Before now, business success was built on the ability to move goods and services with speed and accuracy. Today, information has become the fuel that propels business success. Information technology has been defined as the processing and distribution of data using computer hardware, software, telecommunications and digital electronics.
As noted by Carbo (2006) ethical considerations for ICT related issues first appeared under the topic ‘’information ethics’’ in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology in 1992. This suggests that there is an ethical agenda associated with the use of ICT. Individuals and organisations therefore need to be ethically sensitive as they deploy ICT on their operations. The impact of ICT on human relationship has been tremendous. ICT has helped to enhance family relationship (e.g. mobile phones, palmtops, laptops, virtual conferencing and so on), as well help to separate family and friends from each other.
ICT has enabled new friendship and relationships in virtual communities. How genuine are such relationship? What does it portend for individual satisfaction? In the workplace for instance, new kinds of jobs are being created such as data miners, web-counselors etc, but these opportunities are also endangered by problems of unemployment from computer replacing humans. A wide range of new laws, regulations, rules and practices are therefore needed if society is to manage these workplace and other changes and development brought about by ICT.
Thus the society need to consider the following ethical and social challenges related to ICT use:
➢ Recognition for personal and corporate ethics associated with ICT.
➢ Striking a balance between ethical, economic and technological (Rogerson, 2008) as well as political considerations.
1. Intellectual property rights issue (trademarks, patents, copyright and trade secrets).
2. Non violation of privacy and associated rights amidst electronic information data mining.
3. The opportunity to commit crime with ICT (computer crime).
4. Legal issues and limitations.
5. Consequence of using ICT.
6. Professional responsibilities (Kallman and Grillo, 1999)
