Reflective Responsibility and the Management of Information Systems

Before we start analysing the details of how reflective responsibility impacts on the use of information technology, we should briefly recapitulate what the purpose of the entire enterprise was and where we stand right now. Responsibility has been identified as a central term that is used in the public discussions about normative problems. It has been demonstrated that the core of responsibility is a social process of ascription. An overview of the literature on responsibility, however, has shown that the term is highly complex, consists of a large number of conditions, dimensions, and aspects, which in many cases are contradictory. In order to render the term useful, we have tried to identify common features that can be found in most if not all responsibility ascriptions and that help give meaning to its use. The three shared characteristics that were found are openness, affinity to action, and consequentialism. In a subsequent step it was asked what would happen if responsibility ascriptions were analysed with regard to these three characteristics. The result was a notion of responsibility that was called “reflective responsibility,” which was then further investigated with the aim of determining what the consequences of this reflective use of the term was. It was shown that reflective responsibility has theoretical and practical consequences that relate back to some of the ethical theories on which responsibility ascriptions might be based. Reflective responsibility requires the classical virtue of prudence as well as a modern reliance on institutional settings. It can be instantiated by following the ideas of other theories of practical philosophy such as discourse ethics or the stakeholder approach.

Information Systems and Business Information Technology

This first content chapter of the book is meant to clarify the notions involved in the responsible management of information systems. The focus of this book is the concept of reflective responsibility, which will be developed in the subsequent chapters. However, the application of this theory will be the area of information systems. In order to develop what responsibility means in the context of information systems, we will therefore have to define the notion. This is not an easy task, as “information system” can mean many things. On the one hand there is the academic discipline, sometimes called information systems, computer information systems, management information systems, etc., and on the other hand there is the physical artefact. This artefact, be it a computer, a network, or some other type of ICT, becomes an information system by being used in social settings. Information systems have been defined as “an amalgam of hardware, software, procedures, and activities” (Lyytinen & Hirschheim, 1988, p. 19). This chapter will use another route to introduce the concept of information systems. It will look at three of the constitutive aspects of information systems, namely at business, information, and technology. By analysing these three terms and their composition, it will show what information systems are, and more importantly, why the theory of reflective responsibility is a promising approach to addressing the normative problems raised by them.

Reflective Responsibility

What is “reflective responsibility”? The idea behind it is to see whether the concept as discussed so far is applicable to itself and what consequences result from the self-application. It is an attempt to clarify the notion by referring to the term itself without using any other theories. The self-application of concepts is an old tool used by philosophers for centuries, sometimes with great success. The probably best-known example which demonstrates that reflexivity can be highly successful and plausible is the refutation of scepticism. Scepticism, understood as the doctrine that there is no truth, has been part of the philosophical discourse ever since humans started discussing truth. Given the difficulties of defining truth and the obvious fallibility of our knowledge, it is an attractive position that allows the speaker to avoid many pitfalls. However, scepticism has one big problem, which becomes obvious as soon as one applies the idea onto itself. If scepticism is true and consequently there is no truth, then scepticism cannot be true. Scepticism can thus be shown to be self-contradictory. Self-reference on the other hand is also a dangerous game to play because it can create serious logical and practical problems. One example is the mathematical class of all classes that contain themselves. This has led to logical problems that have kept the mathematicians in work for a greater part of the 20th century. A rather practical problem is that of self-fulfilling prophecies. These are created by applying a theory to itself, and they can have a considerable social impact (cf. Watzlawik, 2001b).

Why Responsibility and Information Systems?

In this chapter we want to show why it makes sense to use the concept of responsibility with respect to the business use of information technology. There are three parts to the argument. At first, we will demonstrate that the development of the moral idea of responsibility is closely linked to modern developments in our societies. Many of these developments have to do with technology and information technology being the latest step in this direction. We will then continue to show that there are several structural similarities between responsibility and business on the one hand and information technology on the other hand. In a last step we will show that this theoretical setting is fruitful because it can rely on a rich background of ethical theories from different fields and perspectives. Before we can do so, however, the next step will have to be a first analysis of the term “responsibility.”

The Theory of Responsibility and Information Systems

In the broadest possible sense, responsibility is “but a set of practices that we use to describe and understand individual and social behaviour” (French, 1992, p. IX). In order to understand how we can use the term as a description and what results from the description, one must be aware of possible definitions, implications, dimensions, conditions, etc. In this chapter we will therefore attempt to describe all these different features of the word. In a first step we will look at the overall definitions that can be found in the literature and the implied objectives of its use. This part will also contain a first reflection on how responsibility relates to ethics and morality. The next part of this chapter will analyse the conditions that are commonly named for the ascription of responsibility. This will then allow us to discuss the classical dimensions, namely subject, object, and instance. From there we will proceed to take a look at the other relevant determinants of responsibility such as type, temporal dimension, sort of imputation, and the limits of ascription. As a summary we will extract the implications that most sorts and definitions of responsibility share. In total this chapter will lay the theoretical groundwork needed for addressing the problems that responsibility in information systems pose, which will then be discussed in the following chapters.

Ethics and Morality

Academic texts have to conform to certain standards, and one of these is to define the concepts they use. Texts dealing with ethics or morality therefore have to define what these concepts mean. In the case of English text about computer ethics, the definitions are usually done by contrasting the teleological and the deontological tradition. Another possibility is to talk about absolutist versus relativist ethical theories. Frequently, the terms ethics and morality are treated as equal. Arguably, texts on computer ethics are not meant to be expertises in ethics and many readers of these texts tend to be practically oriented. It is often argued that an introduction into the depth of ethical theory will do more to confuse these readers than help them. However, such arguments can be used to blend out problematic aspects of ethics and pretend that there are clear solutions to these problems when these are in fact contentious. This book chooses another route and will spend some time giving an introduction to normative terms that may be unfamiliar to many native English speakers. Furthermore, it will emphasise that the complexity of the problems warrants a more fine-grained use of the terms, and that it is useful to distinguish between ethics and morality.