The new economy is a technological revolution involving the information and communication technologies and which affects almost all aspects of the economy, business, and our personal lives. The problems it raises for businesses are not radically new, and even less so from an ethical viewpoint. However, they deserve particular attention, especially now, in the first years of the 21st century, when we are feeling the full impact of the changes brought about by this technological revolution. In this article, I will (...) try to draw a "map" of the main, positive and negative ethical challenges raised by the new economy, concentrating on its three basic features: (1) a knowledge- and information-based technological change, (2) which is taking place in real time on a planetary scale (globalization), and (3) which entails a new, flexible, network-based business organization. (shrink)

Drawing on William F. Ogburn's cultural lag thesis, an inherent conflict is proposed between the rapid speed of modern technological advances and the slower speed by which ethical guidelines for utilization of new technologies are developed. Ogburn's cultural lag thesis proposes that material culture advances more rapidly than non-material culture. Technology is viewed as part of material culture and ethical guidelines for technology utilization are viewed as an adaptive aspect of non-material culture. Cultural lag is seen as a critical ethical (...) issue because failure to develop broad social consensus on appropriate applications of modern technology may lead to breakdowns in social solidarity and the rise of social conflict. Reasons for cultural lag between technology and ethics include the social structural and market conditions under which each are developed. The thesis is illustrated by reviews of technological trends involving computer-telecommunications electronics and bio- genetic engineering, and the implications of these and other technologies for privacy rights, electronic commerce, control of essential resources and social definitions of life are discussed. (shrink)

The ethical issues introduced by excessive uses of ubiquitous information technology at work have received little attention, from either practitioners or ethics scholars. This article suggests the concept of technological ill-being and explores the ethical issues arising from such ill-being, according to the individual and collective responsibilities associated with their negative effects. This article turns to the philosopher Michel Foucault and proposes a renewed approach of the relationship among IT, ethics, and responsibility, based on the concepts of practical rationality, awareness, (...) and self-engagement. This article reports a case study of an international automotive company actively engaged in both corporate social responsibility and ubiquitous IT deployment. Technological ill-being is an expression of the tension between an individual’s social attributes and aspirations when using modern IT and a system of norms, rules, and values imposing constraints on him or her. We identify the reasons for the lack of consideration of technological ill-being in CSR through identification of the inclusion–exclusion principle. The resulting critical, comprehensive approach to corporate responsibilities and IT uses incorporates the ethical implications of the latter, highlights the practical rationality of their relationship, and demands both individual and collective responses, through a call for collective ethical awareness and self-engagement. The findings prompt a Foucauldian ethics of IT use in organizations, which emerges in a mutually constitutive relationship between the self, as a moral subject of own actions, and broader organizational principles, in which CSR appears as a techne. (shrink)