information. And this is the main focus of our proposed paper.

We have conducted a Delphi study in Spain to determine the factors that affect the usefulness and convenience of IC new metrics from the information’s user point of view. A broad group of factors were examined in depth, by expert consensus, to be important at the conclusion of this study. This paper concludes that at present there are still significant measurement problems to be addressed with respect to IC metrics and reports.

The main contribution of this paper is to show that IC metrics are not broadly accepted from the information’s user point of view. Disclosure rules still needs to change so information’s users can be armed with a more uniform, less subjective and more robust way of measuring IC in the knowledge society. If the user can not trust them, IC metrics will remain both useless and worthless.

Over time, the IC metrics will evolve, continuing to identify value creation drivers, while remaining sufficiently flexible so it can adapt to the constantly changing nature of companies in the connected economy. Further work in terms of measurement and its utility need to be done to validate the information produced from intellectual capital metrics so that meaningful analysis of the organizational IC can be performed.

AUTHOR
Goran Collste

ABSTRACT

We live in an age of globalisation. Globalisation refers to: processes and relations (social, economic, political, cultural etc) that are transcending national borders, that link distant places and peoples and that are spontaneous rather than the result of political decisions.

Information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, global media etc are important means for this development.

Globalisation implies, e g, an encounter of different moral traditions and systems of values. What happens when different moral traditions and value systems are confronted? Will globalisation lead to inevitable value conflicts?

In the discussion about ICT-ethics certain values have been stressed. These are for example privacy, transparency, freedom of speech and responsibility. Although there are different views of the justification and implications of these values as well as different interpretations of their meaning, they are parts of a “common morality” and there seems to be a basic consensus on their importance in the Western ICT-ethics community. (Johnson, 2001, Spinello, 1995, Johnson and Nissenbaum, 1995) With the global reach of ICT, can one also expect a global consensus on these values?

Communitarians stress the contextuality and incommensurability of different ideological and moral traditions. According to Alasdair MacIntyre there is no common ground between different traditions. Instead each tradition has its own criteria for rationality and justice (MacIntyre, 1988). Hence, according to communitarianism one can not expect a global consensus on ICT-ethics.

In contrast to communitarianism, thinkers in the liberal tradition have argued that there are real possibilities to achieve a global moral consensus. In this paper I will discuss three different views:

The first view is the idea of an overlapping consensus developed by political philosopher John Rawls. A value consensus can, according to Rawls, be achieved through, what he calls, an “overlapping consensus” of different reasonable comprehensive doctrines, i.e. world-views, philosophies and religions. Albeit pluralism, it is possible to reach an agreement on principles of justice, core values and rights. These values and rights are then anchored in different religions and world-views and can thus achieve a broad theoretical support and motivational force. (Rawls, 1993)

The second view is developed by Amartya Sen. Sen argues for a plural interpretation of different cultures and value systems. According to Sen, a moral tradition contains different and also conflicting values. Value conflicts are thus as much internal to traditions as conflicts between different traditions. (Sen, 1999)

According to the third view one can expect a convergence of moral standards when people from different traditions interact. According to Chandran Kukathas: “Moral standards, like social standards generally, arise out of the interaction of individuals in particular circumstances and contexts”, (Kukathas 1994, p.14). We chose to act in conformity with what we expect other people wishes. When cultures are isolated from each other this will also imply different systems of norms. But when social contacts and social cooperation increase this will lead to a convergence of norms leading to a moral consensus. Kukathas even maintains that “…the interaction of different cultures might turn out to be a source of moral insight.” (ibid, p. 16)

In this paper I will analyse these different views of the possibility to overcome value conflicts. I will then relate the views to possible value conflicts related to ICT and see whether they are helpful for the undertaking to develop a global ICT-ethics.

