TITLE- Ethics of IT & Business

Submitted ByHarshit Manaktala(R.no.24) Ananya Pratap Singh(R.no.36) Tanvi Praveen(R.no. )

Of Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA Symbiosis International University PUNE On

Under the Guidance of Mrs.Ranjul Rastogi

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Certificate
The project entitled Ethics of IT & Ethics Submitted to Symbiosis Law school, Noida for Managerial Economics as part of Internal assessment is based on our original work carried out under the guidance of Mrs. Ranjul Rastogi . The research work has not been submitted elsewhere for award of any degree. The material borrowed from other sources and incorporated in the thesis has been duly acknowledged. We understand that we, ourself could be held responsible and accountable for plagiarism, if any, detected later on.

Signature Of the Candidates Date:

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take immense pleasure in thanking Mrs. Ranjul rastogi, our beloved Professor for having permitted me to carry out this project work.

Needless to mention that Mrs. Ranjul rastogi course in charge Managerial Economics, who had been a source of inspiration and for his timely guidance in the conduct of our project work. Finally, yet importantly, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my beloved parents for their blessings, my friends/classmates for their help and wishes for the successful completion of this project.

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Index S.No
1. Introduction 2. Description Of Business ethics 3. Social Responsibilities Of Business 4.
Important ethical principles that a business should follow

Name of Topic

Page No.
5 6 6,7 8 9 10,11 11 12,13,14

5. How To implement Business Ethics 6. Information Technology: Ethical Issues 7. Position of Ethical Problems In India 8. Challenges and issues raised by Usage of
Ethics in IT.

9. Bibliography

14

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INTRODUCTION
Ethics in business & IT are nothing but the dos and donts by the business users in the business. In other words it could be referred as set of principles a common man ought to follow while using Information Technology & Business. There should be ethics means that they should be conducted according to certain self recognized moral standards. Few unethical elements in the present day business are cheating, stealing, lying, bribing, corrupting etc. A person should be aware of the ethics in the business & IT and should follow them in order to maintain ecological balance in the society. Ethics in Business Business ethics reflects the philosophy of business, one of whose aims is to determine the fundamental purposes of a company. If a company's purpose is to maximize shareholder returns, then sacrificing profits to other concerns is a violation of its fiduciary responsibility. Corporate entities are legally considered as persons in USA and in most nations. The 'corporate persons' are legally entitled to the rights and liabilities due to citizens as persons. Economist Milton Friedman1 writes that corporate executives' "responsibility... generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom". Ethics in Information Technology Every advancement in Information Technology is accompanied by at least one ethical quandary. From Facebook to email updates, computer users are unaware of the fine balance between ethics and profit struck by providers. Software developers, businesses and individuals must think about the rights and wrongs of using Information Technology every day. The fundamental issues underlying the world of Information Technology are the end user's expectation of privacy and the provider's ethical duty to use applications or email responsibly.

Friedman, Milton (1970-09-13). "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved March 11, 2011.

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DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS ETHICS

The study and examination of moral and social responsibility in relation to business practice and decision making in business is known as Business Ethics .The term business is commonly referred to the commercial activities achieved at making profit. But gradually there is a substantial change in the way in which people viewed the business. In the past primary objective of a business was profit maximization but the present perspectives on business objectives is not maximization. It is profit maximization in long run besides fulfilling the ethics in the business. A business is regarded as social institution forming integral part of social systems .The business is viewed as subsystem to the social system. This is because any type of social system is influenced by 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The way the business functions The organization of the business Innovations Transmission and diffusion of information. New ideas etc.

They have either direct or indirect effect on the society.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS

A firm expresses its responsibility to the society by reacting in either orboth of the following two ways. 1. The manner in which it carries out its own business activities. 2. The welfare activities it takes upon itself as an additional function.

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RESPONSIBILITY TO SHARE HOLDERS

1. To make the shareholders feel secured by protecting their investments. 2. To be transparent. 3. To allow them to participate in decision making. 4. To ensure them good dividends.

RESPONSIBILITY TO EMPLOYEES
1. To offer employees fair wages 2. To establish better working conditions 3. To provide them fair work standards and norms. 4. To provide labor welfare activities 5. To educate the employees by adopting proper training methods. 6. To recognize and appreciate the work of the employees and reward 7. them or to promote them. 8. To install grievance handling cell. 9. To enable them to involve in decision making.

RESPONSIBILITY TO CONSUMERS
To improve the efficiency of the business by Increasing productivity. Improving quality. Suroothening distribution system. 1. To offer the products at reasonable prices. 2. To provide pre-purchase and post purchase service to the consumers. 3. To facilitate research and development to meet the customer requirements. 4. To maximize imperfections in distribution systems. 5. To provide sufficient and unnecessary information about the product.

RESPONSIBILITY TO COMMUNITY
1.
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To be pollution free and maintain ecological balance.

2. To invest more in research and development so as to improve the standard of living of the society. 3. To develop alternative recourses thereby preventing current resources being used from exhaustion. 4. To improve the efficiency of business operations. 5. To include in social welfare activities. 6. To contribute to national effort to build up a better society.

