Page 88 - Using MIS

ethics Guide

i Know what’S Better, really

Suppose you work for a small startup company utilitarianism. The basis of this theory goes back to early
involved in the innovative application of 3D printing tech- Greek philosophers, but the founders of the modern theory
nology, like AllRoad Parts. Your company is 2 years old, em- are considered to be Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill,
ploys 50 people, and, like many startup companies, is short as you will learn in your business ethics class.
of money. Even though you’re relatively junior, you’ve im- According to utilitarianism, the morality of an act is
pressed the company’s founders, and they have asked you determined by its outcome. Acts are judged to be moral if
to take a leadership role on a number of special projects. they result in the greatest good to the greatest number or if
Recently, the company has been investigating developing they maximize happiness and reduce suffering. The prior
an information system to store 3D engineering designs and sentence contains a great deal of subtlety that has led to nu-
make them available to customers for purchase. You’ve merous flavors of utilitarianism, flavors that are beyond the
been assigned to a committee that is developing alternative scope of this text. Here we will work with the gist of those
IS designs for consideration by senior management. statements.
You and a coworker, Leslie Johnson, have developed Using utilitarianism as a guide, killing can be moral
two different alternatives for consideration by the commit- if it results in the greatest good to the greatest number.
tee. You believe that Alternative Two is vastly preferable to Killing Adolf Hitler would have been moral if it stopped the
Alternative One, but Leslie believes just the opposite. You Holocaust. Similarly, utilitarianism can assess lying or other
think if Leslie’s alternative is chosen, the result will be a forms of deception as moral if the act results in the greatest
major financial loss, one that your young startup company good to the greatest number. Lying to someone with a fatal
is unlikely to survive. Even if that does not occur, so much illness that you’re certain he or she will recover is moral if it
time will be lost pursuing Leslie’s alternative that your increases that person’s happiness and decreases his or her
company will fall behind the competition in your dynamic, suffering.
developing market and will lose substantial market share to
the competition as a result.
Unfortunately, Leslie is called away due to a family emer- Our Recommended Alternatives
gency on the day the two of you are to present your alterna-
tives. You so strongly believe that Leslie’s plan is likely to Alternative One
cause irreparable harm to the company that you decide to • In-house stores 3D Diagrams
present only your plan. While you never lie outright, you lead • Direct connect to e-commerce server
the committee to believe that both of you strongly support
your plan. The committee adopts your plan, and Leslie never
learns that the committee saw only one alternative. Is your Alternative Two Use the Cloud
behavior ethical? • 3D diagrams stored on elastic cloud servers
The Ethics Guide in Chapter 1 introduced Kant’s cat- • Use MongoDB on AWS
egorical imperative as one way of assessing ethical con- • SOA connections to e-commerce server
duct. This guide introduces a second way, one known as

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