The Impact of ICT on Business, Society, and Culture: Ethical Issues

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of contemporary ethical issues in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), focusing on the profound impact of the internet on business, society, and culture. It explores both the positive aspects, such as enhanced communication, globali...Read More

Contemporary issues
in
Information Technology

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Ethics in Information and Communication Technologies
Information and communication technologies have reached into the hands of billions of
people. This is having impact on the lives of the individuals and performance of the business.
More critical role in this is played by the internet as it has made world more inter-connected.
This has made the communication faster and has allowed people exchange information over a
greater distance. It has facilitated businesses to operate from any part of the world and
converted the world into a global village (Valaei, et al. 2016). ICT allows the companies to
manage their large amount of operations very easily and with one flow. This also allows the
firm to manage the skills of the individual. Both positive and negative impacts of information
and communication technologies upon business, society and culture after the invention of
internet will be discussed in this essay.
After the invention of internet, ICT technologies have taken new wings and stared to become
the part of the companies and the lives of the people. The first impact it had were on the way
individual’s communicated. Internet impacted upon the individual’s way of communicating
with each other. For instance in the beginning, internet allowed companies and individuals to
send mails, then after the beginning of the era of mobile technology it allowed them to have
verbal communications and at the same time ICT also allowed businesses and society to
communicate with others about everything quickly (Pookulangara and Koesler, 2011). With
the invention of internet people started searching everything on the internet. This has changed
the behaviour of the society in terms of learning process. This is because internet sources
have huge amount of information and people can gather it with just one click. The positive
impact on the business can be understood by the fact that it helped machines at the global
levels to work with each other simultaneously i.e. a computer in the London can be operated
from New York. It also has positive impact on the culture as the people are able to share their
idea from one part to another part of the world. It is this sharing of ideas at the global levels
that has permitted people to learn the best practices from all across the globe from all the
cultures. This had impact on the overall learning process of the society.
Another positive impact on the businesses and society is that it has allowed the processes to
become more transparent. There are many operations within the organisation that remained
hidden from the masses such as transaction of money. It is due to technology, everything

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happens in front of everyone. This has allowed the governments to control corruption and has
also allowed people to have regular checks on the government processes (Bertot, Jaeger and
Grimes, 2010). Internet has become an important medium for whistle blowing as it is a fast
mode of communication and the information spreads like a wildfire hence any wrong
practices can be raised through internet and the affected institution gets no time to suppress
the voice. Wikileaks was one of institutions that has whistle blown about several things that
had impact on the society.
It also allows companies to involve more and more stakeholders in their processes. In the
decision making process, internet along with ICT can be utilised by the firms so as to take
suggestions from maximum possible stakeholders. Everything happens according to the data
available with the firm and the ones that could be accessed from internet. This allows
companies to make sure that they are making the correct decision and satisfies the need of
different stakeholders (Lee, et al. 2011). The positive impact is also in terms of the fact that it
has made operations easier like Marketing as internet allows companies to market their
products at the global level at just one click with minimum investments. People also use
internet for purchasing items. They do not have to go to brick and mortar units so as to
purchase something rather they can order online and things gets delivered at home.
There is negative side of the internet and the use of ICT. The first negative impact is on the
privacy of the people. This is because internet has not only allowed individuals to get access
to the information but it has also allowed the institutions to peep into the life of the people.
This can be understood in terms of the fact that ICT helps an organisation to gather
information about people. Many of them take personal data of individuals which they utilise
for their own benefits. This has raised the ethical concerns for the society and businesses
(McLean, 2011). Since the competition is getting tougher and tougher everyday hence
companies these days are demanding for knowing what is going on in the minds of the
customers. This will help them in doing more and more personalised marketing which can
lead to higher amount of sales. It is also creating security threats as if the data gets leaked at
wrong platforms or their system gets hacked, then there is higher chances that it can be
utilised for hacker’s or someone else benefits.
Negative impact can also been seen in terms of the fact that it has made people stuck to their
chairs or with the technologies they are using. There are many contents available on the
internet mediums that is waste and people remains indulged in that for hours. It is also seen

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that this internet facilities have also given the control to the governments and hence they can
peep into the lives of the people very easily (Leidner, 2010). It also has negative impact on
the culture as the dominant cultures from the west are taking on the cultures of east. Internet
promote cultures hence people in different parts of the world are adopting similar cultures.
Due to this cultures are getting mixed and people are forgetting about their own culture. It is
creating a global culture for everything i.e. food, style, clothing etc. This also has negative
impact on the knowledge of the overall society.
As almost all the organisations are facing negative impacts due to overuse of technologies. .
In the time when the attacks through internet sources have become higher, it has become
necessary for the organisations to manage the information safety and also ensure that they
have protected the data. It is the responsibilities of the computer professionals to ensure that
there is ethical utilisation of emerging ICT applications. First responsibility of theirs is that
they need to ensure that the mediums that are using for transferring data should be protected
(Shirazi, Ngwenyama and Morawczynski, 2010). Channels need to be secured with the help
of the data privacy software that does not allow any unauthorised individuals to access the
data. Secondly they need to follow all the privacy related norms so as to remain competitive
in the market. This is because any loss of data might let others to know the strategies of the
company or any other important information which they can utilise for their own benefits.
Third responsibility of the computer professionals is that they need to train all those
individuals who do not have knowledge about the way in which secured transmission of data
is possible. Fourth major responsibility of the people is that they should manage the hardware
and software i.e. they should ensure that the technology that they are using is up to date both
hardware and software (El-Mekawy and Rusu, 2011). This is necessary for managing the
operations. It is also their responsibility to make continuous review of the whole ICT system
involved as it would help in managing the data privacy and security easily. Risk assessment
about the impact that a particular technology can have on the whole ICT infrastructure is
going to be evaluated on the regular basis.
Future technologies such as “Internet of Things” are going to create more ethical
complications for the ethics managers as it will make the world more inter-connected as there
will be more nodes through which leakage of data is possible. In this regards it is the
responsibilities of the computer professionals to ensure that ICT gets secured through
encryptions so that only the authorised personnel can gain access to the data (Capurro, 2018).
This is also true in the case of data management software where the data parks created by the

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companies have data that is too large and this large amount of data needs more secured ways
to manage it. It is also the responsibility of the computer professionals to ensure that they also
remain updated about different technologies. This is critical for their performance while
ensuring that data theft risk is minimised. In conclusion it can be said that after the invention
of internet, ICT is being used for several purposes both by individuals and business so as to
make their operations easier. In future it is expected that world will get more interconnected
hence they need to ensure that every individual must have the basic knowledge about how to
use technology and information without giving access to the unwanted parties (Oleksy, Just
and Zapedowska-Kling, 2012).

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