Important ethical principles that a business should follow

1. Do not deceive or cheat the customers by selling substandard or defective products by under measurement or any other means. EXAMPLE: Textile merchants in general clear the defective stock under the guise of discounts. 2. Do not report to hoarding, black marketing or profiteering. EXAMPLE: Management of theaters sell the tickets for higher prices during the initial days of release of a film starred by a crazy hero and heroine. 3. Do not destroy or distort competition. 4. Treasure sincerity and accuracy in advertising, labeling and packaging. EXAMPLE: Ads of automobiles in general provide false details in every aspect. 5. Do not furnish the image of competitors by unfair practices.

EXAMPLE: Publishing false information about courpetitors, bribing the retailers etc. 6. Make accurate business records so that transparency to the share holders canbe achieved. 7. Pay taxes and discharge other obligation promptly. 8. Do not form castle agreements, even informal, to control production, prices etc to the common detriment.

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EXAMPLE: Cellular network providers will be in informal castle agreements to control the traffic.

9. Refrain from secret kick backs or pay logs to customers, suppliers, administrators, politicians etc. 10. Ensure payment of fair wages and fair treatment to the internal customers as well as external customers and share holders.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT BUSINESS ETHICS

1. Trade associations can be formed by the business users which should 2. bloster the efforts of running any business with ethics. a) Formulation a code of conduct for their members which should contain code of ethics. b) Praising and rewarding those firms and business users who keep up the ethics in business & by publishing. Another fact which the business user must realize is the management and ownership must be separated because the owners always tend for profit maximization where as the managers case for ethics as they work for fixed salaries. 3. Managers must be a professional who possesses systematic knowledge and skill to perform certain responsible functions with authority and who is bound by certain ethics in the use of his knowledge and skill. 4. A professional has to have autonomy. 5. He/she has enormous responsibilities and shall not use his/her knowledge skill and authority unscrupulously shall not knowingly do distribute to his/her customers.

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Information Technology: Ethical Issues

Analysing and evaluating the impact of a new technology, such as INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, can be very difficult. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY does not only involve technological aspects, but also epistemology since the main component of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY is information which represents data, information,and knowledge. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY assists and extends the ability of mankind to capture, store, process, understand, use, create, and disseminate information at a speed and scale which had never been thought possible before. Some of the impact and changes of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY are obvious, but many are subtle. Benefits and costs need to be studied closely for a nation to progress and improve the quality of life for its citizens. Issues that have arisen fr om t h e a d o p t i o n o f I C T , s u c h a s t h e a p p l i c a t i o n o f automated teller machines (ATM), can be summarized as follows (Baase, 1997): 1. Unemployment The automation of work has caused creative destruction by eliminating some vocations and creating new ones. How does this affect the employment or unemployment of the work force of a nation? 2. Crime Stolen and counterfeit ATM cards are used to steal millions of dollars each year throughout the region. The anonymity of the machines makes some crimes easier and creates many new types of crimes. 3. Loss of privacy Transactions are transmitted and recorded in databases at banks, hospitals, shopping complexes, and various organizations, in the public or private sector. T h e c o n t e n t s o f e l e c t r o n i c c ommu n i c a t i o n s a n d d a t a b a s e s c a n p r o v i de imp o r t a n t and p r i v a t e i n f o rma t i o n to u n a u t ho r i se d i n d i v i du a l s and organizations if they are not securely guarded. 4. Errors Informa t ion input into the da t aba s e s i s prone to human and devi c e e r ror . Computer programmes that process the information may contain thousands of errors. These errors can create wrong and misleading information about individuals and organizations. Information and programme errors might result in financial loss, or even the loss of lives.
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5. Intellectual property Millions of dollars of software is illegally copied each year all over the world.This phenomenon has a great impact on the software industry in the region.Local and foreign software industries need consumers support all over the world to maintain the progress of technology. Most importantly, for the sake of growth in indigenous INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY innovation and invention, local software industries in Asia-Pacific need local support in protecting their intellectual property rights and investment. 6. Freedom of speech and press How do the constitutional rights of individuals in terms of the freedoms of speech and press apply to electronic media? How seriously do the problems of pornography, harassment, libel, and censorship on the net affect individuals and society? What government initiatives have been used in handling this crisis? 7. Digital Divide How does INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY affect local community life? The increasing use of computers has increased the separation of rich and poor, creating a digital divide between the information haves and have-nots. What subsidies and programmes have been provided by governments of the region to address the issue? 8. Professional Ethics How well trained and ethical are our INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY professionals in dispensing their duties? Faulty and useless systems that cause disasters and hardships to users might be built by incompetent INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY professionals. In dispensing their duties INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY professionals must demonstrate their best practices and standards as set by professional bodies for quality assurance.

