The Significance of a Suitable Information Ethical Code: A Case Study of the Chinese Morality Perspective

IntroductionComputers and electronic communication facilitate a detached form of interaction among people, and are media through which people are able to send and receive information in an unpremeditated way, leading to changes in interpersonal relationships. Moreover, they represent a quick, low cost communication mechanism through which the copying and printing of intellectual property is easily done, making the violation of patent rights, residuary rights, copyright, and piracy rife, and the interception of messages and invasion of privacy commonplace. Such a communication channel provides considerable freedom and space for the innovative use and diffusion of information. The concept of information sharing runs counter to that of complete confidentiality and partial accessibility. For this reason, the principle of information ethics always contravenes the important value of freely accessible information. In view of this, the electronic age requires legal authentication to render unnecessary paper authorization and legitimization. Therefore, due to the unique difficulties and challenges of the IT developments outlined above, the principle and application of ethics must be adapted to accommodate the needs of information technology (IT) (Weiss, 1990; Martin, 2001; Davison et al., 2006).A well-designed code will help to educate several communities. If a code is sufficiently detailed, it will help to educate clients and society, and reduce the developer's tendency to take short-cuts. A detailed code can be used as a foundation for a malpractice suit against developers who intentionally fail to meet the standards specified in a code. A code also serves to educate its membership and potential membership about the standards of the profession (Gotterbarn, 1998). The Center for Business Ethics (1986) found that 83 to 93 percent of companies have an ethical code (Berenbeim, 1992), the manager of those companies believing that the code is instrumental in the prevention of unethical conduct among employees (Manley, 1991). As employees recognize the ethical code as a form of law and rule, it helps clarify the definition of the range of behavior unacceptable to the company, thus helping both to prevent computer abuse and to influence the moral judgment of employees (Bequai, 1983).The ethical code of NASW (National Association of Social Workers, 1996) includes a series expectant of the normative description of workers' attitude and behavior, most of which is context dependent. Due to the inhibitions of code, to resolve the conflict between situation factors and code, rule and standard should refer to the context. The hypothesis of the code is individuals of good character will behave responsibly in good faith. For this reason, social workers should consider cultural habits and adopt a flexible interpretation of the behavior of professionals (Goldstein, 1999).Although a number of scholars have studied information ethics (Schlegelmilch, 1989; Langlois and Schlegelmilch, 1990; Swinyard et al., 1990; Berenbeim, 1992; Whitman et al., 1998; Guillen et al., 2002; Wood et al., 2004; Davison et al., 2006; Mele et al., 2006; Hui et al., 2007), studies from the cultural perspective using longitudinal and qualitative methods are still scarce (Chang, 2009). According to Mason (1 986) there are four aspects to informational ethics (PAPA): privacy, accessibility, property, and accuracy. In light of this, the present paper aims to explain the different reactive processes of MIS professionals in CHSyst (pseudonym) in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, and to interpret these reactions from the perspective of Chinese morality (Hwang, 1998) and Mason's PAPA (1986). It aims to provide fresh insight into the Chinese morality perspective, and to create a new direction for ethical codes in Chinese enterprises.The structure of the paper is as follows: The first part reviews the body of literature on the theory of the importance of ethical codes and the Chinese morality perspective. …