Dual Approaches for Integrating Ethics into the Information Systems Curriculum
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Participants will experience and compare two approaches to introducing ethics into the MIS curriculum. Organizers, experienced in teaching ethics, will help participants evaluate different pedagogical options in terms of the needs and challenges of specific academic programs.
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Dual Approaches for Integrating Ethics into the Information Systems Curriculum
- 1. Dual Approaches: Integrating ethics into the information systems curriculum José A. Cruz-Cruz William J. Frey University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez June 14, 2015
- 2. Agenda • A Little Background: From Engineering to Business Administration • Our experience with and contribution to ABET Ethics Assessment • The EAC Matrix • Levels of Moral Development • Approach 1: The 3 Tests – An Ethical Decision-Making Framework • Demonstration • Comments & Pointers • Approach 2: Applied Theory • Examples • Framing Issues • Common Misconceptions • Appendix: Online Resources @ACBSPAccredited #ACBSP2015
- 3. 3 EAC Matrix Objectives x Curricular Targets x Moral Development Analytical Thinking Multiple Framing Reflective Exploration of Meaning Practical Reasoning ADMI 4016: Environment of Organization Mod-A SICI 3018: Information Systems Mod-B GERE 3009: Intro to Management Et Awareness Et Evaluation Integration ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔= Primary Focus = Secondary Focus = Actual Outcomes Prevention Value Realization
- 4. Five Levels of Moral Development: Macro and Micro Original description Original Micro Applications Redeployed in Macro Ethics Awareness: ability to perceive ethical issues in complex, concrete situations” Jose’s Pre-Test for Information Systems ability to pick out social, ethical, and global relevance in technologies and socio-technical systems. Evaluation: ability to assess a product or process in terms of different ethical approaches or tests Gray Matters as developed by Lockheed Martin (Scenario plus solution alternatives) evaluating and ranking different appropriate technology solutions to problems of community development Prevention: ability to anticipate ethical/social problems, and design counter measures Chuck Huff’s Social Impact Statements for “Ethical Issues in Software Design” (See computingcases.org) ability to uncover ethical problems through a socio-technical analysis J. Cruz and W. Frey, “An Effective Strategy for Integrating Ethics Across the Curriculum in Engineering: An ABET 2000 Challenge”, Science and Engineering Ethics (2003) 9, 543-568
- 5. Five Levels of Moral Development: Macro and Micro Original description Original Micro Applications Redeployed in Macro Ethics Integration: ability to integrate ethical considerations into an activity Ethics of Teamwork: integrating value in groups: •Discovery •Translation •Verification ability to treat social, ethical, and global value as ends in the designing activity Value Realization: ability to recognize and exploit opportunities for realizing moral value Moral Exemplars in business Students identify virtues that pertain to Muhammad Yunus, Fred Cuny, Carmen Segarra and Sallie Krawcheck. ability to recognize and exploit opportunities for promoting personal and social well-being •Value Sensitive Design •Participatory Design J. Cruz and W. Frey, “An Effective Strategy for Integrating Ethics Across the Curriculum in Engineering: An ABET 2000 Challenge”, Science and Engineering Ethics (2003) 9, 543-568
- 6. Teaching Ethics in Business Administration • Environment of the Organization • Ethics of Teamwork • Moral Exemplars in Business • Responsible Choice in Appropriate Technology • Responsible Dissent in Hughes Aircraft Case • Macro-Ethics in Business: Encuentros (“Encounters”) • Introduction to Information Systems • Two Approaches: Framing scenarios with ethics tests or with ethical approaches
- 7. Approach 1: The Three Tests A Pedagogical Demonstration
- 8. Agenda (for Approach 1) • You’ll evaluate some short scenarios (individually) • We’ll discuss one or two of them • I’ll present a framework for Ethical Problem Solving / Decision-Making • You’ll have the opportunity to re-visit / re-evaluate the scenarios • We’ll discuss some of the other scenarios
- 9. Information Systems Related Scenarios • For each of the scenarios reflect on the following three questions: • 1. Do you think this situation is common/realistic? • Yes or No • 2. Do you consider this situation Ethical or not? • Ethical or Unethical • 3. Do you think others may disagree with you? • Yes or No
- 10. Ethical Decision Making Tests1, 2 • REVERSIBILITY: Would I think this is a good choice if I where among those affected by it? • PUBLICITY: Would I want this choice published in the newspaper? • HARM: Does this choice cause harm? Less harm than other alternatives?
- 11. Group Discussion • Discuss two or three scenarios with the aid of the ethical decision-making guide and the ethics tests. • Did you perception of the situation change? • How would you handle a similar situation in the future?
