Many problems in software development can be traced to a narrow understanding of professional responsibility. The author examines ways in which software developers have tried to avoid accepting responsibility for their work After cataloguing various types of responsibility avoidance, the author introduces an expanded concept of positive responsibility. It is argued that the adoption of this sense of positive responsibility will reduce many problems in software development.

Many problems in software development can be traced to a narrow understanding of professional responsibility. The author examines ways in which software developers have tried to avoid accepting responsibility for their work. After cataloguing various types of responsibility avoidance, the author introduces an expanded concept of positive responsibility. It is argued that the adoption of this sense of positive responsibility will reduce many problems in software development.

Purpose: This short viewpoint is a response to a lead paper on professional ethics in the information age. This paper aims to draw upon the authors’ experience of professional bodies such as the ACM over many years. Points of agreement and disagreement are highlighted with the aim of promoting wider debate. Design/methodology/approach: An analysis of the lead paper is undertaken using a binary agree/disagree approach. This highlights the conflicting views which can then be considered in more detail. Findings: Four major agreements and four major disagreements are identified. There is an emphasis on “acultural” professionalism to promote moral behavior rather than amoral behavior. Originality/value: This is an original viewpoint which draws from the authors’ practical experience and expertise.

Researchers have found that software piracy worldwide over the years has significantly contributed to billions of dollars in lost revenue for many software firms. Software developers have found it difficult to create software that is not easily copied, thus, creating a software protection problem. Software piracy remains a global problem despite the significant effort to combat its prevalence. Over the years, significant research has attempted to determine the factors that contribute to individuals' propensity to commit software piracy. Most of the research on software piracy has been limited to larger societies, with recommendations by researchers to extend similar studies to smaller ones. The literature indicating the need for additional research on this topic in different populations and cultures is significant. Given that, the key contributions of this study were to assess empirically factors such as personal moral obligation (PMO), cultural dimensions, ethical computer self-efficacy (ECSE) and the effect it has on individuals' propensity -- in cultures that support it -- to commit software piracy in smaller geographical locations. Therefore, this research empirically assessed the contribution that PMO, Hofstede's cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism (I/C), and ECSE have made on individuals' propensity to commit software piracy. The study extended the current body of knowledge by finding answers to three specific questions. First, this study sought to determine whether the PMO component contributed to individuals' propensity to commit software piracy in The Bahamas. Secondly, this study sought to determine the level of contribution of Hofstede's cultural dimension of I/C to individuals' propensity to commit software piracy in The Bahamas. Finally, this study sought to determine the contribution of ECSE to individuals' propensity to commit software piracy in The Bahamas. A total of 321 usable responses were collected over a one-month period from students from the school of business at a small Bahamian college, to determine their level of PMO, I/C, and ECSE contribution to individuals' propensity to commit software piracy. This represents, approximately, a 64% response rate. The results showed the overall significance of the models of the three factors in predicting individuals' propensity to commit software piracy. Furthermore, the results indicated that PMO and ECSE subscale PMO and ECSE_DB were significant, however, I/C, and ECSE (as a whole) were not.

Each year billions of dollars are lost due to illegal downloading and copying of intellectual property. Individuals often perceive little or no consequences as a result of digital piracy. Research has shown that perceived consequences could be used to alter an individual's ethical intention to engage in digital piracy (INT). In addition subjective norm (SUN) may also contribute to INT. Therefore, the goal of this study was to determine the factors of perceived consequences and to assess their contribution, as well as the contribution of SUN, to INT. This predictive study developed a quantitative instrument to measure the contribution of the factors of perceived consequences and SUN on INT. In phase one of this study, an anonymous exploratory questionnaire was used to gather a list of perceived consequences. That list was combined with a list of perceived consequences found through an extensive review of the literature and a survey instrument was developed and used in phase two. After data cleaning, a total of 407 responses remained. Exploratory factor analysis incorporating principal component analysis (PCA) identified eight factors of INT: Personal Emotional Consequences (PEC), Freedom Consequences (FRC), Minor Consequences (MIC), Personal Freedom Consequences (PFC), Personal Moral Consequences (PMC), Network Access Consequences (NAC), Self Worth Consequences (SWC), and Industry Financial Consequences (IFC). A model was developed using Ordinal Logistic Regression to determine the contribution of the eight factors of perceived consequences and SUN on INT. PEC, PMC, and IFC as well as SUN were found to be significant contributors to INT. The Mann-Whitney U test determined that INT was the only factor that showed a significant difference for males. Additionally, gender was a significant contributor to FRC, MIC, PFC, PMC, SWC, and IFC. Each of these factors was more significant for females than males. The Kruskal-Wallis test determined that there were no significant differences in the factors of perceived consequences, SUN, and INT based on age or computer usage. Important contributions of this study include the identification of eight perceived consequence factors not previously known as well as the development of a unified predictive model, addressing all forms of digital piracy.

