Information Technology Ethics And Professional Issues

Discussion on cross-cultural differences in computer ethics

Discuss about the Information Technology Ethics and Professional Issues.

In most of the countries around the world, the revolution in the information technology has altered several aspects of the life such as security, transportation, medicine, entertainment, employment etc, in a very significant way. Along with that, both the information technology and the communication technology has been affected in both the good as well as bad ways and affect the relationship between the human, their education, family life, freedom, community life, democracy etc. Therefore, in order to avoid the bad impact of the information technology, it is very much important to follow an ethics. As stated by Brey (2012), computer ethics can be referred as the ethics that ensure that the professionals will follow an effective code of ethics as well as a good standard of practices in their professions. In the recent times, with the development of the technology, the professional also faces different professional issues. In order to avoid that, the professionals should follow a good ethics.

It is seen that, there are several culture with different types of language, values and practices. Therefore, it can be easily estimated that, their ethical value is also differed. Individual from different cultures have different types of ethical behaviour and faced different types of professional issues because of their different culture but ethics related to computer will not be deferred because utilisation of computer cannot be deferred.

This assignment is intended to describe the ethics related to information technology and different professional issues that are faced by the professional involved in the information technology field.

As stated by Lin (2011), computer ethics can be defined as the part of the practical philosophy that mainly concerns with the decision making of different computing professionals related to different professional and the social conduct. Ethical decisions mainly dependent on the 3 main influences such as personal code of different individuals, exposures to different formal ethical code as well as the informal code of ethical conduct. Therefore, it can be said that the ethics is the moral value that can stop any individual from doing any illegal activity related to the computer. Any individual and organisation that utilises computer should have a complete knowledge regarding the computer ethics. This is because, computer ethics helps any individual to prevent theft of the intellectual property of others, it also prevents any individual or organisation to prevent the misuse of different personal information of others. Ethical code of conduct helps any individual from being unethical, which may create several legal issues as well as it also prevent the loss of different types of jobs in the field of software development. An effective computer ethics can help any individual to make their computer a safe and better place and facilitate an effective communication with others. With the expanded consideration, paid to moral issues in business rehearse; there is enthusiasm for the morals hole between the U.S. furthermore, the U.K. also, in the consequences for instructing understudies for business administration positions. This paper looks at the distinctions in morals judgments between U.S. what’s more, U.K. business understudies. The outcomes show that distinctions in their demographic profiles don’t impact their morals judgments. Nonetheless, reliably higher business morals of female understudies from both nations are talked about in connection to giving business morals training.

Ethical theories

However, it is seen that with the development of technology, many individual or organisation are utilising their computer for their individual benefits by accessing the information of others, which is not ethical. Therefore, for a bad code of conduct and lack of intention to follow an effective computer ethics many individual are destroying the important or personal data and expose their personal information, which is not very ethical so it creates different ethical issues. As stated by Mason (2015), due to those ethical issues, any intruder can access all of the private information of any computer users and utilise those data for their individual benefits.

Therefore, it is mandatory for any computer professionals to follow all of the computer ethics. Therefore, it is very much important to identify the ethical issues. Along with that, it is also important to find out the way by which the ethical issues can be mitigated. In order to resolve the ethical issues, Michael Davis propose a model by which ethical model can be easily resolved. Davis model stated different ethical problem, and then checked different facts. After that, it generates a list of the option by considering different facts regarding the problem. Davis model is generally the seven-step model that helps any individual to make ethical decision. In this model, the first step is stating the problem regarding ethics that need to be resolved. After that, it is important to check different facts because many problem can be resolved by conducting a closer examinations. According to Weckert & Adeney (2013), then it is important to identify different factors that are relevant to the ethical issues. Like professional code, different laws, practical limitations. Next it is important to develop a list of option to resolve the issues. After developing list of options, it is very much important to develop several options for tests like defensibility tests, colleague test, publicity tests, harm tests etc. Then it is important to make a choice and after that it is important to review the previous stages.

There are several ethical theory that describes that any professional or people should behave in the way so that it benefitted every individual. Ethical theories mainly consider the benefits of the whole society and there are mainly two approaches of the ethical theory that are deontological approach and the consequentialist approach. As per Mather (2011), among those approaches, the first consequentialist approach generally assumes that the moral value for actions are generally solely determined by different consequences of the actions. This approach is mainly the utilitarians in nature that consider that everyone act in the way that can bring them the greatest amount of the happiness.

