Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Jean the Programmer Society Ethics Comprises

Question: Describe about the Jean the Programmer for Society Ethics Comprises. Answer: Introduction Ethics in a society comprises of two aspects; firstly it deals with the standards that are well found for deciding the right and the wrong regarding the human behavior and the obligations and secondly the study of the theories that help in understanding the behavioral traits of people and the society (Santa Clara University, 2016). This work aims to analyze the case study Jean the Programmer' by two ethical theories which are namely the deontological and consequentialist utilitarian.' Analysis of the topic from the perspective of Ethical theories Ethics deals with the systemization, recommendation and defending the concepts regarding the behavior of a person and classifying them into wrong and right. The ethical theories can be divided into three areas, which are: applied ethics, normative and metaethics (Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016). Deontology is a normative ethical theory which judges an action based on the duty and obligation and hence can be understood as rule-based theory.' Consequentialist theory too is a normative ethical theory but places more emphasis on the outcome/consequence of the decision, as the judgment is based on the result (Wheeler Laham, 2016). Analysis of the case study based on Deontological theory.' Deontological theory places the rules and regulations above everything, and the rules of the organization should be taken as the basis of deciding the ethical behavior of the person. The outcomes of a deontological theory fail to understand the human emotions that are associated with each decision (Stahl et al., 2014). Since the outcomes do fail to understand the satisfaction of human, it is termed as an incomplete theory. It should always be borne in mind that rules in human communities are created by human themselves according to the need. Hence the rules of societies do change with time. Hence an ethical situation at present could have been unethical in past or might become so in future (Hurley, 2013). Jean used two segments of code in her program; the first patch was copied from one of her colleagues without any prior information and she even failed to give the credit to the concerned person, the second patch of code was taken from her previous work that was done in other company . Hence, due to her work Intellectual Property right of her colleague was compromised. Jean didnt even respect the professional ethics of consulting the colleague for his/her expertise but straight away copied the work. She even misrepresented her skills and knowledge and refused the due credit deserved by her colleague. For the second patch of work, Jean refused to respect IP of her previous employer and misrepresented her speed. So, the rules that were flouted in this case are ICT professionalism, Intellectual property and Community and Identity (Rekha Pillai, 2014). The violations of the ethical rules have led to fraud, negligence, and plagiarism. Thus it can be easily concluded that act committed by Jean is totally unethical, and she can be put on trial for the same. Analysis of the case study based on Utilitarianism theory.' Consequentialism holds the consequences of a persons conduct as the ultimate base for judging the rightness or the wrongness of the action. Utilitarianism is a subclass of the consequentialist theories and judges the outcomes on the basis of collective satisfaction among the people, i.e. if the majority of the people are happy with the consequences or the outcome of the decision, then the decision is taken to be ethically right. On the other hand, if the majority is not satisfied with the decision then it is taken to be ethically wrong (Eyal, 2014). It has been found in many cases that an ethical utilitarianism decision is unethical in deontology. Jeans decision to do the path work has resulted in the fast closure of the project before the deadline. Hence the boss will be happy and will make the customers happy thus creating a large pool of happy people due to the decision. But is should be understood that this happiness is short lived. Once the patch works are realized and finally identified, the colleague can file a lawsuit; the other colleagues will be cautious about sharing their work with Jean. The boss who was happy will doubt the capabilities of Jean and once the previous employer comes to know about the breach they can file a lawsuit against the present employer thus creating too many unhappy people (Burnes By, 2012). So we can see that Jeans decision is ethical only for a short span of time, which will become unethical after the patches are discovered. Hence from the discussion that has been carried out in the previous section it can be noticed that short term happiness will become a concern in due time and will become a reason for punishment, and hence the result of consequentialist utilitarian theory varies with time for the same decision. As the outcomes change with the time, the ethical consideration of the utilitarian theory too changes with it. But the deontological ethical outcome is constant as the ethics are based on the hardbound rules for a larger duration of time, but it should be understood that the rules are created by human only and are prone to changes too. Thus from the analysis of the case study act of Jean is unethical. Conclusion In this report, a case study has been analyzed with the help of two ethical theories which are namely, the deontological theory and the consequentialist utilitarian theory. The case study taken for this case was Jane the Programmer.' The study has helped in learning the dissection and evaluation of the arguments with the help of the ethical theories. The evaluation of the taken decision by deontological theory shows that Jane the decision is grossly unethical and is liable to be punished for the same. Upon analyzing the outcomes of the decision based on utilitarian theory it was found that the results failed to satisfy the masses. Hence the work carries out by Jean the Programmer is unethical by both the theories and should be condemned. References Burnes, B., By, R. T. (2012). Leadership and change: The case for greater ethical clarity.Journal of business ethics,108(2), 239-252. Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2016). Iep.utm.edu. Retrieved 18 September 2016, from https://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/ Eyal, N. (2014). Non-consequentialist Utilitarianism. Hurley, P. (2013). Deontology.The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Rekha, A. G., Pillai, R. R. (2014, May). Piracy in the digital age: Is ethical awareness turning into action?. InEthics in Science, Technology, and Engineering, 2014 IEEE International Symposium on(pp. 1-4). IEEE. Stahl, B. C., Eden, G., Jirotka, M., Coeckelbergh, M. (2014). From computer ethics to responsible research and innovation in ICT: The transition of reference discourses informing ethics-related research in information systems.Information Management,51(6), 810-818. University, S. (2016). What is Ethics? - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University. Scu.edu. Retrieved 18 September 2016, from https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/what-is-ethics/ Wheeler, M. A., Laham, S. M. (2016). What We Talk About When We Talk About Morality Deontological, Consequentialist, and Emotive Language Use in Justifications Across Foundation-Specific Moral Violations.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,42(9), 1206-1216.

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