CONSEQUENCES OF REFLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY


The reflective use of responsibility will lead to consequences in the way the term is understood and used. This is firstly one of the reflective properties of the term itself ”a reflective use of a consequentialist term should produce consequences ”and it is secondly a necessary result of the change of the use of the term. If the reflective concept did not lead to other consequences than the original one, then the question would have to be: Why bother? As it turns out, however, there are many aspects of a theoretical as well as a practical nature that are affected.

Theoretical Consequences

Taking the reflective turn of responsibility seriously leads to a number of consequences for the process of ascription and its consequences. First of all, however, the term itself is affected. Making sure that responsibility is an open process, which leads to action, and that it has palpable consequences requires some changes in the theoretical groundwork . The first point here has to do with the clarity of the notion. Responsibility can only fulfil the three criteria if it is clear to everybody involved. This means that it is a central task of every theory of responsibility to clearly say who is responsible for what under which circumstances and with what results. Actually, this can be seen as a condition for all sorts of responsibility (Bayertz, 1995b, p. 66f) and also for most ethical theories , but it acquires a new urgency in the light of reflective responsibility.

Another theoretical consequence of reflective responsibility is a certain kind of pragmatism in the ascription process. Pragmatism can be understood as the doctrine that true is what works. In our context that means less time is spent on the attempt to define exactly the facts of a situation, the duties of the parties involved, the foundation of ethical norms, or other potential fields of thought for philosophers . It should be kept in mind that the successful solution of problems is the quality mark of responsibility. This should not be understood to mean an anti-intellectual process that only tries to produce quick results. However, there may be many cases in which the affected parties agree on the relevant circumstances or norms. In those cases reflective responsibility can display its effectiveness without necessarily having an unassailable theory for everything involved. If, for example, it is a recognised industry standard that programmers document the program development and a specific individual fails to do so despite knowledge of that standard, then an ascription of responsibility may be viable without recurring to the basis of this standard. In other cases the opposite may be true as well, and it can very well be necessary for a successful ascription to determine exactly what its theoretical basis is.

This leads to another philosophical position that must at least be partially accepted when dealing with responsibility, to constructivism. In its radical form constructivism holds that the entire world is nothing but our individual or collective construction. We create the world by perceiving it. In its radical form this position, even though it goes back to Kant s distinction between the thing in itself and the phenomenon , will probably be a bit too harsh for the average person to accept. However, reflective responsibility requires the recognition of the constructive nature of responsibility ascriptions. It is a matter of collective agreement, and thus of collective construction, who is eligible to act as a subject, and what can count as object. But many of the other factors discussed so far are also constructions. Among them we find causality as a precondition or the difference between doing and omitting. Causal chains, as I have tried to demonstrate earlier on, are not given by nature but are human interpretations. It seems a perfectly plausible thing to say that the programmer is responsible for neglecting to check her work for mistakes. But this is only possible on the basis of a shared construction of the world and a person s duties. One could for example excuse the programmer and say that the computer did not have a debugging mechanism, that the keyboard did not work correctly, that she forgot her glasses or was educated by her parents to be a forgetful person. Depending on the circumstances all of these facts could count as excuses. Whether we insist on the responsibility ascription is therefore a question of collective agreement, which shows that responsibility is a collective construct that only works on the basis of other collective constructs such as causality or action.

This may on the one hand seem threatening and relativistic because there are no more final foundations upon which ascriptions must be based. On the other hand it is also an enormous opportunity because it allows the process of ascription to determine who or what is eligible for which role. This can for example be applied to the question of whether collective subjects are admissible , as will be shown later on.

A final theoretical result of reflective responsibility is the acceptance of its inevitability . If moral norms can be translated into responsibility and reflective responsibility stands for the consequences of norm application, then there is no way to escape it. Responsibility can be ascribed for doing as well as for omitting, for physical action, for theoretical action such as writing or speaking. Responsibility is a potential consequence of everything we do. In the modern technological age, responsibility grows with the power we have and with the temporal horizon to which we can follow the results of our action. In this sense one has to agree with Zimmerli (1994a, p. 4) when he says that in technological contexts it is no longer a question whether one accepts responsibility; it is a constant factor. The question is only whether the potential ascription will be realised or not. This refers to risk and uncertainty, both of which are inevitable, which is another reason for the close connection between risk and responsibility.