Unethical behaviour is affecting societal behaviour and impacting business success. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is increasingly adopted across businesses and for personal use and insufficient attention is paid to the impact of unethical practices in the use of ICT on various stakeholders involved. ICT professionals are well positioned to provide guidance to ICT users and decision makers but they need help. While they have the knowledge and skills in ICT, they also need a sense of professional responsibility towards their stakeholders and a moral attitude to help them understand how unethical practices in ICT can affect others and the ability to make good decisions in the use of ICT. Ethics education has been shown to be effective for other professions and this research project builds and tests a model based on current good practices found to be effective in ethics education. More specifically, it adopts a Positive Psychology perspective, not previously used in ICT ethics education, looking at what is working well and examines the use of a Positive Psychology approach, namely Appreciative Inquiry (AI) which has been found elsewhere to be an effective method to motivate change. This research project tests the impact that an Appreciative Inquiry included in a computer ethics class has on the development of moral attitude. The project had a quasi-experiment design with a large sample of over 400 participants (undergraduate Information Technology Management students) using both a control and treatment group to determine the effect of AI on the changes in moral sensitivity and moral judgment of the participants. One well validated survey tool and one developed specifically for ICT, the Defining Issues Test 2 and the IMIS Survey, respectively, were used to test changes from the beginning to the end of each course. The study findings demonstrate that a well-developed ethics course, adopting good practices, produced significant changes in the moral attitudes of the participants. The adoption of AI in the treatment group produced significant changes in elements of the student’s moral judgment validated by both the pre-and post-analysis and instructor observations. Thus taking a Positive Psychology approach to ICT ethics is a useful innovation to ethics education. The project has also demonstrated that AI may have significant potential for ethical education across professions and business at large.

The purpose of this study was to obtain information about the knowledge and attitudes of students, staff, faculty, and administrators in the community colleges in the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) system about the ethical issues relating to the current policies and laws regarding the use of computers and software; to compare the knowledge and attitude of these users and to investigate any relationships that may exist between users, knowledge and attitude toward computer ethics. A total of 700 students (280), staff (140), faculty (140), and administrators (140) from the 14 TBR community colleges were surveyed. The total responses was 389 (55.57%) which included 161 students (57.5%), 76 staff (54.29%), 81 faculty (57.86%), and 71 administrators (50.71%). Fifteen hypotheses generated from 6 research questions were tested using Kruskal-Wallis test, Mann-Whitney U test, t -test and Spearman's rho. This study showed that administrators possessed the most knowledge about computer ethics, followed by faculty and staff. Students were shown to know the least about policies and issues concerning computer ethics. Age did not have any impact on the knowledge of computer users but affected the attitudes of students. No differences were found in the knowledge or attitudes toward computer ethics between gender groups. The frequency of computer usage did not affect the knowledge of computer users while it had influence on the students, attitudes toward computer ethics. Training on computer ethics positively affected the computer users, knowledge about computer ethics. For staff, faculty, and administrators, training on computer usage generally did not affect their knowledge and awareness of computer ethics nor did the frequency of computer usage, age, or gender. However, these factors affected the knowledge of student group. Research results showed a correlation between the knowledge and attitudes toward computer ethics for faculty and administrators in general. There tended to be a positive correlation between the knowledge and attitudes toward computer ethics for faculty and administrators who used computer daily and of age 40 or older. It indicated that the more awareness of computer ethics, the more they favor of tighter control of computer use.

