Morality and Computers: Attitudes and Differences in Moral Judgments

Business ethics is an emerging area of research in many subfields of management, including information systems (IS). Empirical IS research has studied differences in users' attitudes and in moral judgments regarding ethical computer-related behavior. This study applied the “domains of morality” approach to determine how users felt about certain computer-related behaviors. Vignettes describing ethical dilemmas involving computer technology (e.g., uploading a computer virus on an electronic network/bulletin board system) were presented to a sample of Internet users. The research findings offered several interesting and, in some cases, unexpected results. The empirical results indicated that older computer users have a less permissive sense of what is right and wrong for an illegal game. When computers were used to test a banned game, men and women differed in their assessment of its appropriateness. A surprising finding was that participants were not likely to endorse civil liberties, and were more concerned about the harm to, and violations of, social norms when the scenario described a situation involving a computer virus. How users perceive, prejudge, and discriminate computer ethics and abusive computer actions raises numerous questions and implications for IS researchers, IS practitioners, and policy makers. The results of this study foster a better understanding of Internet users' moral categorization of specific computer behaviors and, hopefully, help to further reduce risks and vulnerabilities of systems by identifying computer actions deemed ethically acceptable by users. Opportunities for IS researchers to further explore this timely issue are also discussed.