- 12. Why is Ethics Important? • Our awareness of ethics can affect our behavior in positive ways. • If we incorporate ethical considerations early in the decision- making process we can avoid difficult ethical choices later on. • Information Technology has changed our Society leading to new ethical situations. (Laudon, et al., 1996, p.513) • Everybody's responsibility. (Kallman & Grillo, 1996, p.19)
- 13. Conclusion •Be Ethical, be WISE!
- 14. Issues in Computer Ethics (1-5 are from Laudon, et al., 1996, p.510-553) • Privacy (Information and otherwise) • Property Rights (Intellectual) • System Quality (Responsibility and Risks) • Quality of Life (Work, Environment, etc.) • Information Systems (Security, crimes, etc.) • Use of Power • Risk and Reliability • Equity and Access, • Honesty and Deception • Many Others
- 15. Ethical Decision Making1 • State the ethical issue (problem/conflict/dilemma) • Review/state the relevant facts (real problem?) • Identify stakeholders (those affected + & -) • Identify or develop options (the more the better) • Assess each option (Feasible?, Ethical?) • Apply some tests (Harm, Publicity, Reversibility) • Select, pursue and implement an option • Think about what you could do to make it less likely that you will have to face such a decision again.
- 16. Where to go from here? (Students have asked) • Take a formal course in Ethics • Seek out and read related news stories and articles • Study relevant Professional & Corporate Codes of Conduct • Read ethics related chapters and excerpts available in many textbooks • Discuss related situations (scenarios or experiences) with your colleagues or your organization’s ethics officer.
- 17. References / Notes • References: • Ernest A. Kallman and John P. Grillo, Ethical Decision Making and Information Technology, 2nd ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. • Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol G. Traver and Jane P. Laudon, Information Technology and Society, 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1996 • June J. Parsons and Dan Oja, Computers, Technology and Society, Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1997 • Notes: • 1. Based on handouts from Ethics in BSE Retreat, “A Guide for Ethical Decision Making” (based on models/guidelines by Dr. Vivian Weil and Dr. Michael Davis) • 2. (Laudon, et al., 1996, p.514) and (Kallman & Grillo, 1996, p.11) • 3. (Parsons and Oja, 1997, pp.PRV-32, PRV-33)
- 18. Problem-solving (on analogy with design) • Problem Specification • Classify the problem as a conflict, factual or conceptual disagreement • Solution Generation • Develop solution alternatives • Solution Testing • Reversibility, Harm, Publicity • Solution Implementation • Resource, Interest, and technical constraints
- 20. Kant’s Categorical Imperative • Act only on that maxim that can be converted into a universal law • Formulate the maxim (= personal rule) • Universalize the maxim (apply to everybody) • Check for Contradiction • Is the maxim self-defeating when applied to everybody? • Do I make myself the exception in my maxim (and will the opposite for everybody else)
- 21. Example • Circle of Cheating • Maxim: If I have not studied for the exam, I ought to copy from someone else’s exam • Universal Law: Everybody should copy from someone else’s exam when he or she has not studied • Test for contradiction: I actually want others to study and make myself the exception in my maxim.
- 22. Kant’s Formula of the End • Treat others (yourself included) always as an end and never merely as a means. • My friend asking my sister out on a date so he could make his ex-girlfriend jealous. • Treating others as ends excludes… • Manipulation, Force, Fraud, Deception… • Difficulty of distinguishing treating as a means from treating merely as a means • Students treat teachers as means • But when they cheat they treat teachers merely as means
- 23. Utilitarianism • Principle of Utilitarianism • Act so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. • Maximizes value and minimizes disvalue • Partially encapsulated in the Harm Test • Utilitarianism sorts consequences into benefits and harms, maximizing the first and minimizing the latter • The Harm test focuses only on negative consequences. (Other tests pick up benefits.) • Utilitarianism needs to be supplemented with some account of distributive justice • Not just net results but how these are distributed among stakeholders
- 24. Framing Issues Categorical Imperative • Based on principle of non- contradiction • Requires ability to abstract from situation and frame maxim • Top Down • Reason from principle to concrete • Focus on evaluative perspective • Outside perspective of judge Reversibility • Based on role-taking • Requires imagination and empathy • Requires ability to hone in on moral salience • Bottom Up • Work from moral particulars to broader feature • Focus on participatory perspective • Inside perspective of agent
- 25. Common Misconceptions Categorical Imperative • Difficult transitioning from maxim to form of universal law • Sneaking in consequences through the backdoor • Mistaking universality (taken formally) with maximizing benefits • (Centered in evaluative standpoint) Reversibility • Scylla • Self absorption. Failure to transcend egocentric standpoint • Charybdis • Vicarious Possession. Getting lost in perspective of the other • Shifting person or perspective • Moving from participatory to evaluative perspective • Switching agents • (Centered in participant standpoint)
- 26. Questions or Comments? • You may contact us at: • j.cruz@upr.edu or • williamjoseph.frey@upr.edu
- 28. Ethics Resources Online • Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility • http://www.cpsr.org/ • Center for Democracy and Technology • http://www.cdt.org/ • Electronic Frontier Foundation • http://www.eff.org/ • Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) • http://www.epic.org/
- 29. Ethics Resources Online (continued) • Computing Cases • http://computingcases.org/ • Online Ethics • http://onlineethics.org • EAC Toolkit • http://cnx.org/lenses/eactoolkit/eactoolkit • Ethics Resource Center • http://www.ethics.org/ • Markkula Center for Applied Ethics • http://www.scu.edu/ethics/
Editor's Notes
- The EAC Matrix identifies course modules that address ethics and skills objectives. After identifying key interventions, the matrix explores their depth by identifying the kind of skill development brought about. For example, Module A in the course, “Environment of the Organization”, empowers students to use analytical thinking to bring about specific evaluations. Module B in “Information Systems”, helps students to become aware of multiple framing and to use it in the imaginative exploration and evaluation of different business practices and activities. (Objectives from “Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession”, Colby et al., 2011).