Position of Ethical Problems in India

Indias efforts in promoting the adaptation of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY and in combating cybercrime can be summarized by the following legal enactments and initiatives: 1. The Information Technology Act 2000
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2. Rules under the Information Technology Act 3. The Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Act 4. The Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Rules 5. The Communication Convergence Bill 6. Computers and the Indian Law 7. Hacking and the Indian Law 8. Network Service Providers and the Indian Law 9. Cybercrime Police Station established in Bangalore, India: a first in Asia Pacific 10. Cybercrime Cells established in different states in India for investigating cybercrime. National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development has implemented an appropriate legal framework for the creation of an IT-based society,282 with due focus on intellectual property rights (IPR), secrecy, security and safety of information. India also established the Asian School of Cyber Laws (ASCL) in 1999 to facilitate awareness, study and advanced research in cyberlaw and information security. It provides education and training programmes in cyberlaw, information security and cybercrime investigation. In these fields, they have been working closely with several educational institutions, corporate houses, law enforcement agencies and Government departments, both within India and abroad.

Challenges and issues raised by Usage of Ethics in IT

There are many challenges and issues that need to be addressed by governments, NGOs, communities, professional organizations, and individuals at large in the process of embracing INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY as a tool for the development and progress of humanity in general. The main challenges and issues that we going to be engaged with include the digital divide, poverty, privacy, cybercrime, human rights, and gender inequality.

1.

Digital Divide

The ethical implications of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY pose considerable issues and challenges. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
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represents an unprecedented opportunity to provide new knowledge, services, and opportunities in rural and underserved areas. Both urban and rural consumers may benefit from INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYs by receiving: (i) enhanced access to information and communication across large distances, (ii) improved access to governmental and quasi-governmental resources and services, (iii) new credit and financial services available through palmtops and information kiosks, (iv) new o p p o r t u n i t i e s to d e s i g n , m anufacture and market their products thro u g h INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY-technological systems, (v) more and better education through computers, and (vi) superior medical advice, diagnosis or knowledge in their own region.

2.

Poverty

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYs are increasingly central in the effort to escape poverty. Few would argue that lack of access to information and communications technologies is an element of poverty in the way that insufficient nutrition or inadequate shelter is. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYs have repeatedly demonstrated their potential for alleviating poverty in the Asia-Pacific region, and in developing countries around the world. For example, poor people have experienced benefits in the form of: increased income; better health care; imp r o v e d e d u c a t i o n a n d t r a i n i n g ; a c c e s s t o j o b d e v e l o pme n t o p p o r t u n i t i e s ; engagement with government services; contacts with family and friends; enterprise d e v e l o pme n t o p p o r t u n i t i e s ; i n c r e a s e d a g r i c u l t u r a l p r o d u c t i v i t y , a n d s o o n . However, in probably all cases, these experiences have arisen from highly focused and locally intensive pilot projects that were experimental in nature

3.

Piracy

The results from the annual BSA Global Piracy Study for 2001 indicate that for the first time in the studys history , the world piracy rate increased in two consecutive years, i.e. in the year 2000 and 2001 .T he 2001 piracy rate of 40 percent is a marked increase from 37 percent in 2000. And, both years were up from the low set in 1999 at 36 percent.Since the study began in 1994, a steady decrease in the rate of software piracy was observed. In 2001, the effect of a
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worldwide economic slowdown has hit technology spending particularly hard. The results of this year 2001 study indicate that software piracy rose in response to the pressure of the curtailed spending of the economic downturn. This is the first period of a general global economic slowdown since the study began in 1994. The results presented here suggest that the progress against piracy that was made in the 1990s is conditional. Compliance with software licensing is at risk of being considered an economic luxury that can be abandoned in difficult times.

4.

Cyber Crime

Regional and international trends in cybercrime take various forms, including theft, fraud, extortion, crimes against persons, sales of drugs and contraband, intellectual property piracy, theft of information, spread of malicious codes, denial of service attacks and cyberterrorism. There have been no detailed studies conducted exclusively on the issue of Cybercrime and Information Security as a whole. The 2002, a Computer Crime Survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute confirmed that the threat from computer crime and information security breaches continued unabated, and that the financial toll was mounting.

Conclusion
Business system as a subsystem to the social system should promote ethics for improving health and wealth of the society consistently. Holistic, integrated, and cohesive policies need to be established at international,regional, and national levels to ensure effective and beneficial application of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYs within the AsiaPacific region, especially in the poorer and inadequately serviced areas. Given that different countries of the region have expertise in different partsof this new technology, collaboration efforts between countries in the region will bring greater benefits in the application of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYs for development of the region.The most basic problems and challenges that public policymakers face trying to enhance INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY diffusion and development are the lack of both financial and trained human resources. The need for continuous collaboration in the development of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY is vital.

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Bibliography
1. Ethics, by Dr. M. Thenmozhi Professor Department of Management Studies Indian Institute of Technology Madras 2. Ethics of Information technology by Tengku Mohd T. Sembok, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. 3. http://www2.unescobkk.org/elib/publications. 4. http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IITMADRAS/Management_Science 5. Friedman, Milton (1970-09-13). "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved March 11, 2011. 6. IT TAKES MORE THAN ETHICS AICE2000 CONFERENCE PAPER by Chris Simpson http://www.cm.deakin.edu.au/AICE/aice2000/sim.pdf (09 October2000). 7. Duggal, http://www.cyberlaws.net/cyberindia/articles.htm

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