Ethics and Ist

What are some ethical issues you might encounter when you use IST in your chosen field?

Ethics in Marketing Research

Rapid changes in the technology of business raise ethical issues to which legislation and experience cannot provide all the answers. Society is increasingly concerned and there is growing involvement with business ethics in political, academic and theological circles.

The area of information systems and technologies (IST) has special characteristics that have resulted in the need for ethical consideration. These characteristics relate to complexity, adaptability and versatility, processing speed and relative cheapness, reproduction, storage, and coding.

Computer programs can often be complicated with thousands of lines of code, making it difficult for people to understand how they work completely. The ethical dilemma is deciding how much testing must be undertaken

Adaptability and versatility: Office automation products are likely to result in efficiency gains and reduce overheads, but can lead to health problems such as RSI (repetitive strain injury) caused by uninterrupted periods of computer usage or mental stress caused by the break-up of social groups, or even the loss of status through job redesign.

Processing speed and relative cheapness: Computers can perform millions of computations making individual calculation costs almost nothing and virtually undetectable.

Reproduction: Computer files, data, or programs can be copied a number of times, and at insignificant cost. The copy is identical to the original.

Invasion on personal privacy has become a critical issue in marketing research. The proliferation of databases, the selling of address lists, and the ease with which consumer information can be gather through Internet technology have all increased public concern. From an ethical standpoint, a marketing research practice that is particularly problematic is the promise of cash rewards or free offers in return for...