Canisius College



Question 1 Essay 25 points

Lester and Koehler imply that information ethics are an important concern for organizations as well as society as a whole. One important example of this is the issue of the privacy of employee communications within an organization. Relate this issue to the issue of knowledge management. That is, how might the issue of the public and private communications of employees be part of the competitive advantage of an organization and, thus, be an important element in a knowledge management information system? Use the notions of explicit and implicit knowledge to make your argument.

Answer

According to "The Knowledge in Knowledge Management (KM)" by Fred Nickols

(), explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been expressed, implicit knowledge is knowledge that could be expressed but hasn't been, and tacit knowledge is knowledge that can't be expressed. Lester and Koehler cite (pg. 113) that the job of a Chief Knowledge Officer entails making sure "employees have the right information at the right time in the right place". Furthermore, they state (pg. 239) that employees cannot expect privacy on employer-supplied communications systems. Statutes, courts, and company policies have sided with the employer, not the employee.

That being said, the question addresses employee communications within an organization. I'm assuming that we're discussing communications entirely within the organization and not including calls to outside. The job of a chief knowledge officer is to essentially orchestrate the flow of information within a company. If all communications are public, or explicit, then redundant work or knowledge gaps become immediately obvious and a CKO can eliminate the redundancy by re-assigning workers to different tasks and cover the knowledge gap by assigning additional workers to the task who have the knowledge needed to complete the task. This utilizes resources to maximum efficiency for task accomplishment which is a competitive advantage for an organization.

If a worker communicates privately with another worker, he may acquire incomplete, obsolete or even simply wrong information, the execution of which may actually set the task goals back. This is why implicit or non-expressed information is not an asset to the organization. It is an obstacle to the chief knowledge officer's duty of keeping the knowledge flowing correctly. Conversely, if an employee feels as if he has no privacy and that he is constantly being monitored, it would be bad for morale. The employee may leave the company for a different job under what he feels are better working conditions, which may not necessarily include more pay. His knowledge of the job would be lost with him. The solution is to allow employees privacy, but keep an 'open door policy' so that employees feel free to come to their superior with information or problems.

By keeping employees up to date with explicit knowledge, employees feel like they're part of the team, even if their work isn't directly involved with the task at hand. Morale is

improved, which in turn improves efficiency and production, a competitive advantage for an organization.

Question 2 Essay 25 points

How does the permeability of national boundaries in a networked information environment affect political and economic issues related to information?

Answer

The permeability of national boundaries in a networked information environment affect political and economic issues related to information because a difference in cultural values may lead to mis-understandings which affect decision-making processes. Lester and Koehler cite an example (pg 210). To the Western school of thought, creative copyright rests with the creator who has the sole right to sell, distribute, give away or transfer his intellectual property rights. To the Eastern mind, the creator is simply a 'conduit' of creativity, and intellectual property 'rights' belong to society. It took the signing the Berne Convention (1989) and the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (1998) for these rights to be settled as the Western school of thought. According to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998), a copyright is for the creator's life plus seventy years, or in the case of a corporate copyright, ninety five years.

Conversely, the European Union is far ahead of the United States regarding privacy laws.

U.S. legislation is fragmented, contradictory, and inconsistent. The European Union

Directive on Data Privacy (1998) is much stricter than U.S. laws regarding consent, notification, confidentially, security and transnational data flow (Lester and Koehler, pg. 216). While the EU Directive is not legally binding within the U.S., American corporations are voluntarily compilying with the directive because European companies would not do business with them otherwise. This is a clear case of political and economic issues being changed by the permeability of national boundaries in a networked information environment.

Question 3 Essay 25 points

Question 3: In Lester and Koehler, they discuss the relationship between values and ethics in the use of information and in information policy. What is the relationship between these two concepts? Use the example of the societal concern of the information "digital divide" to illustrate the relationship.

Answer

According to Lester and Koehler, (pg. 227) Morals are a set of customs derived from social practice or religious guidance. Values are a subset of morals, a belief that a specific mode of conduct is preferable to another. Multiple values form a value system.

Ethics is the application of a value system. We assess what we do to what we think we should do. We compare our state of being to our internal system of ideals.

"Societies have almost always debated distribution and redistribution policies for a wide range of social goods, including quality education, information access, literacy training,

health care, infrastructure development and so on." (Lester and Koehler, pg. 246) Back in the 1930's there were government programs for universal telephone access and electricity delivered to rural areas, a telephone in every home.

The "Digital Divide" is the distinction between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' in regards to access to information technology. The digital divide is a social ill that needs to be eliminated. I don't think that there has been much debate over whether or not we should do this. Ethically, society should 'distribute the wealth' as evenly as possible. The debates are nearly always on _how_ it should be done, which way is the best way. The

Clinton administration began a program to promote Internet access to public schools and libraries. However, in this case, it is the nature and the future of education that needs to be changed rather than simply technology distribution. First, radical changes need to be made to the social structure. Computer literacy starts with literacy.