Professional standards

Therefore, it can be said that this approach mainly focuses on the consequences of any particular actions and assure the maximum happiness for all of the involved people. On the other hand, the deontological approach emphasise the character of any act. This approach describe that if any action can be taken from the sense of duty and all of the principles  are universalised, then the action can be considered as the right. Two approaches deontological approach and the teleological approach are the most important ethical theory based upon which any ethical decisions are taken. It is important for any individual to have their own set of professional ethics when they are entering into the workforce or any complex set of relationship with any other individual. Professional ethics is important to ensure duties and the rights among all of the individual (Muller & DiMola, 2012).

There are several professional standards, according to which any professional maintains all their responsibility to their clients. Every computer professionals must enjoy their freedom to specify that how they can meet the actual computer systems. It is seen that they generally meet the minimum performance levels in order to meet the reliability, budget and speed. However, their organisation may want more performances from them so it may create a professional issues (Robertson, 2016). Along with that, conflict in interests in any organisation may generate professional issues among different professionals that may destroy the complete project. Any individual can face professional issues of they do not have any respect for their co-workers. Along with that, any team member of any team may access the intelligence properties of others that can create also the professional issues.

As examination has set up, IT-related moral issues are common around the world. As future IT experts, understudies enlisted in innovation educational modules will more likely than not get them confronted with moral difficulties at some point in their profession. Additionally, in light of the fact that the pattern toward a globalized economy proceeds with, a large portion of today’s understudies will wind up working with people of various nationalities and it will turn out to be progressively essential to see how distinctive people react to moral concerns. This article shows the aftereffects of a study of undergrad IT understudies from the U.S. also, three European nations (Santana & Wood, 2012). The study scrutinized the understudies about the ethicality of different IT hones and their apparent aims in the event that they ought to experience such a circumstance. The perspectives of the American understudies were then contrasted with those of the European understudies to investigate textures and contrasts.

Professional issues

According to Schultz (2012, p.76), the privacy is linguistic in various way in in various languages. English have their own sets of cultures and thus the limitation of their privacy is bounded the protocols offered by their culture. IT has revoluted the structure of culture in various country. Countries like Japan and China, those are very productive in international IT cases are experiencing a glimpse of western culture. Privacy is defined as keep the resources of one special person from the visibility of any other person. The privacy factor is now beyond the definition of social science. With implication of social network the countries have faced a new issue that is privacy. Ample of countries are promoting violent and other websites containing criminality, nudity and violence. China had banned whatsapp due sharing irrelevant videos and Pakistan has banned Youtube since it contains sexual documents. Privacy is also defined as securing the data of online customers. Countries like USA had been accused that they checks for private messages. This can be one risk to privacy that hindered by the implication of Information technology. England is experiencing a change in culture due to lack of privacy in internet. Country is having same sex marriages and single mother problem due to open protocol system in privacy.

Therefore, in order to avoid different professional issues in the workplace, the entire professional involved in computer technology should follow some professional consideration. Along with that, in order to increase the performance it is important for any professional to evaluate their performances by other team members because it can help them to know their actual knowledge level. Every professional should be loyal to their organisation and do not expose any sensitive organisational information to any other organisation. In order to avoid any kind of professional issues, it is the duty of any computer professional to ensure the safety, health as well as welfare for the public. It is the professional duty of any professional to educate general people regarding computing.

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be said that there are some set of ethics and professional ethics that should be followed by every individual around the world and it can be said that ethical theories cannot be different in different region because usage of computer and thee duties and responsibilities of the professional cannot be differed in different region. However, due to different culture, some more ethics can be applied (Siegfried, 2014). Suppose in some region the tendency of the individual to access others information is high, then it is clear that among that culture, some more ethics can be applied to protect user from the situation. It is seen that the teleological approach describe the every people should act in the way so that it can ensure the maximum amount of happiness or in case of the ideological approach, the right or wrong meaning of any action has been described. It describes that when any individual should consider any action as the right. Therefore, it can be state that, how any action can ensure the maximum happiness or when should any individual consider any action, as right is not changeable. This is because, every geographic region access internet in the same way and follow an universal code of conduct or professional ethics so there should not be any differences in computer ethics in different cultural region. Therefore, it can be said that there ethical consideration is not changed, but there are some view that computer ethics are changed with the culture or the geographical locations (Towell et al. 2014).