The theoretical consequences of reflective responsibility are thus to firstly clarify what the term means and to secondly reflect on the conditions of its realisation. Apart from this there are several areas where the realisation of responsibility and the way it is ascribed in practice are affected.

Prudence

Reflective responsibility, with its emphasis on openness, action, and consequences, must solve a problem that other moral systems do not necessarily have. It cannot tell the subjects what to do in which situation, how to behave, and what the right thing would be at any given time. In fact it demands the subjects to reflect on this question and find the right answers for themselves , using their own mental faculties . Reflective responsibility thus does not demand a new morality for new problems, but it first of all demands a new way of critically judging the situation and for that, the subjects need an ability that philosophical literature tended to call prudentia or phronesis . It also goes by names such as good sense, judiciousness, or prudence.

The idea that good intellectual judgment is closely linked to morality is of course not a new one. Aristotle pointed out that ethical virtues and prudence are linked. For him the foundations of prudence aimed at producing virtue. Virtue on the other hand had to be ordered by prudence. Both have to do with passions and therefore with the whole, with body and soul. This, according to Aristotle, shows that virtues have to do with the whole of man and are therefore deeply human. Felicitousness, the aim of human action, can only be achieved by the combination of virtue and prudence (cf. Aristoteles, 1967, p. 1178a).

While prudence is a venerable ethical concept, it is also of particular importance for responsibility, especially of the reflective kind. Not only openness, uncertainty and risk demand that the subject use its mental capacities. Even at an earlier stage, at the realisation that responsibility is a social construct, it becomes clear that it needs to rely on what it is constituted by, the human mind and its capacities .

But what is prudence, what does the word stand for in concrete terms? For Weil (1998; 1960, p. 127), it is defined as the will to be ready to make a moral decision in any given situation. It depends on and demands the subject to know itself and to know the world. For him there is no contradiction between justice or pure moral intentions and prudence. The two depend on each other and could not exist without one another. Ricoeur (1991c, p. 108) follows a similar path when he defines prudence as the art of integrating the moral, the rational, the historical, and the legal into life. He also calls it the concrete reason in the historical world.

Prudence clearly has something to do with knowledge, with rationality, and with the way it is used in given circumstances. It is more than just intellectual brilliance. It is interesting to compare what it means in other languages. When one translates the English word prudence into German and back, one gets terms such as carefulness, cautiousness, discretion, deliberateness, level-headedness, wisdom, or wiseness. Prudence is an individual virtue which finds its expression in the way the individual leads its life and especially in the way it contributes to society (Aristoteles, 1967, p. 1141b).

Prudence is one possible link between rationality and morality (cf.Hausman & McPherson, 1996, p. 25). In this function it is especially suitable to fulfil the promises of responsibility. For Lipovetski (in Russ 1995, p. 33), responsibility embodies the soul of the post-modern culture. This is so because it keeps up the idea of morality without preaching the abdication of the self on the altar of superior ethical ideals. Responsibility for him is reasonable in the sense that it does not force the realisation of its own imperatives, but attempts to find reconciliation between values and interests. In order to be able to do that, responsibility will have to find mechanisms for this reconciliation and this leads us straight back to the idea of prudence.

Another related idea is that of judgment. If prudence is the application of moral norms in concrete situations, then the most prominent place where it can be demonstrated is the act of judging. Judgments are again closely related to responsibility. The clearest example of judgment can be found in the case of a judge who is required to rule according to the criteria named above. The judge must know the normative background, in this case the law, but she must also take other relevant factors into consideration. Making a legal judgment is not a simple matter of applying a norm to a situation and following some kind of algorithm. It requires common sense and character on the part of the judge which in turn are needed to mediate norms, expectations, morality, and facts.

If responsibility stands for the moral good ”some idea of a good life ”then its realisation depends not only on the idea of the good life, but requires knowledge of the facts and circumstances. It can only become reality if the relevant parties concretise it using judgment and reason (Berger, 1994, p. 137). In this sense responsibility is also open to other ethical theories that emphasise the importance of judgment, such as newer Aristotelian approaches (H ffe, 1990, p. 561) or virtue ethics (De George, 1999, p. 122).

Prudence is an individual human property that requires its bearer to fulfil some preconditions. One of these is experience. Aristotle (1967, 241, p. 1142a) already points out that prudence requires a knowledge of the relevant things and that this knowledge can only be acquired over time. With experience and the age that requires it comes another characteristic that the prudent individual should have ”wisdom. For Ricoeur (1990b, p. 265), a practical wisdom is necessary for solving moral conflicts. It is linked to moral judgment and to the situation in which it is needed.

