Crm Ethics and Solution

In "10 ethical issues raised by IT capabilities," we examined ethical issues raised by IT capabilities, issues that all of us as technology professionals need to consider as we go about our duties. This time, we take a look at ethical issues more specific to management--and not necessarily just IT management. Once again, one of our themes is that advances in technology, just like advances in any other area of endeavor, can generate societal changes that should cause us to reexamine our behavior. The dynamic nature of civilization means some components of ethical codes that were perfectly appropriate in previous generations may no longer apply. Although space limits us to 10 issues, the ones we examine here are based on five main categories of particular interest to technologists: privacy, ownership, control, accuracy, and security. As in the previous article there are more questions than answers.

Governments collect massive amounts of data on individuals and organizations and use it for a variety of purposes: national security, accurate tax collection, demographics, international geopolitical strategic analysis, etc. Corporations do the same for commercial reasons; to increase business, control expense, enhance profitability, gain market share, etc. Technological advances in both hardware and software have significantly changed the scope of what can be amassed and processed. Massive quantities of data, measured in petabytes and beyond, can be centrally stored and retrieved effortlessly and quickly. Seemingly disparate sources of data can be cross-referenced to glean new meanings when one set of data is viewed within the context of another.

In the 1930s and 1940s the volumes of data available were miniscule by comparison and the "processing" of that data was entirely manual. Had even a small portion of today's capabilities existed, the world as we now know it would probably be quite different.

Should organizations' ability to collect and process data on