1. Social contexts of IS Ch. 3 – Boddy et al.
Political, economic, culture and legal factors
e.g how governments affect market entry, business operations or use of the Internet use
Legal context
data privacy and intellectual property
Ethical issues in managing IS
Can ethical behaviour pay?
Case: Google

2. Political contexts Rules on market entry
government policy (intentionally or otherwise) affects whether suppliers can enter a market – e.g. Wipro
Also affects how companies do business – e.g. EU rules on costs of text messages
Actions on specific markets – e.g. Attempts to develop a European rival to Google’s library project
Such policies reflect the interaction of commercial and political interests in relation to companies’ IS strategies

3. Economic contexts Economic conditions affect viability of IS projects.
Measures (by country or demography) include:
number of Internet subscribers – see Figure 3.1;
how customers use the Internet during the buying process;
level of expenditure per transaction.
These and other measures affect focus of, and return from, IS investments

4. Economic contexts – measures of Internet access
Figure 3.1 Internet subscribers by region and access type, 2006
Source: ITU ( /statistics / )

5. Cultural contexts Culture defined (Hofstede 2005)
‘unwritten rules of the social game’
High context and low context cultures
Cultures and social networking sites
relation to culture affects use
organisations value their ability to attract people with identifiable characteristics, so valuable as marketing and recruitment tools
Technology as fashion – e.g. mobile phone design
Producing and consuming (Toffler 1980)
Modern IS change relationship between producing and consuming
Consumers create services which they also pay for…

6. Legal context (1) – data privacy
Technical developments and data privacy
cookies, tracking, monitoring
Protecting personal data
code of Fair Information Practices
awareness, consent, access, security, redress
Interaction between IS and strategy
do companies follow the code?
See Schwaig (2006), Figure 3.3
compare EU and US approaches
Privacy policies vary between countries, reflecting balance of commercial and political interests.

7. Adherence to the Code of Fair Information Practice
Figure 3.3 Privacy Policy Assessment Matrix applied to the Fortune 500
Source: Adapted from Schwaig et al. (2006)

8. Legal context (2) – intellectual property
Intellectual property rights (IPR) intended to protect those who create ideas – music, videos, books etc.
Copyright
Patents
Trademarks
Technical developments and intellectual property
digital media make it easy to copy and distribute original work – see Figure 3.4

9. Technology and music distribution
.fributopo
Figure 3.4 Downloads as a proportion of single sales in the UK, by week,
Source: British Phonographic Industry, quoted in Gowers (2006), p. 28

10. Law, choice and ethics Figure 3.5 Three domains of human action
Source: From Daft, Management (5th edition) (2000). Copyright © Reprinted with permission of South-Western, a division of Thomson Learning

11. Ethics and IS
Modern systems enable people to act in ways that others may see as unethical:
monitoring staff use of websites;
passing information between agencies;
being careless with personal data;
sending unsolicited messages or promotional schemes.

12. Ethics and stakeholder interests
Stakeholder expectations – see Table 3.3
Ethics in context: behaviour depends on situation as well as person – see Figure 3.6

13. Influences on behaviour
Figure 3.6 Trevino’s model of ethical decision-making
Source: Trevino (1986). Reproduced with permission

14. Can ethical behaviour pay?
Ethical behaviour only sustainable in competitive situations if the actions meet one or more of these criteria (Vogel, 2005):
shareholders see it as enlightened self-interest;
serves the corporate mission;
avoids negative publicity;
supports a strategy – such as building customers’ trust.