Professional Practice in IT: Ethical Decision-Making and Values

This assignment delves into the ethical considerations for IT professionals, particularly in the context of organizational mergers and restructuring. It addresses cultural issues impacting ICT professionals, such as rapid changes, anonymity, and new organizational dynamics. The solution utilizes McDonald's framework for ethical decision-making, emphasizing its step-by-step approach and focus on consequences, actions, and decision-making. Furthermore, it presents a 3-step approach to handling ethical dilemmas, including analyzing consequences, actions, and making judicious decisions. The assignment also includes a value statement and code of ethics tailored for a medium enterprise lacking these components, emphasizing values like productivity, trust, safety, and partnership, along with ethical guidelines for clients and members. The solution references key sources to support its arguments and recommendations.

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Professional practice in IT
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Question 1:
Each company has its own culture and every worker needs to follow that particular culture. In
the post mergers or restructuring situation the work culture of the previous organization also
changes (Becher, 2018). Some of the cultural issues which might impact an ICT professional
following organization merger or restructuring are as follows;
 Rapid changes: when a company has merged with another the new administration tried to
adopt rapidly their new workers to their new culture and this might become
uncomfortable to the workers (Becher, 2018).
 Anonymity: when an employee does not know the working culture in a new organization
they are less confidence of themselves.
 New organization changes: When organizations mergers or there is restructuring there are
new changes which will come up such as; change in working hours, power distance and
aspect of incentivizing could become hard for workers to cope up with it (Eason, 2014).
Question 2:
In this scenario the framework which is used is McDonald’s framework for the ethical decision
making since its more useful. This framework has been chosen because of the following reasons
stated below:
1) The framework offers a detailed step by step solution in dealing with situations related to
ethical dilemma.
2) The framework emphasizes on testing each of the solutions either by application or
perhaps utilizing others experience (Becher, 2018).
3) The framework emphasizes on focusing all the possible alternatives and it checks their
ethical perspective and morality.

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4) The framework focuses on the major issue with an individual. In this case of ICT
professional it’s an ethical dilemma when it comes to adjusting to a changed culture.
5) The framework emphasizes on dealing with a particular situation rather than just
opposing and also resisting it (Eason, 2014). This is important because most of the time
in an organization culture and scenario changes always occur.
Question 3:
Both personal and professional lives, we have come into a position where we have encountered
ethical dilemma (Eason, 2014). It is important to always be cautious when it comes to dealing
with such situations. One can follow a 3 step approach to deal with such situations, this is
explained as follows:
Analysis of the consequences: an individual carries basic assumption before taking a given
decision. Some of the question to ask yourself are;
 Who will be helped by this decision that am making?
 Will this decision harm anyone?
 What is the degree of harm compared to the degree of benefit from this decision?
The next thing would be to take a call as to whether the harm of a particular decision outweighs
the benefit.
2. Analyzing of the actions: This entails focusing on the action rather than the end result. It is
important to ask yourself whether the action which one is thinking to take is disrespecting any of
the ethical standards such as honesty, respect for the human rights, and equality. In case the
action is conflicting with any principle, there is an alternative to take.

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3. Decision making: when it comes to this step it is crucial for one to analyze the above
mentioned condition and take judicious call (Eason, 2014). The focus should always ensure
neither the consequence nor the actions taken does not conflict with the ethical standards.
Question 4:
I am doing my internship in a medium enterprise which does not have organization value or
value statement along with the code of ethics. The only thing they have is the fair trading value
(Eason, 2014). The following is a value of statement and code of ethics I have prepared for this
organization.
Value statement
 Value: we provide our customer with improved productivity at a lower cost.
 Trust: we should respect our client and never break on their trust which will lead us to
lose our reputation (Eason, 2014).
 Safety: we understand that work safety is essential in the organization and we always
strive to provide a safe working environment.
Partnership: we will make good working relationship with our client
Code of Ethics:
 To our clients, we will clearly identify on our terms and conditions, maintain
confidentiality and the security of information, and we promise to keep our facilities
fulfilling our responsibility.

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 To our esteemed members, we promise we will provide all the facilities which will be
required at the work and we will communicate when asked about the progress of the
projects.

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References
Becher, T., 2018. Professional practices: Commitment and capability in a changing
environment. Routledge.
Eason, K.D., 2014. Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.