Matthew Charlesworth
David A. Sewry
ABSTRACT
This paper reports research findings based on an empirical survey of ethical awareness undertaken by the authors amongst 233 members of the IT and IT-related industries. The paper first describes the research context before describing the specific research instrument used to conduct the survey and discussing the results of the survey. Findings are that the majority surveyed have enjoyed no emphasis on ethics within their formal education; there is increased piracy for non-work purposes, though the degree of piracy at work is not negligible; and whilst privacy is generally recognized as being necessary to protect, results were received regarding the abuse of confidential information and the tendency to produce 'half-jobs' or work that is not of an employee's best quality. Individuals within organizations further reported that whilst they are aware of the ethical issues involving IT, their organizations are not.
- CHARLESWORTH, M. 2004. An investigation into the ethics of information systems. Unpublished thesis.Google Scholar
- CSSA (2004), Code of Conduct. Available {On-Line}: http://www.cssa.org.za/home.asp?pid=793Google Scholar
- DAVISON, R. 2002, 'Ethics and Research Methods,' in Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'02, 2002 edn, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 253-2. Google ScholarDigital Library
- GROSS, D. A. (2003) ICT, WSIS and the Future of Freedom. Available {On-line}: http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/rm/2003/27668.htmGoogle Scholar
- HARRIS J., CUMMINGS M., FOGLIASSO C. 2002, 'Ethical codes and their effect on conduct'. The Journal of Computing in Small Colleges. 18(1) pp 259-269. Google ScholarDigital Library
- JOHNSON, D.G. 1997. Ethics online. Communications of the ACM 40, 60-65. Google ScholarDigital Library
- KIRAKOWSKI, J. Questionnaires in Usability Engineering. A List of Frequently Asked Questions. {3}, 1. 2004. Available {On-line}: http://www.ucc.ie/hfrg/resources/qfaq1.htmlGoogle Scholar
- PESLAK, A.R. 2004, 'Improving Software Quality: An Ethics Based Approach' in Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Computer personnel research: Careers, culture, and ethics in a networked environment Available {On-line}: http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=982408&type=pdf&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=21869917&CFTOKEN=82795287 Google ScholarDigital Library
- UNCTAD, UN Conference on Trade and Development E-commerce and Development Report 2003Google Scholar
- USA, United States of America Comments on the March 21st Version of the WSIS Draft Declaration and Action Plan, May 29, 2003. Available {On-Line}: http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/othr/21083.htmGoogle Scholar
Index Terms
- South African IT industry professionals' ethical awareness: an exploratory study
Recommendations
Joining the Conversation about IT Ethics
At a recent conference, philosophers and IT professionals discussed many topics that combine technical details about IT and important humans values. IT professionals are encouraged to join the conversation about computer ethics and IT by reading ...
Identifying Technical Competences of IT Professionals: The Case of Software Engineers
This article aims to identify technical competency levels relevant to Software Engineering in a spectrum of professional profiles which are found in Spain's main Software Development companies. The research work presents a combination of three ...
The ethical attitudes of information technology professionals: a comparative study between the USA and the Middle East
This paper aims at investigating comparatively the ethical orientation of information technology (IT) professionals in the Middle East and the United States. It tests for attitudes toward and awareness of ethically-related issues, namely intellectual ...
Reviews
Shannon Jacobs
This brief paper is a summary of a Web-based survey the authors prepared for a small number of information technology (IT) professionals in South Africa. This research falls into the category of the kind of sociological analysis where the results are collected and analyzed in search of interesting patterns, with special focus on the authors' pre-research hypotheses regarding any expected patterns. The results are usually presented in compact tables, with some indication (usually with symbols) of the most significant results or correlations, which are then considered in detail (mostly in relation to any proven or disproven hypotheses). Unfortunately, in this case, the authors have used their limited space rather poorly. With only five pages of space to work in, they could not really spare a full page for the flowery introduction, and then only report fragmentary results in very terse textual descriptions. While a tabular presentation would naturally make the Likert-scale results clear, without tables the authors wind up with long confusing sentences, with awkwardly paired numbers, as they apparently struggle with their page budget. Did I really parse that sentence correctly__?__ Was the "24.46 percent" matched to the "quite often" several lines earlier__?__ The authors do try to describe some of the significance of the results, and some of this seems quite interesting, but there is too little substance presented here to be sure. For example, they reported that there was a significant correlation of certain reported behavior with the size of the respondent's organization, but it wasn't even clear what behavior that referred to. More troublesome are the areas the authors glossed over or skipped completely. In addition to complete tables of results, the actual questions should have been included, and some key terms, like "piracy" and "privacy," needed to be defined in a substantive way. The authors also need to clarify such factors as how their results were checked or validated. The quality of the English itself was not very good by American or British publishing standards, but that was a relatively minor problem, and the writing would have been adequate if more supporting information was included. My ultimate conclusion is that the authors are not sociologists, but they should have read more sociological literature during the preparation of this paper. Online Computing Reviews Service
Access critical reviews of Computing literature here
Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.
Comments