Another link between responsibility in IS and prudence is that prudence can be linked to economic thinking. Prudence requires the taking into account of all relevant facts, norms, people, and every other aspect that might be of importance. It then leads to a judgment that in turn requires the careful weighing of all these different aspects to come to a wise decision. The inherent aspect of weighing is where Broome (1998, p. 26) sees the relationship to the economy. Weighing is only necessary because of the fact of scarcity. Scarcity comes into every judgment, at least in the sense that judgments must be finished in finite time to make any sense. We have already seen that the mere attempt to find all the causes and results of any one action is potentially infinite. Part of the process of making a prudent judgment therefore has to be when to end the hearing of evidence and to make the judgment. This aspect of scarcity relates the judgment on the one hand to economic thinking in general, but on the other hand also to all sorts of business decisions that have to do with the allocation of scarce goods. [16] Information technology is just one among many examples in this respect.

Prudent use of responsibility is useful in dealing with technology for other reasons besides scarcity. In many cases technological developments are not yet objects of responsibility. Ropohl (1996, p. 57) identifies several reasons for this which relate to the weaknesses of responsibility as they have to be addressed by reflective responsibility. These are the neglecting side effects, the realisation that side effects are unacceptable at a time when they are already widespread, the dispersion of responsibility among many individuals, none of whom feels responsible, and the constitution of law and politics as a mere repair service of technology. All of these are critical points that jeopardise classical responsibility ascriptions because they undermine the two features of action and consequentialism. Reflective responsibility will therefore have to address these points. It must take the realisation of responsibility into account. But before discussing this next line of reasoning, we should first take a brief look at the problems of prudence.

Prudence is not an unequivocal algorithm that can give clear instructions to those who seek guidance in a complex decision situation. It is, like responsibility, open and, as we have seen, it is more like an art than like a science. It may be acquired by experience, but experience is no guarantee for prudence. Criticism of prudence could therefore be that it cannot be realised, at least not realised in a universal way that would be adequate for a moral term. Morality is often thought to have some universal character in the sense that everybody to whom it applies should be able to understand it and to live up to it. A morality that the subjects cannot follow will have a difficult time establishing itself as obligatory . If this is so, then prudence could endanger reflective responsibility. The answer to this is that there are different levels of prudence. Prudence as the high art of making judicious judgments in complex situations is something that cannot be expected of everybody. However, there are rules of prudence in the sense of acting carefully that are recognisable to the general public. In fact there are standards of prudence that we all know. If we disrespect these standards, we are guilty of negligence: negligence can be understood to be a failure to do something that a reasonable and prudent person would have done (Johnson, 2001, p. 184).

A prudent judgment requires rare personal characteristics from the person making it. On the other hand it also presupposes the existence of some objective facts. It must be clear who has done what, where, why, etc. Reflective responsibility, in order to ascribe generally acceptable results to a recognisable subject in an open process, also requires these same facts. As we have seen, one of the problems threatening responsibility is the lack of such objectivity. It will therefore have to be addressed in this theory of reflective responsibility. Prudence aims in a direction that moral theories classically have not spent a lot of energy on, but which seems of high importance in reflective responsibility. It is the question: Is our moral theory realisable? Reflective responsibility, with its emphasis on the closeness to action and the consequences of ascriptions, cannot afford to ignore these issues. The next section will therefore be dedicated to them.

Realisability

The question whether reflective responsibility is realisable and what relevance that has to the theory in general can be placed in the context of the discussion of theory and practice: What is the purpose of theory? What impact does it have on practice? Is theory not some kind of practice itself? This leads to the philosophy of science and the questions: What is the purpose of science? Why do we research what we research? Why do we teach what we teach? This is a particularly virulent problem in the area of information systems research. IS as partly computer science and partly business studies is often unsure about its academic paradigm. It is torn between a desire to do rigorous research and producing results of relevance to practitioners . [17] It also leads to the problem of theory and practice in moral philosophy, parts of which were already discussed in connection with the German tradition. It is impossible to reflect the different viewpoints adequately. One general critique of academic research is always that it produces nothing of practical relevance. This is expressed by the image of the academic ivory tower. One of the reasons why this is so is that many theories forget to take into consideration the efficacy of the theory (Bourdieu, 1998b, p. 59). Whether and how far that applies to all theories is an open question, but it often rings true in questions of ethics. Moral norms are deeply practical because they determine what we do and, as Hausman and McPherson (1996, p. 54) point out, otherwise they would be of little interest. So the question of theory and practice is pertinent in ethics, and many authors agree that ethical theory has to reflect it. The first step is to ask: Is the ethical theory we are using or developing possible at all? It is hard to disagree with Mendieta s (1999, p. 121) reasoning when he says:

ethics concerns action, what one must do. What cannot be done, is not part of ethics. The question is what can be done? The ethical thus must include an elucidation of what is feasible , attainable.

