Susan J. Harrington
ABSTRACT
This research looks at the impact of company codes of ethics, as well as codes of ethics written specifically for information systems (I.S.) employees. Moreover, since the intent of ethics codes is to clarify responsibility, the personality characteristics of denial of responsibility and its interaction with exposure to codes of ethics was examined. The impact of codes and the personality characteristic of denial of responsibility were measured based on I.S. judgments concerning illegal software copying, computer cracking (sometimes called hacking), spreading viruses, corporate sabotage using the computer, and computer fraud. Denial of responsibility was found to be related to a variety of computer abuses and did interact with company codes of ethics to influence attitudes toward viruses and computer fraud.
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Index Terms
- The impact of codes of ethics on information systems personnel
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Reviews
Donald W. Gotterbarn
In the past three years, several organizations, including the ACM and the IEEE, have significantly revised their codes of ethics. These changes are consistent with the attempts of professional organizations to clarify the responsibilities of their members. Some codes, such as the ACM revised Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, address fundamental ethical responsibility, responsibility as a member of the profession, and responsibilities when in a leadership role in an organization or in a voluntary situation. Harrington examines the impact of codes of ethics on the attitudes of people with varying degrees of a personality characteristic called “denial of responsibility.” She surveyed the attitudes of 219 information systems employees in nine organizations in northeastern Ohio in 1991. They responded to questions about their attitudes about several scenarios. From the results, the author concludes that “codes of ethics appear to have different effects on different people depending on the individual's personality.” She makes several intermediate observations, including that codes do have some effect in the areas of computer sabotage and computer fraud even for people with a very high degree of denial of responsibility, that the degree to which something is judged as unethical is related to the degree of the activity's impact on others, and that information systems employees may see impact on individuals differently than impact on organizations. There are several problems with the paper. First, Harrington utilizes a distinction between “specific” and “generic” codes and the different effects they have but she never defines the difference between these two types of codes. Unfortunately, the scenarios used mix ethical and legal issues; thus, someone's judgment that an act is wrong may have no connection with a code of ethics, but may simply be based on the fact that the act would violate several laws. It is unfortunate that the survey data were collected in 1991, at least a year before the revisions of some of the codes that she cites. The paper points at several interesting research areas for those interested in improving software professionals' understanding of their responsibilities.
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