"If the digital divide is to be closed, there is a need to ensure that:

-- an adequate network infrastructure is developed.

-- people are trained to use Internet facilities and to understand the Internet and its limitations, and

-- hardware and software are made available and usable without unreasonable hardship."

(Lester and Koehler, pg. 247)

Ethically, the smaller the digital divide, the more informed the populace is. The more informed the populace, the more intelligibly they will discuss, debate and vote on issues and candidates. A more informed decision is a better decision, a more ethical choice.

Question 4 Essay 25 points

Scenario: Miranda Oliveira is a manager in the Information Systems

Department of a specialized retail clothing company: Moda Carioca Design. The company was founded in 1978 and has been a successful distributor of an upscale inspired Latin American line of women's apparel. In the last few years, in order to maintain their competitive advantage in the marketplace, the CIO of the company has strongly backed development of a new Internet-based system for processing orders with suppliers and customers. While this new supply chain management system shows promise of success, Miranda Oliveira remains concerned because there has been excessive turnover in her system development staff. In Miranda's opinion this has resulted in exorbitant company expenditures in terms of developer training and the time involved in bringing new hires up-to-date and productively integrated into the organization. Since system development takes place in work teams, Miranda is especially concerned with the disruption caused to these teams when a key person leaves.

In short, Miranda sees this situation as a significant risk to the competitive advantage of

Moda Carioca Design since she knows that other companies are also working hard at developing Internet base supply chain systems.

Although retention of personnel in the IS department is critical, Miranda also knows that to some degree it is an inevitable circumstances given the job market for IS professionals, and given the budgetary constraints her IS department has to work with, she knows that she cannot engage in a bidding war to retain personnel.

Miranda sees this situation as a challenge of retaining knowledge within the organization – i.e., she sees it as a knowledge management issue. If you were Miranda, knowing the critical aspects of developing a knowledge management system, what would be your primary considerations for planning a knowledge management system that might help to alleviate this problem at the Carioca Moda Design?

Answer

First of all, this is not simply an IS or KM problem. Miranda needs to work hand-in-hand with the Human Resources department of her company to meet their common goal of employee retention. They need to work together to encourage more people to stay.

Drastic solutions include contractual obligations. It may have to be written into a contract that if an employee agrees to undertake the training necessary to work with the new Internet based order system that they are under contractual obligation to stay with the company for a minimum time period, say five years. Leaving the company prior to the end of the contract results in a financial penalty paid by the employee to the company.

This is a drastic solution and has generally only been used by companies who have government contracts to fulfill.

Non-competitive clauses are fairly standard in both the fashion and the computer industry. It's part of the hiring contract that, unless otherwise agreed upon, when the employee leaves the company, they are not allowed to work for an established competitor or start their own business in the same field of endeavor. I, myself, had to sign such an agreement at my last job. Fortunately, the company only provided web pages as a service to their regular clients, and didn't see my free-lancing as a webpage designer to be in competition with them. My non-competitive clause was for three years and only recently expired.

The most reasonable solution would be to examine the work-place environment and see if changes there would make a more comfortable working environment inducing people to stay without necessarily offering them more money in their paychecks. Possible changes might include: flexible hours, people can come in on their own schedule, either early or late, perhaps after dropping their kids off at school; child care services right at the company, employees would never have to worry about finding a sitter; casual dress codes, employees feel more comfortable at work; promotion from within, employees are more likely to stay with a company if they feel that there are good chances for job advancement, they are less likely to do so if they feel like a faceless cog in an impersonal machine; a variety of health care plans and retirement programs, a standard 'one size fits all' seldom does, by offering a variety of plans, frequently at the same price, employees are more likely to find one that fills their needs.

Miranda has to realize that no technique is going to be universally effective. People will leave, regardless of their incentive to stay or dis-incentive to leave. Exit interviews need to become a necessity. Employees who are leaving should be interviewed to find out why they are leaving. It may be possible to change that condition to encourage other employees to stay.

When Miranda has done all she can to keep employees from leaving, she needs to concentrate on keeping the accumulated knowledge from leaving. The training for the new Internet based order processing system needs to be available in as many different formats as possible. Senior employees who are familiar with the system should give classes, on company time, on how to use the system. Additionally, new hires should be paired with senior employees to get on-the-job training in using the system. The lecture classes by the senior employees should be video-taped and available for employees to take home and play. This was standard practice at my last job at Plantrol Systems. User manuals and training manuals need to be written for using the new order processing system. Senior employees need to be heavily involved in the writing, or at least the dictating, of these manuals. It's their knowledge and skills and experience that you want to keep within the company.

If the budgetary constraints cannot change, then the efficiency of using the budget must change to meet the challenge of retaining knowledge within the organization. It may be that production and design may have to maintain their current levels without expansion for a short period of time to ensure that the knowledge and experience of the company stay within the company.

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