Macguire Center of Ethics

Assumptions. They seem so insignificant when strategy is on course, when almost every project the firm undertakes meets or exceeds the 15 percent ROI target. But, when things get rocky, when competition becomes intense and changing social trends disorient the company, assumptions become crucial. Faulty assumptions ns, like Lorelei, lure a strategy to disaster. Sound assumptions are like sextants that guide a strategy to success.

This paper describes some key defining characteristics of a special class of information systems known as Management Myth-Information Systems (MMIS) or story-telling information systems. MMIS are information systems [Mason, Richard O., Ian I. Mitroff. 1973. A program for research on management information systems. Management Sci. 19 (5, January) 475–487.] which present information to a decision-maker by means of stories. In an MMIS, a scientific datum by itself is not information. In an MMIS, information is information if and only if it is tied to an appropriate story or myth that has meaning to the individual who needs the information, the organization in which he is located, and the type of problem that he faces. This defines the key variables underlying an MMIS. As such, the study of the critical literature dealing with the nature and function of mythology becomes central to the design of MMIS. One of the key purposes of this paper is to suggest how the literature of mythology an...

It is only within the last ten years that the necessary technical machinery has been developed that enables us to construct models that even begin to approach the complexity of dialectical reasoning. This paper shows both the diversity and the complexity of the concepts that must be woven together in order to construct a dialectic 'process logic', i.e., a logic that unfolds over time. It utilizes such concepts as Rescher's and Manor's plausibility calculus, Toulmin's framework for argumentation, and Markov chains. The result is the essence of a design for a computer based dialectical policy system,

The American Political Science Review Vol. 77 constitutional and political thought, on the powers of Congress in foreign affairs, the general welfare and spending, and the regulation of commerce, and on the president's removal power. Text includes an introduction and epilogue by Loss, a table of cases, and an index.

Expert systems offer promise for decision-making support in stressful circumstances such as those that occur when law enforcement officials respond to hostage-taking incidents. These are life-or-death situations in which the costs of decision error are enormous. This paper reports on an expert system being developed and tested to aid police decision makers in hostage-taking incidents. Knowledge is represented by rules embedded in an incident-based decision-tm network. Four different decision makers who haw similar but distinct information needs are supported and their efforts are coordinate& by the system, which must function in real time as the crisis unfolds. Clear, concise, highly focused dialogue is required at the user interface since frequently only seconds are available in which to make a decision and implement it.

The alignment of worldwide computer-based information systems and integrated business strategies is critical to the success of multinational firms in a highly competitive global market. In this paper, information technology (l m solutions are explored that drive firms toward making economic decisions based on worldwide distributed knowledge. These solutions focus on a number of entities (or global business drivers) that identify where a firm can benefit most from the management and application of the technology. A variety of approaches for overcoming the barriers and risks of applying this technology are also discussed.

Recent changes in the health care industry that foster competition are drastically affecting hospital planning and marketing activities. Increased price competition, the development of less costly alternative health care delivery systems and providers, and the shift to prospective average-cost reimbursement for Medicare beneficiaries are major factors promoting a new emphasis on strategic hospital planning. Hospital information systems do not currently support the sophisticated data-collection and analysis requirements that will be needed to implement strategic planning activities. New data must be collected and old data must be analyzfd and stored in new ways. New hospital information systems designs are needed to cope with the change in the economic structure of the health care industry and its effects on hospital information needs. This paper proposes a system design for a management support system that will assist hospital administrators and planners in analyzing internal organizational data and external industry data to develop strategic planning objectives, strategies, and business plans. Analysis of the structure and process of hospital strategic planning was performed to identify the information needs of hospital planners. A prototype system is currently being implemented at the University of Arizona. The system provides an integrating framework for data base management systems, executive information systems, model management systems, and dialogue management systems. Objective analytical models and subjective strategic planning models are available to assist with idea structuring and decision processing.

Information-intensive services are being globally disaggregated as corporations respond to the pressures of increasing global competition, and take advantage of the opportunities made available by the progress of information technology and the emerging global work force. In order to globally disaggregate services, corporations must decide whether or not to carry out a service activity within the organization, and where to locate it, within or outside the geographic boundary of the home-base country. This paper analyzes the opportunities and challenges of global disaggregation of information-intensive services. Specifically, the paper proposes a taxonomy of disaggregation, and develops a theoretical framework that identifies the criteria and guidelines for successfully selecting service activities to be globally disaggregated.

There is much debate about social responsibility in the context of business and industry but not much in the context of information technology. We address this void by examining developments and innovations at the interface between information technologies and positive social change. In particular, the paper explores the role of information technology in three critical domains: connectivity, education, and economic development. The underlying premise of the authors is that information and communication technologies can serve agents of social innovation in underserved communities and that their consideration is vital to the success of many efforts that pursue global and sustainable change. We also submit that such issues ought to be integrated more centrally into the practice and scholarly mission of the IS discipline.

