Ethical Decision Making In IT Work Environment – A Case Study

Discussion

Ethical practices are very important for an organization. Following the philosophies of ethics, help an organization to maintain a good environment within it. Decision-making is one of the major parts of the ethical policies. In the given case study, there is an organization named NewAge Pty Ltd that develops operating systems for tablets or computers manufactured by an organization named XYZ Pty Ltd. Software has been delivered to XYZ and one of the professionals of the testing team has discovered a loophole in the system. The professional informed the owner of organization regarding the error, but she said to ignore it and she allowed the employees to implement them in the new devices that were supposed to be launched within a due date (Morris, 2016). This has affected the organization, employees and the end users in many ways. These factors are mentioned in details in the discussion part of the report.  

The stakeholders involved in the case study are, Mr. McBright, Mrs. McDonald, testers and end users. Mr. McBright succeeded in applying the ethical value of informing Mrs. McDonald regarding the error found in the system. The testing team informed Mr. McBright regarding the error in the system; as a result, they applied the ethical decision-making approach. Mrs. McDonald was informed regarding the error in the system and inspite of that, she allowed the devices with defected system to be launched. As a result, she failed to apply the decision-making approaches in the situation.

The ethical dilemma that confronted stakeholders is that weather to rectify the error detected in the system or to deliver the operating system in its expected time. This ethical dilemma had created a problem for the organization (ACS Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf , 2018). Selecting any of the options would have created a mess among the customers. Mrs. McDonald had decided to launch the product with the defected system. This was done to meet the deadline of the project and deliver the products to the customers before the expected time. If the project was not launched and it was postponed in order to rectify the error in the system, customers would have reacted as well. Because both delivering the project in time and quality of product are important for the customers. Delay in any one factor would create a mess among the customers and it would also affect the organization.

The decision taken by the owner of the organization was to hide the fact that the system was defective; this has affected the stakeholders greatly. The consequences with respect to the stakeholders are as follows.

• Principals: These professionals act as decision makers of the organization. They pay for a system and then make it use in the organization for various purposes (Skills Framework for the Information Age., 2018). They are affected because were responsible for handling the situation if a loophole has been detected in the system.
• Partners: They are a group of professionals who work for better production of the company. The group includes staffs of operations team, support staff, legal experts, trainers, applications developers, installers and some more (How SFIA supports the skills management cycle — SFIA., 2018). This group of stakeholders involve in developing as well as testing the system, if they detected the error, they should have taken steps to stop Mrs McDonald from launching the defected products.  
• End users: They are the people who use the system in order to fulfill their necessities. This as a result helps in meeting the objectives of the company (Johnson, 2017). The launch of defected product has affected the end user greatly.

The stakeholders involved

The ACS code of conduct has certain values. The values of ethics are relative to the organization to some or the other extent. These values are as follows:

• The primary of the public interest: Mrs McDonald should have kept the public interest over the interest of business, sectional interests and personal interests (Morris, 2016). One of the public interest lies on the quality of product. This should have been maintained by the organization before launching the products.
• The enhancement of quality of life: This ethical value relates directly to the customers because delivering defective products affected the quality of life in a negative way.
• Honesty: Mr. McBright and Mrs McDonald should have been honest in their jobs and stopped the defected operating system from launching in the market (Lawrence & Weber, 2014). Mrs McDonald should have been honest to her post in the organization and taken necessary steps to stop the devices to be launched with defective operating system.
• Competence: Both the professionals did not work diligently and competently (Laudon & Laudon, 2015). Their ignorance to the problem has not only affected the end customers but also the stakeholders that were a part of the organization and did not know anything regarding the problem.
• Professionalism: Both the professionals should have maintained their professionalism by disclosing the defect in the operating system before installing it to the devices.
• Professional development: Though this ethical value does not relate to this case study directly but the launching of devices with defected operating system has greatly affected the professional development of the organization.

Some theories of ethical philosophy that is appropriate for Mrs. McDonald is the professionalism and public interests. She must have maintained the professionalism and not allowed the devices to be launched with a defected software system (Siedel, 2016). The public interests should have been maintained and she should have remembered that customers prefer quality of products to anything.

