[AISWorld] PACIS 2016- "Ethics and Information Systems" track

[Angsana T.]

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to consider submitting a paper to the "Ethics
and Information Systems" track at PACIS 2016. The growing awareness in
society of the important role of businesses in addressing broader societal
issues indicates that, in the future, IS management and governance should
expand to consider ethical issues more closely, especially by incorporating
the concerns of a wider group of parties, beyond the supply chain of each
organization. In short, management and governance should shift towards a
stewardship view, away from a transactional and agentic view (Davis,
Schoorman & Donaldson, 1997).

PACIS 2016 will be held in Chiayi, Taiwan from June 27 to July 1. The
deadline for submissions is Friday, March 4, 2016 and the instructions for
authors can be found here: http://www.pacis2016.org/Page/Index/78
<https://outlook.aut.ac.nz/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=wZkt7fYPX4OOI-PHf4FiE5hiqaGL4xlSwLu98n2a3lbRF3K_AzTTCGgAdAB0AHAAOgAvAC8AdwB3AHcALgBwAGEAYwBpAHMAMgAwADEANgAuAG8AcgBnAC8AUABhAGcAZQAvAEkAbgBkAGUAeAAvADcAOAA.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.pacis2016.org%2fPage%2fIndex%2f78>

Sincerely,
Track Co-Chairs:
Harminder Singh (hsingh at aut.ac.nz),
Angsana Techatassanasoontorn (angsana at aut.ac.nz),
Antonio Díaz Andrade (antonio.diaz at aut.ac.nz),
Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
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# Introduction:

“The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit,
without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings.” (Pope
Francis, Laudato Si, 2015)

This track calls for papers that examine the role of ethics in the use,
management and development of information systems (IS). As individuals and
organizations interact with information technology (IT) daily, they
encounter a variety of ethical issues, such as privacy, sustainability, and
social equity. However, research in the IS field on ethical issues is
either minimal or fragmented (Smith, 2002; Mingers & Walsham, 2010). This
is surprising, given the increased pervasiveness of IS in organizations and
society, but understandable, given the tendency among policy-makers and
businesspeople to focus on its narrow functional features and economic
benefits, while understating its broader and long-term effects. This track
encourages researchers to contribute to this field by crafting connections
across diverse phenomena based on shared underlying principles and theories
to provide guidance to academics, practitioners and policymakers.

# Overview:
The growing ubiquity of IT in society over the last few decades has
traditionally been accompanied by praises for the efficiency savings it has
led to. These have taken the form of improved coordination, cheaper
communication, and an increase in the ease of carrying out transactions,
which have been visible across all layers of society - e.g., individuals,
organizations, and communities – as well as at different levels of economic
activity – e.g., businesses, supply chains, and industries.

However, there is growing interest in adopting a broader perspective on the
impacts of IT on societies, as seen in the recent special issues in the
Information Systems Journal (“The Dark Side of IT, May 2015) and MIS
Quarterly (“ICT and Social Challenges”, Forthcoming). A few issues drive
this revived attention on the broader repercussions of IT. First, there is
a growing awareness that IT-enabled phenomena, such as the sharing economy
(e.g., AirBnB), on-demand services (e.g., Uber, Task Rabbit), and markets
for micro-tasks (e.g., Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), are either leveraging on
or aggravating societal challenges, such as income inequality, regulatory
capture by corporations, and the shrinking role of the state (Kuttner,
2013; Singer, 2014). Second, the rapid growth of the market for mobile
computing devices targeted at consumers, whose use spills over into
workplaces, has led to concern over the disposal of electronic waste, which
is often sent to less economically-advanced countries. Alongside these
issues are other concerns, such as the increased monitoring of individual
activities enabled by the widespread use of mobile devices and online
interaction (Boyd & Crawford, 2012; Newell & Marabelli, 2015), the
hollowing-out of technical careers in industrialized countries because of
the extensive use of outsourcing and automation (Brynjolfsson & McAfee,
2011), and various forms of IT-enabled crime.

While research on these developments, most of which gained prominence over
the last few years, has been carried out, the focus has been on their
functional features, outcomes, and contextual applications. Although useful
and valuable, what has been rarer is research on how these phenomena embody
ethical choices, which are often latent and not made explicit (Sojer et al.
2014). For example, some on-demand services are seen as attempts at ethical
arbitrage, as their business model exploits loopholes in regulations
(Lazonick & Mazzucato, 2013). Another example is that while crowdsourcing
the completion of micro-tasks may be efficient for firms, the global nature
of the platforms leads to a “race to the bottom” in terms of the wages paid
to the workers. A third illustration is the use of staff scheduling
information systems that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours for
employees, but instead place them “on demand” so that they have to appear
for work at very short notice. Finally, although the “sharing economy”
appears to be an efficient mechanism for individuals to obtain more value
from their assets, this benefit is only available for those who own assets
in the first place, thereby serving to entrench socio-economic differences.

