The Ethics of Information Systems

The Ethics of Information Systems

Introduction

Information systems in their simplest forms have always been a part of business. With the increase of technology, business information systems are expanding and becoming a more intriqet part of how business is done. Companies count on information systems to support their business decisions and operations. Along with this increasing role comes the questions of ethical actions. Taking this into consideration this paper will cover what information systems are. What is ethics, and how does it apply to information systems and business? We will look at what has been done to promote ethical behavior as well as discuss what more could be done to better increase this desired behavior in regard to information systems. With newer and different ways of doing business constantly appearing, business is left with the task of integrating long held standards and ethics into these new fields. This is an increasingly important aspect of business given the many scandals and attempted cover-ups that have emerged recently within businesses of all types.

To start out with what is an information system? I stated that information systems have been around for a long time, and found information systems defined as “(1) A set of people, procedures, and resources that collects, transforms, and disseminates information in an organization. (2) A system that accepts data resources as input and processes them into information products as output.” (Management Information Systems) Information systems therefore were originally people gathering information and processing it into useable data through a set of defined steps. For many companies, IS is the name of the department responsible for computers, networking ...

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