Students after graduation tend to get confused regarding their skills; they have no idea that which profession would be better according to the skills that they acquire. A carrier plan has been prepared with the help of SFIA 6, which helps students to understand the set of skills required for a particular plan (McKenzie, Coldwell-Neilson & Palmer, 2017). The carrier plan would help them to prepare in order to get their desired job. The carrier plan states some responsibilities that are to be followed by employees and the skills required for them. These skills are rated from 1-4,

1 indicates that the students do not require the skill but should have the ability to manage the skills if required

2 indicates that the employee should understand the background, its issues. He has the ability to handle critical situations and proceed further along with advising the clients according to the problems.

3 indicates that the employee should have detailed knowledge of the subject and are able to provide advice to the professionals. The professional should be able to integrate the capability into design and architecture.

4 indicates that the professional should have extensive knowledge regarding the subject.

IT architecture roles	Architecture board member	Architecture sponsor	IT architecture manager	IT architecture technology	IT architecture data	IT architecture application	IT architecture business	Program or project manager	IT designer
IT knowledge skills
IT application development methodologies and tools	2	2	3	4	4	4	2	3	3
Programming languages	1	1	3	4	4	4	2	2	3
Brokering applications	1	1	3	3	4	4	3	2	3
Information Consumer Applications	1	1	3	3	4	4	3	2	3
Storage management	1	1	3	4	4	2	2	2	3
Networks	1	1	3	4	3	2	2	2	3
Web-Based services	1	1	3	3	4	4	2	2	3
IT infrastructure	1	1	3	4	3	2	2	2	3
Asset management	1	1	4	4	3	3	3	2	3
Service level agreements	1	1	4	4	3	4	3	2	3
Systems	1	1	3	4	3	3	2	2	3
Migration planning	1	1	4	3	4	3	3	2	3
Management utilities	1	1	3	2	4	4	2	2	3
Infrastructure	1	1	3	4	3	4	2	2	3

                                                             Table 1: IT general knowledge skills

IT architecture roles	Architecture board member	Architecture sponsor	IT architecture Manager	IT architecture technology	IT architecture data	IT architecture application	IT architecture business	Program or project manager	IT designer
Technical IT skills
Software engineering	1	1	3	3	4	4	3	2	3
Security	1	1	3	4	3	4	3	2	3
System and network management	1	1	3	4	3	3	3	2	3
Transaction processing	1	1	3	4	3	4	3	2	3
Location and directory	1	1	3	4	4	3	3	2	3
User interface	1	1	3	4	4	4	3	2	3
International operations	1	1	3	4	3	3	2	2	2
Data interchange	1	1	3	4	4	3	2	2	3
Data management	1	1	3	4	4	3	2	2	3
Network services	1	1	3	4	3	3	2	2	3
Communication infrastructure	1	1	3	4	3	3	2	2	3

                                                          Table 2: Technical IT Skills required

Conclusion:

From the above report, it can be concluded that failure of proper decision making in ethical matters create problems for the customers as well as organization. The launch of a defective product might be harmful for customers and this as result would affect the image of the organization. It would affect the stakeholders involved in the project as well. These consequences are mentioned above in details.

References:

ACS Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf (2018). Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/ACS%20Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf

How SFIA supports the skills management cycle — SFIA. (2018).

 Retrieved from

 https://www.sfia-online.org/en/framework/sfia-6/skills-management

Johnson, C. E. (2017). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow. Sage Publications.

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2015). Management information systems (Vol. 8). Prentice Hall.

Lawrence, A. T., & Weber, J. (2014). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

McKenzie, S., Coldwell-Neilson, J., & Palmer, S. (2017). Informing the career development of IT students by understanding their career aspirations and skill development action plans. Australian Journal of Career Development, 26(1), 14-23.

Morris, R. (2016). The fundamentals of product design. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Morris, R. (2016). The fundamentals of product design. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Siedel, G. J. (2016). The three pillar model for business decisions: Strategy, law and ethics. Van Rye Publishing, LLC.

Skills Framework for the Information Age. (2018). Retrieved from

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skills_Framework_for_the_Information_Age