Ethics of Information Management

This is a well-written and well-organized treatment of a very important topic. I enjoyed reading it and gained some new insights and ideas. The explanations are clear and detailed and the examples are very helpful. The Ethics of Information Management is unique with its total focus on information and privacy. This is a critical area and this book makes a fine contribution. --Ernest A. Kallman, Research Fellow, Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College "At this stage in the information age, at this point in our understanding of issues and our understanding of the relation between ethics and information, any book that raises our awareness and sense of responsibility is worth publishing. Ethics of Information Management definitely does that." --Martha L. Hale, School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University "This book breaks new ground in innovatively introducing the issues involved in information ethics to a business school curriculum. Cases are used throughout to identify the issues with numerous references back to each case to identify ways of reasoning, situations in which policies and procedures can help, and situations in which laws and professional codes are useful or not. There are many nuggets of information and ways of looking at situations that will assist readers in identifying the issues and stakeholders, assessing alternatives and their ramifications, and making informed, ethical decisions throughout their careers." --Sue Conger, Management Information Sciences, Southern Methodist University The authors to the second volume in the Sage Series in Business Ethics provide ways of thinking about information and the new responsibilities engendered by its acquisition, processing, storing, dissemination, and use. The Ethics of Information Management provides a set of concepts, methods, arguments, and illustrations designed to sharpen the reader′s ethical focus. Organized into three sections, the first part of the book provides motivation and conceptual background for the volume as a whole. Part II focuses on fundamental concepts about ethics, including a description of the process of ethical thinking and a range of theories and principles that can be used in ethical situations. In the final chapters, the concepts of information, and the need for ethics and ethical thinking, are applied to the various levels of the social system to which they pertain: individual and professional, organizational and societal, or systemic. Intended primarily for those who are, or will soon become, information professionals, The Ethics of Information will also be of interest to others concerned about what those who handle information do and how it affects them.

Richard O. Mason is Carr P. Collins Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. He served as the Director of The Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at SMU from 1998 to 2005. Mason’s main fields of interest are information systems, ethics and management. He is the author of numerous academic articles and books. In 2001, the Association of Information Systems awarded him the Leo Award AIS Fellow for lifelong contribution to the information systems field. In 1992, he was made a Foreign Fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences in the Informatics and Cybernetics Section.