Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical issues surrounding information systems (IS) practice with a view to encouraging greater involvement in this aspect of IS research. Information integrity relies upon the development and operation of computer-based information systems. Those who undertake the planning, development and operation of these information systems have obligations to assure information integrity and overall to contribute to the public good. This ethical dimension of information systems has attracted mixed attention in the IS academic discipline.

The authors are a multidisciplinary team providing a rich, diverse experience which includes professional and information ethics, management information systems, software engineering, data repositories and information systems development. Each author has used this experience to review the IS ethics landscape, which provides four complimentary perspectives. These are synthesised to tease out trends and future pointers.

It is confirmed that there is a serious lack of research being undertaken relating to the ethical dimension of the Information Systems field. There is limited crossover between the well-established multidisciplinary community of Computer Ethics research and the traditional Information Systems research community.

An outline framework is offered which could provide an opportunity for rich and valuable dialogue across the two communities. This is proposed as the starting point for a proactive research and practice action plan for information systems ethics.

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.

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.

Four major agreements and four major disagreements are identified. There is an emphasis on “acultural” professionalism to promote moral behavior rather than amoral behavior.

This is an original viewpoint which draws from the authors’ practical experience and expertise.

This paper aims to explore the ethical and social impact of augmented visual field devices (AVFDs), identifying issues that AVFDs share with existing devices and suggesting new ethical and social issues that arise with the adoption of AVFDs.

This essay incorporates both a philosophical and an ethical analysis approach. It is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, philosophical notions of transparency and presence and human values including psychological well-being, physical well-being, privacy, deception, informed consent, ownership and property and trust.

The paper concludes that the interactions among developers, users and non-users via AVFDs have implications for autonomy. It also identifies issues of ownership that arise because of the blending of physical and virtual space and important ways that these devices impact, identity and trust.

Developers ought to take time to design and implement an easy-to-use informed consent system with these devices. There is a strong need for consent protocols among developers, users and non-users of AVFDs.

There is a social benefit to users sharing what is visible on their devices with those who are in close physical proximity, but this introduces tension between notions of personal privacy and the establishment and maintenance of social norms.

There is new analysis of how AVFDs impact individual identity and the attendant ties to notions of ownership of the space between an object and someone’s eyes and control over perception.

This paper aims to explore similarities and differences between robots, invasive biological species, and genetically modified organisms. These comparisons are designed to better understand the potential effects of robots on human society.

This paper applies established ideas in one discipline – biology – to issues that are less well understood, but actively being studied in another discipline – science and technology studies.

Robots entering human society in large numbers share many of the characteristics of an invasive species entering a new ecosystem. The authors also find that robots have several characteristics that are similar to a genetically modified organism. Taken together, these similarities suggest that society should be cautious about the introduction of large numbers of robots in a short period of time.

The approach taken here to assess robots in society by these analogies to ecological processes is, to the authors' knowledge, novel. Applying ideas from a better-known area to a less well-known area is routine in philosophy, but these particular analogies have not yet been carefully articulated in the literature.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of serious teacher misbehaviour (TMB) in schools from the perspective of headteachers, a largely un-researched area.

Data were collected via the documentary analysis of misconduct cases from the Teaching Agency and semi-structured interviews with five headteachers who had managed serious cases.

The research suggests four primary impacts of serious TMB, affecting other teachers, students, the reputation of the school and headteachers themselves. The paper concludes by suggesting a fifth impact affecting public trust in the teaching profession.

Although rare, serious TMB can be highly damaging. Furthermore, the findings suggest that it is almost impossible to predict and so this paper suggests a “map” of the impacts helping headteachers to manage and contain it when/if the worst does happen.

Empirical studies of the impacts of serious organisational behaviour are scarce; empirical studies of serious organisational behaviour in schools are non-existent and so this paper addresses that gap.

The increased need for, and maintenance of, infrastructure creates challenges for all agencies that manage infrastructure assets. To assist with these challenges, agencies implement asset management systems. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the importance of barriers faced by agencies establishing transportation asset management systems in the USA and Libya to contrast a case of a developed and developing country.

A literature review identified 28 potential barriers for implementing an asset management system. Practitioners who participate in decision-making processes in each country were asked to rate the importance of each barrier in an online survey questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, Kendall Concordance W., and Mann-Whitney are used to analyze the collected data.

Through an analysis of 61 completed questionnaires, 14 barriers were identified as important by both the US and Libyan practitioners. A total of 11 additional barriers, primarily in the areas of political and regulatory obstacles, were determined to be important only for Libya. These 11 barriers provide reasonable insights into asset management systems’ barriers for developing countries.

The list of barriers identified from this research will assist decision makers to address and overcome these barriers when implementing asset management systems in their specific organizational and country conditions.

The research identified standard barriers to implementing asset management systems and identified barriers that were specific to the country context, such as political and regulatory barriers in Libya. When viewed with the asset management literature, the results show broad applicability of some asset management barriers and the need to contextualize to country context (e.g. developing countries) for other barriers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the strategic planning‐performance relationship by drawing on data from a sample of Turkish firms.

The sample frame for the study was derived from the database of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry's 500 largest Turkish manufacturing companies and the database of companies quoted on the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Based on a postal survey, 135 usable questionnaires were returned. Using LISREL causal modeling the moderating effects of a set of contingency factors on the relationship between formal strategic planning and firm performance were investigated.

The findings show that there is a good deal of support for the study's hypotheses. A strong and positive relationship was formed between formal strategic planning and firm performance, which tends to confirm the arguments of the prescriptive strategic management literature. The test results also verify the moderating roles of environmental turbulence, organization structure and firm size on the strategic planning‐performance link.

Strategic planning and its key dimensions represent a subtle and complex activity, and that to obtain rich data on such phenomena may be best accomplished through research methods that employ qualitative data gathering techniques. Incorporation of qualitative performance measures, in addition to financial measures would enrich our understanding of the planning‐performance relationship.

After almost a decade of relative neglect perhaps this research issue will again begin to attract the kind of attention that it deserves. Although strategy is often considered to be a universal practice, it is better thought of as many different crafts, varying according to its different contexts. So, the impact of various contexts on the planning‐performance relationship should be taken into account.

Prior studies that have examined strategic planning‐performance relationship have tended to focus on firms from industrialized countries. This is one of the first studies that has explicitly modeled and empirically tested the relationship in an emerging country context.

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a conceptualization of competitive aggressiveness (CA), a dimension of entrepreneurial orientation.

Structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression are employed on responses from 182 banks in the southwestern US Performance data on the banks are drawn from the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC's) Call reports.

The results indicate awareness, motivation and capability are antecedents of CA, which itself is positively related to increased market share and, in more dense markets, profitability.

Aggressive firms exhibit certain routines that can lead to competitive actions, which assists performance in some contexts. Managers who wish to increase (or decrease) their firms' overall competitive posture can encourage (or discourage) employees from performing competitive routines such as monitoring their rivals or talking about their rivals' strategies.

By developing CA' conceptualization, the study advances the understanding of the antecedents of competitive behavior and makes it easier to study competition in smaller firms.