Whether Information Systems should or should not be part of the core business school curriculum is a recurring discussion in many universities. In this article, a task force of 40 prominent information systems scholars address the issue. They conclude that information systems is absolutely an essential body of knowledge for business school students to acquire as well as a key element of the business school's long-run strategic positioning within the university. Originally prepared in response to draft accreditation guidelines prepared by AACSB International, the article includes a compilation of the concepts that the authors believe to be the core information systems knowledge that all business school students should be familiar with.

The Leo team can certainly teach us a thing or two." Computing magazine 1 Modern Lessons from LEO * Kalle Lyytinen was the accepting senior editor of this paper. • Dedicated to LEO Award recipient Frank Land who lived the LEO saga and provided innumerable useful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. The editor and anonymous reviewers also provided valuable guidance and corrections. Any errors that remain are mine. 1 Quoted from the back cover of the dust jacket of Caminer et.al., 1998. 2 For more information on the LEO award see aisnet.org/award/leorecip.shtml LEO ARTICLE

Chapter 10. Conclusion 342 Notes 359 Sources for Illustrations 433 Index 435 This book has been longer in the making than I would care to admit. It would be nice to be able to claim that it just took that long to think it through. Nice, but not truthful. A nearly fatal combination of malinger ing and adm inistrative chores accounts for part of the delay. For the rest, the scope of the book simply expanded, in an academic version of Parkinsons Law, to fill all the space that I would give to it. Finally, I had to call an arbitrary halt or else start thinking of it as a life's work. The scope of the book together with the time it took to complete it explain the long list of intellectual debts I have accum ulated along the way. A full accounting of them would be interm inable except for the fact that I realize some of my creditors would just as soon not be asso ciated with the final product. Though I shall not implicate them here, I owe them nonetheless. Instead of turning my argum ent in the direction they urged, I took their criticisms to heart by fortifying my case so that it would better answer their objections. My other intellectual creditors, having failed to disavow the final product in advance, will be nam ed here and, it is to be hoped, implicated. Some of my debts are to institutions. I spent the 1990-91 academic year at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin as a recipient of their hospi tality and largesse. The tem ptation of living for a time in Berlin, just a year after the Wall came down, proved irresistible. After physically la boring for six weeks on an ex-collective farm on the Mecklenburg Plain in eastern Germany (an alternative that I dream ed up to avoid sitting for six weeks in Goethe Institute classes with pimply teenagers), I hurled myself at the German language, Berlin, and my German col ix x A cknow ledgm ents leagues. My research hardly advanced in any formal sense, but I real ize that many fruitful lines of inquiry opened up then. I w ant particu larly to thank Wolf Lepenies, Reinhard Prasser, Joachim Nettlebeck, Barbara Sanders, Barbara Golf, Christine Klohn, and Gerhard Riedel for their many kindnesses. The intellectual boon com panionship of Georg Elwert, my local patron saint, as well as that of Shalini Rande

Seven aspects of measurement are of particular importance in terms of MIS foundations: (1) scientific and technical characteristics, (2) basic design choices, (3) level of information and decision support, (4) managerial functions supported, (5) organizational focus, (6) information system component origin, and (7) behavioral dimensions. A brief summary of these aspects is presented, and it is argued that measurement deserves recognition as one of the most important foundations of MIS.

To protect Sweden against attacks from abroad. 2. To carry troops and material to theaters of war on the other side of the Baltic. 3. To provide revenue for Sweden by blocking Danzig and other ports in Poland, and by levying customs duties on the many cargo ships that used these ports. 4. To blockade hostile ports, preventing the enemy's fleet from leaving, on penalty of being conquered, bombarded of sunk.

In 2014, MyTelco established an independent Business Analytics (MyBA) organization that provided data analytics services to both MyTelco and third party customers. It was expected that this organization would be able to fund itself through the revenues generated from the commercialization of insights derived from MyTelco's data. To address the ethical risks associated with mining and commercializing big data, MyBA relied on an Ethics and Compliance Committee (ECC) to review project proposals that involved customer data. Situated in November 2016, a week after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed new legislation to increase consumer's choice over their personal information, the case describes three proposals that the ECC needed to evaluate. Students deliberate each proposal's legality and ethicality from the point of view of MyTelco's Ethics and Compliance Committee.

This case tells the true story of a university employee who suffered from color blindness and who, although he had been an exceptional employee, was terminated when he could not read the color screens displayed by the newly installed PeopleSoft system. Moral outrage on the campus initiated a process that ultimately resulted in Hal Richards being offered another position in which his talents could be used effectively.