Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology

Citation

Line, M.B. (2004), "Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 192-193. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410533524

The two persons misleadingly shown as authors on the cover and title‐page are actually editors of an assemblage of papers. The 25 authors of the 16 chapters (who include the editors) are all American except for two Australians. Many of them are associated with Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and they are mostly academics in management, computer information systems, and philosophy.

A great deal has been written about these issues in the last ten years. Does this book have anything special to say? The fact that it is a collection offers a variety of approaches, but at the expense of a continuous coherent argument. The audiences are said to be professionals entering information systems management, undergraduates in computer information systems programmes, graduates in management information systems programmes, students of public policy and public administration, and professionals entering public sector management. It will be noted that those studying or working in librarianship and information work are not included. According to the back cover, one reason for the book was the conviction that legal and ethical issues are not given much place in the training of IT professionals.

The chapters are grouped in three sections, devoted respectively to social, ethical and policy implications. A final section, which has a chapter to itself, is titled “Further implications”. I can see little point in this division, since all three kinds of implication turn up in almost every chapter. Moreover, discussions on policy issues such as copyright, workplace rights and data protection inevitably have little relevance outside the USA.

There is not space to discuss every chapter, so I will take three examples. Hoffman's chapter on “Ethical challenges for information systems professionals” starts with a naive and simplistic discussion of basic ethical principles, and is over halfway through before it gets down to unique ethical problems faced by IT professionals. The remainder is all rather obvious, apart from the startling statement that basic ethical imperatives change every millennium or so. The five references include two to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Better is Chapter 2, by the two Australians, on “Digital divides”, which argues that they are not always bad in themselves, but can create bad conditions. The first chapter, “Global perspectives on the information society” by McIver, is the best in the book: authoritative, thorough, well researched and referenced – altogether an admirable overview.

For all the book's length, some issues are not fully examined. Loyalty to one's employer is said to be one central ethical necessity, but this may conflict with wider social and ethical responsibilities – in the case of an arms manufacturer, to the world at large, in the case of a pharmaceutical company, to the Third World. Such conflicts of course affect board members and managers as well as IT people, who are in a special position since they have control of information and how it is used.

The text appears to be error‐free. The index contains subjects but no names, and when a subject covers several consecutive pages it refers to the first page only. And does there really have to be a copyright statement at the foot of every page?

Most readers would find something of interest here, but they would have to hunt for it. Those familiar with the literature do not need to read it, while for a newcomer I would recommend other works.