It is seen that, individual or professional of the US are more aware of the ethical behaviour in the business. Therefore, there should not be any extra ethics regarding the individual of the US. The reason behind this is, all of the ethical code of conduct are developed in the western countries so it was developed in the earlier times, that all of the current ethical consideration will secure the IT users. On the other hand, it is found that the Thai professionals are most likely to commit different software piracy rather than the individual of US. Therefore, some extra code of conduct or the ethical consideration is required in order to protect the organisation from this loss.

However, in the computer ethics the main difference in the computer ethics in  diversified culture is related to their approaches to resolve the information ethics. It is seen that, there are significant cross-cultural differences among the western and the no n-western organisation and their approach is also different to take ethical decision.

As stated by van Wel and Royakkers (2014), in order to develop the answer regarding it, concept of moral relativism is effective. It is seen that there are two kinds of moral relativism like the metaethical moral relativism and the descriptive moral relativism. According to the descriptive moral relativism, there are an extensive diversity according to the moral principles and the values regarding the groups, culture, historical periods etc. On the other hand, descriptive moral absolutism there is not any profound disagreements are present in different groups, culture, society and the individuals. On the other hand, according to the metaethical moral relativism, justification of the moral judgement is not the objective or the absolute, but it is relative with the groups, culture, and historical periods. Therefore, it can be said that the descriptive relativism claims about the values about which different society or people actually have.

On the other hand, metaethical relativism claims about different values that can be justified to have. There is a claim that the any ethics (also include computer ethics) is culturally relative, therefore, the metaethical relativism is true in this case. It has claimed that the computer ethics are valid in the culture in which it is developed. As per the viewpoint of Weckert and Adeney, (2013), computer ethics is one of the product of the western countries so according to the cultural relativity the value and the principles cannot be applied in the non western countries. It is seen that the, metaethical relativism is generally dependent on different previous observation when the descriptive relativism is true. Therefore, if descriptive relativism is false then the people across the world would share a framework that contains different basic values or principles and in this case, the computer ethics will not be different in different culture. It is seen that in different culture the concept of the intellectual property and the privacy is same. There are mainly three kinds of evidence by which it can be seen that are conceptual, behavioural and the institutional. Among them the first evidence conceptual describe the extent to which moral concepts in different culture has the same meaning (Yao-Huai, 2015). For example, chinese culture has the same concept regarding the privacy like the american culture.

Therefore, it can be state that here the concept of privacy is same in both the western as well as the non-western culture. On the other hand, institutional evidence describe the extent to which there are some similarity between different types of codified rules that express different moral principles as well as the codified statements, which can express moral judgement regarding any particular situations. For examples, the moral principles that are written in different Latin cultures are same as the rules and the law of America (Towell et al.2012). The behavioural evidence is the similarity regarding the behaviours and the customs that are generally guided by different moral principles. In this behavioural evidence there are some tendencies that can avoid the immoral behaviour than the moral.

Freedom of information consists of two principles such as speech and access of information. The freedom of speech deals with the expressing of one’s ideas and knowledge in the form of writing and speech. In some western countries, information freedom is often considered as constitutional right. Laws for the protection of information freedom are sometimes designed to ensure that the individual can enjoy and relate to this freedom without any governmental interruption. As opined by Brey, (2012), the interruption of government is only allowed in some critical situations. Certain non-western countries does not follow information freedom as the principal for guiding. However, there are also some institutional freedom protections and practices are present that interrupt the information freedom. The concept of this is not part of established standard of the society. In those societies the precedence taken by the national societies and the independent right to information freedom is not recognised and is taken as subordinative in terms of national interests. This hardly resembles the right of western countries to the information freedom. The state ownership practices are widespread in some countries where the mass media is highly controlled by the government authorities. The databases and internet libraries are highly censored and the messages are largely cracked.

Conclusion:

All of the professional must fulfill their responsibility to their users or clients, to their colleagues, organisation as well as public. Any professional should report all of the findings to their clients or the users with honesty and it must be represented accurately. While designing any computer system, then the professional should not only consider the specification provided by their clients but they also consider the way by which the system can provide more quality in life. In order to generate an effective system it is very important for any professional to avoid any kind of conflict in interests among their colleagues because it may create several professional issues.

Reference list:

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