REFERENCES

Johnson, Deborah, Computer Ethics, Upper Sadle River, New Jersey, 2001

Johnson, Deborah and Nissenbaum, Helen, eds, Computers, Ethics and Social Values, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1995

Kukathas, Chandran, ”Explaining Moral Variety”, i Cultural Pluralism and Moral Knowledge, ed Paul, Miller, Paul, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? London, Duckworth, 1988

Rawls, John, Political Liberalism, New York, Columbia University Press, 1993

Rawls, John, ”The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, i The Law of Peoples, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1999

Sen, Amartya, Freedom as Development, New York, Anchor Books, 1999

Spinello, Richard, Ethical Aspects of Information Technology, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1995

AUTHOR
Jyoti Choudrie, Vishanth Weerakkody

ABSTRACT

Since the advent of the Internet, business opportunities involving Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have multiplied, persuading not only commercial enterprises, but governments around the globe to invest profoundly into e-services. However, now the potential of a clear link between the use of ICTs and economic growth have become apparent thereby urging numerous organisations and governments to invest profoundly into ICT driven change (OECD, 2002). The e-services offered by governments are aimed at relaying information and public services to citizens over the Internet and is referred to in general as ‘e-government’. In this paper the authors examine how horizontal integration between the various departments of a local authority in the United Kingdom (UK), which is also the case study of this research, occurs in order to deliver e-services to the citizens in the vicinity. The research question guiding this paper is: What can be learnt about how horizontal integration between local authorities is being achieved in the e-government context in order to better deliver e-services to citizens. In line with that the aim of this paper is to extract the “success factors” in government intervention that support horizontal and vertical integration based on the strategies pursued in the UK in order to render favourable results if applied elsewhere. According to Lee et al., (2005) various countries adopting the e-government initiative are at different levels of development and to date, very few governments have initiated the collaboration of government agencies across horizontal and vertical levels. The UK is a country that is striving to undertake substantial measures in the e-government area that will ensure that it is in line with other countries around the globe and obtain efficiency and effectiveness concurrently. In 1997, the Prime Minister announced that a quarter of all government services in the UK will be electronically delivered within five years and by 2005 all major public services were to be e-enabled (Phythian and Taylor, 2001). However, by the end of 2005 this deadline had to be extended to 2008 as most local authorities failed to meet the cut-off date (Anon, 2005). It has been recognized as pertinent to offer services according to users needs, as this enhances cooperation between agencies, which is categorically required in order to provide central services and present an enhanced user experience for citizens using the services (Traunmuller, 2004). Furthermore, Jaeger (2002) argues that e-government will need to promote horizontal and vertical integration of the various governmental branches in order to satisfy the citizens’ need for round the clock 24 hours and 7 days services. To understand whether theory does actually work in practice, a research methodology that consisted of an in-depth case study that used the research tools of interviews and referring to archival documents was pursued. This ensured that a subjective bias was avoided and verified and confirmed the obtained results. For the analysis of this research a growth or stages phase model developed by Layne and Lee (2001) was used. This research is timely since currently governments around the globe are becoming technically savvy and the issues of integrating various and diverse departments are becoming important. Subsequently we intend to examine the possibilities of generalizing our findings to other geographical and or cultural settings. The conclusion and lessons that can be learnt from this research is that e-government integration on a horizontal level obtains significant efficiency and effectiveness as public services are centralized due to the newly formed online services and products. Due to this, public agencies and businesses can share information in a seamless fashion. Further, when using online services and products the citizens are also encouraged to participate in the decision making process. This is encouraging as the citizens then indirectly become a part of their local authority’s decision making process thereby helping to ensure that their tax paying money is being utilized in an effective and efficient manner. We believe that our analysis will be useful to policy makers seeking to promote the use of online products and services to communities in a country in an equitable manner. Researchers in the area of process changes can also benefit by obtaining insights into the application of a stage or growth phase model that is used to study change within private sector organizations, but in a diverse context, the public sector and e-government arenas.

AUTHOR
Akemi Takeoka Chatfield

ABSTRACT

Information technology (IT) offshoring or offshore outsourcing is a fast growing trend that is worldwide and continuing. According to an IDC market research report, the estimated market size of IT offshoring will reach US$29.4 billion by 2010. IT offshoring is a business strategy that is (at least initially) focused on IT cost reduction by buying tradable services from offshore IT service providers in India or China who enjoy existing comparative advantage in lower labour cost and skilled labour (see, Appendix). The process of IT offshoring involves the transfer of in-house IT functions and activities to offshore IT vendors, including business processes, non-core back office processing, software application development, consolidation of distributed IT infrastructures, and real-time management of IT assets such as customer database access control rights. Similar to the manufacturing offshoring trend that started in the 1960s and propelled the shift toward services, IT offshoring will have enormous impacts on workforce in wealthy developed countries. Unlike the former which had economic and social impacts on uneducated and unskilled factory workers, however, IT offshoring will have transformative impacts on highly educated and highly skilled IT professionals. Drawing on prior research published by Alan S. Blinder* in Foreign Affairs (March-April 2006), who views offshoring as the next industrial revolution, this research paper reviews the changing IT offshoring landscape and develops an analysis of its transformative impacts on IT professionals in developed countries.

*Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics at Princeton University and former Vice chairman of the Board of governors of the Federal Reserve from 1994 to 1996

AUTHOR
Flick Catherine

ABSTRACT

Informed consent, despite being a relatively new concept, is a well-established requirement in areas such as medical research and clinical practice whereby practitioners are required to fulfill certain requirements of disclosure, achieve understanding, judge competence, and ensure voluntariness before obtaining assent from a subject or patient (Faden and Beauchamp, 1986).
Situations similar to that in medical research and clinical practice exist in an information technology setting, whereby computer users are asked to make autonomous decisions that can affect important aspects of their lives, such as their personal privacy, security, and autonomy.

This paper aims to explore the nature of informed consent and its applicability to information technology situations by studying the traditional theory behind the concept, the history and use of it in clinical medical practice and medical research settings, and the attempts at establishing informed consent mechanisms in information technology. It lastly explores a theory of informed consent based on these ideas that is specifically aimed at information technology situations.

The seminal literature for theory of informed consent is Faden and Beauchamp’s 1986 “A History and Theory of Informed Consent”. Although it concentrates primarily on the medical and legal fields, the concepts it introduces can be applied to situations in information technology, and have been in some specific situations, such as for online interactions (Friedman et. al. 2000,Friedman et. al. 2002). In this paper I argue that the principles of informed consent, as established in medical research and clinical practice, can be more generally described and applied in information technology to offline as well as online computing interactions between a variety of different stakeholders, and not just the generic at-home end-user/non-specific “practitioner” stakeholder relationship as explored by Friedman.

The establishment of informed consent in the medical field is fairly recent, and is rooted in reactions to human rights disasters such as World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis trials. Information technology is yet to have such a crisis, and the establishment of general best practice guidelines may prevent any disasters stemming from similar consent issues. This is especially important considering the increasing ubiquity of computing and the lack of an industry regulatory body, although, ideally, a regulatory body would be best able to impose such guidelines. As it is, informed consent is dealt with on an ad-hoc basis, with potentially serious implications should something go dramatically wrong. All too often the practitioners of the field (for example, companies providing software, hardware, or support) rely on external standards for informed consent guidelines from other fields (such as from the medical or legal fields), and the governing powers of these for guidance, which is essentially the bare minimum required for legal liability, and often not particularly suited for situations that may occur in information technology. This approach, however, ignores the real need for specification within the industry for interactions between stakeholders that places the users of systems as the primary concern, and not purely focusing on legal liability.

I would lastly like to discuss a theory of informed consent for information technology that builds on the history of medical informed consent and the concepts established by Faden and Beauchamp, exploring

• the autonomy of computer users and other stakeholders in a variety of relationships,
• disclosure of information across varied platforms and situations,
• the concept of competence, especially when taking into account the ability for information technology to provide a significant level of anonymisation,
• mechanisms of testing for understanding given the aforementioned anonymisation and potential range of levels of competence,
• ways of achieving a computer user’s autonomous decision free of coercion given the competitive markets and “free-for-all” industry.

Investigating the issues at stake here will provide the groundwork for further research aimed at establishing sets of guidelines and best practice documents that will be able to effectively address informed consent issues within the information technology industry.

REFERENCES

Faden, R, and Beauchamp, T. A History and Theory of Informed Consent. Oxford University Press, New York NY, 1986.

Friedman, B., Felten, E., and Howe, D. C. Informed Consent in the Mozilla Browser: Implementing Value-Sensitive Design.

Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2002.

Friedman, B., Felten, E., and Millett, L. I. Informed Consent Online: A Conceptual Model and Design Principles. UW-CSE Technical

Report Number 2000- 12-2, 2000.