Track: Organizational Systems and Technology
Minitrack: Ethical Challenges in Cyberspace Research and Design

Papers in this mini-track examine ethical issues emerging from the design and adoption of information systems in a globally networked world. These issues include the challenges of work-life balance, virtual world behavior, privacy, intellectual property, accuracy, accountability, and the cultural dimension of each of these issues. Papers present both conceptual and empirical research on the challenges embedded in our work as professionals and academics in the system sciences. As we make personal and professional decisions for the design and adoption of information technologies, we make implicit (and sometimes explicit) choices to enable or inhibit particular behaviors. Such decisions can have ethical dimensions and consequences that may not always be evident, and this mini-track is intended to stimulate a thoughtful discourse on these ethical challenges.

Examples of specific issues and challenges that this mini-track will cover are the following:

• How do the new capabilities of web 2.0 change the approaches to ethical discourse?

• Norms of behavior in virtual worlds: how does a diversity of norms affect individual identity and behavior in non-virtual worlds (is there a difference?)

• How does Agile Design handle ethical issues?

• How does a sense of personal identity change as the distinction between “public” and “private” becomes blurred (or porous) with technology-enabled social networking?

• How do the ethical norms of “digital natives” differ from prior generations?

• Organizational policy and knowledge management: should organizations adapt or embrace the behavioral norms of digital natives as they enter the knowledge work force? (If so, how?)

• If the need exists to increase the awareness of ethical issues for students in management and information studies, as some studies would suggest, how can we do this?

• Wellness and human flourishing: how can we balance work and personal life in a hyper-connected world?

• How can we manage the conflicting needs for public information with the personal expectations of privacy (in health care)?

• Can/should government policy on intellectual property be responsive to the public values as expressed through emerging capabilities of e-government feedback mechanisms?

• How we can assess the effectiveness of public policy intended to assure social justice and equity of information access?

• What are the implications of current laws—both U.S. and non-U.S.—on property and privacy?

• How can we make visible the ethical dimensions of decision making in design, implementation, and use of information technology, and how can we make transparent the decision-making in these processes?
   

Minitrack Co-chairs:

Robert M. Mason (Primary Contact)
The Information School
MGH 370M
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-2840
Phone: 206-221-5623
Fax: 206-616-3152
Email: rmmason@u.washington.edu

Kevin Gallagher
Business Informatics Department College of Informatics
Northern Kentucky University
AS&T Building Office 233
Nunn Dr.
Highland Heights, KY 41099
Phone: 859-572-7716
Email: kevin.gallagher@nku.edu

Antonino Vaccaro
Carnegie Mellon University
Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Baker Hall 131
Pittsburgh PA 15213
Phone: 412-320-1778
Fax: 412-268-3757
Email: vaccaro@andrew.cmu.edu