The phenomena listed above may seem to be a disparate collection. However,
they are related in that studying them requires an understanding of ethical
principles and an appreciation of the value of examining impacts across
multiple time horizons and levels of analysis when making decisions (Culnan
& Williams, 2009). Studying these phenomena is important because it
provides a more comprehensive picture of the impact of IT on our societies,
and surfaces the trade-offs that are being made, sometimes subtly and at
other times, more obviously. Who gains and loses, and when, because of
decisions made about the design, use, and management of information
systems? Are these outcomes apparent to those responsible for their staff
and systems (Chatteree, Sarker & Valacich, 2015)?  Do such decisions differ
across public and private sector organizations? Have such issues become
more prevalent now, or are they just more visible, given the proliferation
in the number of channels individuals can use to broadcast their cases?

# Topics
Researchers are encouraged to submit papers on the ethical aspects of IS
use, management and development across all levels of analysis: individual,
organizational, industrial and national. Possible topics of interest in
this track include, but are not limited to:
● Frameworks or models for IS architecture that incorporate ethical
concerns; ● The governance of algorithms used in key public and/or private
processes, such as security, utilities, and finance; ● Measuring the
externalities of the sharing economy; ● Accounting for e-waste during the
IS planning process; ● The impact of various innovations on socio-economic
differences and well-being of employees and citizens; ● Ethical and
societal impact of government and organizational policies and practices
that promote economic benefits of IT; ● Ethical and societal implications
of new media and IT; ● Frameworks to evaluate ethical impacts of IT; We
expect both completed papers and research-in-progress papers for this
track, using a variety of methodologies. We also encourage workshops on
topics such as:
● Teaching ethics as part of information systems courses; ● Ethical
frameworks and their application; ● Planning, development and use of
socially inclusive technology

References
● Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data:
Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.
Information, communication & society, 15(5), 662-679.
● Brynjolfsson E, and MacAfee, A. (2011) Race Against The Machine: How the
Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and
Irreversibly Transforming Employment. Lexington, MA: Digital Frontier Press.
● Culnan, M. J., & Williams, C. C. (2009). How ethics can enhance
organizational privacy: lessons from the Choicepoint and TJX data breaches.
MIS Quarterly, 673-687.
● Davis, J. H., Schoorman, F. D., & Donaldson, L. (1997). Toward a
stewardship theory of management. Academy of Management Review, 22(1),
20-47.
● Kuttner, R. (2013). The Task Rabbit Economy. The American Prospect,
October 10.  http://prospect.org/article/task-rabbit-economy
<https://outlook.aut.ac.nz/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=QNy7QwzJ8jkt7yjyWDtkwAl_D10PJM-TI_9dis63dHbRF3K_AzTTCGgAdAB0AHAAOgAvAC8AcAByAG8AcwBwAGUAYwB0AC4AbwByAGcALwBhAHIAdABpAGMAbABlAC8AdABhAHMAawAtAHIAYQBiAGIAaQB0AC0AZQBjAG8AbgBvAG0AeQA.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fprospect.org%2farticle%2ftask-rabbit-economy>
(Accessed June 29 2015)
● Lazonick, W., & Mazzucato, M. (2013). The risk-reward nexus in the
innovation-inequality relationship: who takes the risks? Who gets the
rewards?. Industrial and Corporate Change, 22(4), 1093-1128.
● Mingers, J., & Walsham, G. (2010). Toward ethical information systems:
the contribution of discourse ethics. MIS Quarterly, 34(4), 833-854.
● Newell, S., & Marabelli, M. (2015). Strategic opportunities (and
challenges) of algorithmic decision-making: A call for action on the
long-term societal effects of ‘datification’. The Journal of Strategic
Information Systems, 24(1), 3-14.
● Singer, N. (2014). In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and
Uncertainty. New York Times, August 16.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/technology/in-the-sharing-economy-workers-find-both-freedom-and-uncertainty.html
<https://outlook.aut.ac.nz/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=Cm76TVaiXuEKwONF26DDDZ13Qt95US5ObHaHP4B-sk7RF3K_AzTTCGgAdAB0AHAAOgAvAC8AdwB3AHcALgBuAHkAdABpAG0AZQBzAC4AYwBvAG0ALwAyADAAMQA0AC8AMAA4AC8AMQA3AC8AdABlAGMAaABuAG8AbABvAGcAeQAvAGkAbgAtAHQAaABlAC0AcwBoAGEAcgBpAG4AZwAtAGUAYwBvAG4AbwBtAHkALQB3AG8AcgBrAGUAcgBzAC0AZgBpAG4AZAAtAGIAbwB0AGgALQBmAHIAZQBlAGQAbwBtAC0AYQBuAGQALQB1AG4AYwBlAHIAdABhAGkAbgB0AHkALgBoAHQAbQBsAA..&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2f2014%2f08%2f17%2ftechnology%2fin-the-sharing-economy-workers-find-both-freedom-and-uncertainty.html>
(Accessed June 29 2015) ● Smith, H. J. (2002). Ethics and information
systems: Resolving the quandaries. ACM SIGMIS Database, 33(3), 8-22.
● Sojer, M., Alexy, O., Kleinknecht, S., & Henkel, J. (2014). Understanding
the Drivers of Unethical Programming Behavior: The Inappropriate Reuse of
Internet-Accessible Code. Journal of Management Information Systems, 31(3),
287-325.
● Chatterjee, S. Sarker, S. &  Valacich, J. S. (2015) The Behavioral Roots
of Information Systems Security: Exploring Key Factors Related to Unethical
IT Use, Journal of Management Information Systems, 31(4), 49-87.