- A summary of the first three levels. The first column provides a generic description of each level of development. The second column applies these levels to appropriate technology and community engagement projects. (This is taken from our interdisciplinary, NSF-funded project, “Cultivating Responsible Well-Being in STEM,” NSF SES-14494898.) The final column provides exercises that provide students an opportunity to practice the skills associated with each level.
- A summary of the fourth and fifth levels. The Integration and Value Realization levels make use of Value Sensitive Design and Participatory Design. The authors discuss how they have implemented these levels in UPRM’s College of Business Administration in: “Value Integration: From Educational Computer Games to Academic Communities.” Technology & Society Magazine. Spring 2013: 31-35.
- Dr. Frey has been teaching ethics in his “Environment of the Organization” course, and Dr. Cruz has been teaching ethics in his “Introduction to Information Systems course”. In “Environment of the Organization”, Frey examines how different “environments” constrain and enable business activities. Dr. Cruz uses decision-making scenarios to introduce Information Systems students to ethics.
- The presenters will demonstrate the exercise that Dr. Cruz uses in his Introduction to Information Systems course.
- This is the agenda of the exercise that Dr. Cruz carries out in his MIS class. The following slides illustrate the exercise.
- These questions help students recognize that they might encounter situations like this in their careers. They also learn, through discussion and reflection, that others facing these situations may have different points of view.
- First, students informally and freely discuss one or more of the Pre-Test scenarios. After this, they view this slide to learn how different ethics tests can help them frame and focus their ethical discussions. Dr. Cruz frames student comments made during the informal discussion in terms of the ethics tests. This shows students that they are already thinking in terms of these tests, a fact born out by recent research in moral psychology.
- Students revisit the scenarios, this time using the three ethics tests to frame their discussion. With the three tests in their “ethics toolkit”, students conduct a more focused discussion and exhibit better argumentation.
- This slide underscores the fact that ethical reflection focuses and refines business conduct. Students learn to incorporate values and ethics into business decision-making and problem-solving processes.
- Dr. Cruz conveys to his students that applying the 3 tests helps them make better decisions and prevents unnecessary problems.
- This slide shows students the variety of issues that are related to computer ethics and information systems. As computers (IT/IS) become more ubiquitous, more and more ethical challenges emerge. Deborah Johnson, author of a widely used textbook in computer ethics, argues that computers not only pose new challenges but also generate new species of older, traditional problems. For example, privacy was an ethical challenge before computers came into dominance. Yet this technology “instruments” or empowers new and increasingly invasive routes to invading privacy and intimacy. See Deborah Johnson, Computer Ethics, 4th ed., Pearson.
- This is the complete 7 step ethical decision making framework. Once the 3 tests are covered in class, this framework is pretty straightforward for students. We learned of this decision-making framework from Vivian Weil and Michael Davis of the IIT Center for Ethics in the Professions. The emphasis here is to develop guidelines for ranking given solutions in terms of their ethical priority. See Michael Davis, (1999), Ethics and the University, Routledge.
- More than once, Dr. Cruz has had students come up after class and ask, how can they learn more about ethics. Now he uses this slide to encourage the students to learn and read as much as they can about ethical situations and solutions (before they have to encounter them in the real-world). This semester, students taking courses from both of us were interested in comparing and evaluating the different approaches we used to integrate ethics into business decision-making and problem-solving.
- To Dr. Cruz this slide reinforces the importance of proper attribution. Sometimes this can lead to a discussion about plagiarism.