Richard Mason proposed a social framework for addressing the major ethical issues of the information age in his pivotal 1986 article “Four Ethical Issues of the Information Age.” In 2006, Alan Peslak validated the framework by measuring the current attitudes of students, IT professionals, and university faculty and staff toward the four key issues proposed by Mason: privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility (referred to as PAPA). This study continues this inquiry into the seven-year period after Peslak’s research. Previously collected data was analyzed for 312 university computing majors taking a senior-level ethics course where Mason was taught and discussed. Demographic influences as well as differences over the period were considered. A single exam question administered consistently over the period was the focus. Results indicate, with Mason’s framework as a foundation, computing students can identify all of Mason’s ethical issues, selecting privacy as the most relevant issue of concern in their current environment. Age, gender, and computing work experience resulted in no differences in selection of relevant PAPA factors. All genders, all age groups, and all levels of computing work experience select privacy as the most relevant factor for society today. Privacy increased in importance over the seven-year period as the primary ethical issue for computing students. The ever-changing technology environment and new threats to society posed by these changes is discussed, including social networks, data breaches, consumer privacy, internet neutrality, and emerging technologies.

<p>Are agency and responsibility solely ascribable to humans? The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), including the development of so-called “affective computing,” appears to be chipping away at the traditional building blocks of moral agency and responsibility. Spurred by the realization that fully autonomous, self-aware, even rational and emotionally-intelligent computer systems may emerge in the future, professionals in engineering and computer science have historically been the most vocal to warn of the ways in which such systems may alter our understanding of computer ethics. Despite the increasing attention of many philosophers and ethicists to the development of AI, there continues to exist a fair amount of conceptual muddiness on the conditions for assigning agency and responsibility to such systems, from both an ethical and a legal perspective. Moral and legal philosophies may overlap to a high degree, but are neither interchangeable nor identical. This paper attempts to clarify the actual and hypothetical ethical and legal situations governing a very particular type of advanced, or “intelligent,” computer system: medical decision support systems (MDSS) that feature AI in their system design. While it is well-recognized that MDSS can be categorized by type and function, further categorization of their mediating effects on users and patients is needed in order to even begin ascribing some level of moral or legal responsibility. I conclude that various doctrines of Anglo legal systems appear to allow for the possibility of assigning specific types of agency – and thus specific types of legal responsibility – to some types of MDSS. Strong arguments for assigning moral agency and responsibility are still lacking, however.</p>

<p>Examining how our basic values affect development processes is the overall theme of this thesis. In practice, the question is investigated in relation to software development and organizational change and in research, in relation to science and its relationship to common sense, specifically within the area of Human Computer Interaction. The thesis discusses how it might be possible to discover what is essential for development processes and why the essential may be interpreted as something other than the simply obvious. This thesis examines ways of studying and understanding our social environment and development processes, particularly those concerning people, organizations and software. The empirical examples deal with a software development project and a project that scrutinized the strategy for a governmental authority’s business and information technology. Attitudes are discussed in terms of how they view the user, the customer, the software developers, the software, organizational and implementation processes, organizational management, aesthetic values, functionality and use, research, methods, paradigmatic approaches, ethical issues, psychological reactions, sociological prerequisites, categorizations of people and stress-related health consequences. One particular prerequisite for developing superior computer-supported office work has repeatedly presented itself: an open, questioning attitude towards the software development process, towards organizational change and towards the people working in the organizations. A similar attitude towards research and its design can be crucial to the development of new knowledge. This circumstance can be interpreted as an indication of how important it is that we be aware of and question our preconceived notions, in order to develop an autonomous behavior where we take responsibility for our actions. By doing so, we can avoid misinterpretations and not get trapped into making categorizations that are simply obvious. This is essential and must be emphasized in our search for the path to »healthy work«.</p>