- The reason we often choose bad options is because we can’t envision or imagine good ones. Instead of choosing the least bad of available alternatives, perhaps a better approach is to design good and even better options. Caroline Whitbeck has championed this approach through negative and positive argument. Negatively, she argues that ethical challenges do not take the form of multiple choice problems, that is, hard choices between a fixed number of given options. Positively, she argues that we must design our own solutions that realize value and promote ethical ends. Along these lines she argues that there is an analogy between ethics and design problems. The above slide builds on this analogy by recommending that business students approach ethical and practical challenges by deploying the software development cycle, an approach used in software engineering to design high quality software. The ethics tests of reversibility, harm, and publicity enter into the third stage, Solution Testing. But they also play a role in the other stages of this design cycle. See Caroline Whitbeck, (2012), Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research, Cambridge University Press.
- In the following slides Dr. Frey discusses some important lessons learned from teaching ethical theories, such as, the Categorical Imperative or Utilitarianism.
- The Categorical Imperative is one of five formulations that Kant gives for the principle of Respect for Autonomy. It deploys a self-defeating test; if a personal rule breaks down when universalized, then it is self-defeating and violates the Categorical Imperative. Generally, what one wants is to be, for example, a liar in a world of truth-tellers. That way, one’s lie (a personal rule) would work because all others (i.e., truth-tellers) would believe it. So one wants one thing in one’s personal rules and the opposition for everybody else. One wants to make oneself the exception to the rule.
- The Circle of Cheating plays on the explanation given in the previous slide. Here the personal rule of cheating breaks down because if everybody cheats, then nobody has bothered to study, and there is no exam on which one can cheat. In other words, cheating, when applied to everybody, is self-defeating. When one cheats, one wants to be a cheater in a world of honest exam-takers.
- The Formula of the End is another version Kant gives for his principle of Respect for Autonomy. I violate the Categorical Imperative when I seek to make myself the exception. When I succeed, I treat everyone else as a means to my ends or interests. In this way, Kant pivots from the Categorical Imperative to the Formula of the End. As the above slide implies, I treat others merely as means when I do things to circumvent their autonomy. I cheat, lie to, manipulate, force, or defraud other persons to get them to do my will without bothering to persuade them or to appeal to their interests. Dr. Frey’s favorite example here is asking someone out on a date to make one’s ex-boyfriend (or girlfriend) jealous. One is not directly interested in the other person but seeks merely to use this person as a means to some other end.
- The ethical approach of Utilitarianism is easy to teach but difficult to apply. For example, one does not just make a list of consequences. One must sort these out into benefits and harms. Then, in order to weigh the one against the other, they must be compared in terms of probability and magnitude. Harms (and benefits) of high probability and magnitude count heavily in any Utilitarian calculation. But Utilitarianism is useful for those taking an economic approach to decision-making. For example, results can be quantified in terms of price under Preference Utilitarianism. Here the strength of a preference is factored into price in terms of “willingness to pay.” Thus, Utilitarianism lends itself more to quantification than other approaches like Kantian Formalism.
- The ethics tests at least partially encapsulate different ethical approaches. So, for example, the reversibility test encapsulates intuitively the formal application of Kant’s Categorical Imperative or Formula of the End. Certainly a reversible action would not be self-defeating and would, therefore, pass Kant’s test. But reversibility requires more than just avoiding self-defeating rules of actions. It requires that we project ourselves imaginatively into the position of those on the “receiving end” of the action we are contemplating. “Well, it’s like your brain has to leave your head and go into the other guy’s head and then come back into your head; but you still see it like it was in the other guy’s head….” See Michael Pritchard, (1996), Reasonable Children: moral education and moral learning, University of Kansas Press: 157. Pritchard is quoting a 10-year old boy.
- Over the years, we have compiled a list of different ways in which students misconceive and misuse both the Categorical Imperative and the Reversibility Test. When using the Categorical Imperative, students slip out of the logical examination for self-contradiction and into an empirical search for consequences. Kant is very clear on his rejection of this; he wants to ground his principle of morality on formal principles and not on any kind of consequentialism. Reversibility poses a different set of misconceptions. Students, when projecting into the standpoint of another, can go too far or not far enough. Going too far, they become lost in the perspective of the other and take on that person’s values and foibles. On the other extreme, they may fail to leave their own egocentric standpoint and find in the other the mirror-image of their own interests and prejudices. Reversibility, based on what psychologists call “role-taking,” works best when one finds the mean between these extremes of too much and too little engagement with the other. (On role-taking, see Lapsley, D. K. (1996). Moral Psychology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. On the Scylla and Charybdis of role-taking, see Nancy Sherman, "Empathy and Imagination", Midwest Studies In Philosophy, V22, pp. 82–119, 1998 )