Weil, following a similar train of thought, concludes that those who want the good without asking how to come by it are the worst enemies of morality, worse than those who do not care about it at all. A good intention is a good thing, but it needs the reflection of what is possible. Briefly: il faut que toute morale soit practicable (Weil, 1998; 1960, p. 92).

The question whether morality can be realised again has different aspects. The first one, the one Mendieta speaks about, is the fundamental possibility of a norm. If we found a new ethical norm that satisfied all possible aspects of ethical theory but that would be impossible to realise, it could not claim to be a valid moral norm. However, in most cases the problems are less obvious. Questions concerning whether norms are realisable often revolve around the much more subtle question of their enforceability. A norm that consists solely of an ethical appeal can be called na ve if it fails to take into account the legal, institutional, or political measures that would be needed to support it (Lenk & Maring, 1996b, p. 20).

This question is not only one of common sense but also reflects on the foundation of norms. As Habermas (1998b, p. 567) points out, even wellgrounded norms have to be reasonable in the sense that one can only expect people to follow them under the condition that everybody else is acting accordingly . This is so because the reasons for the acceptability of norms are based on their universal observance. This means that the validity of norms depends on their practicability (Priddat, 1994, p. 175; Wieland, 1999, p. 24).

This question of validity due to possibility also brings us back to the business part of IS, because it can be rephrased in terms of costs and thus be translated into the field of economic thinking. One reason why a moral norm might not be applicable could be prohibitively high costs (cf. Wieland, 1999, p. 26; 2001b, p. 26; Birnbacher, 1995, p. 133f). This is of high relevance for reflective responsibility because of the attention it must pay to the consequences of responsibility ascription. It implies that it is not only important that responsibility can produce manifest results, but that some quality of these results, such as their cost, must also be considered . To give a brief example from IS, the discussion of privacy rights must react to this. One solution to the question of privacy is to give complete control over all information to the people to whom it pertains. This might be morally defensible on different grounds such as a property approach to data or the idea of human autonomy. While such an approach might be theoretically acceptable, it would lead to a fundamental change in the way our society deals with data. To implement it would produce considerable costs. We will leave it open at this stage whether these costs would be prohibitive, but it is clear that these costs must play a role in the deliberation of the norms and resulting policies.

A fundamental problem with this sort of argument is that it is always suspect of committing the naturalistic fallacy, of drawing normative conclusions from positive facts. It is generally recognised among philosophers that conclusions from ˜is to ˜ought are not admissible. On the other hand ˜is and ˜ought are related, otherwise the entire enterprise of moral philosophy would seem rather pointless. Without going into this discussion in any greater detail, we believe that the arguments just discussed are valid because they reflect on the conditions of the possibility of ethics. Philosophers have to ask whether their norms are applicable, because otherwise their validity is jeopardised. Another argument looks at the individual as a moral agent. If ethics deals with the consideration of others interests, then it is a moral imperative that the moral agent s ability to consider them be maintained (Priddat, 1994, p. 104). While the (moral) validity of a norm must not be mixed up with its (factual) efficacy, one must admit that there exists a relationship between the two. A social order (for example the law) is only valid if it is effective (Kelsen, 1987, p. 31) and vice versa (Apel, 1980, p. 239).

This area of the realisation of norms in relation to their normative grounding is of high importance for reflective responsibility for several reasons. Firstly, reflective responsibility reflects on the consequences of consequentialism and therefore must enquire what these consequences are. Secondly, reflective responsibility is understood to aim at concrete results and solutions. Thus, there must be a discussion of these solutions, which should start with the question whether they are possible at all. Thirdly, responsibility is a normative but prima facie empty term which has to rely on the provision of material norms from other sources such as the socially accepted morality. If these underlying norms are jeopardised by a lack of practical relevance, then reflective responsibility must react to that.

This special reliance of responsibility on factual consequences and its weakness in the face of a threat to its realisability has been recognised by several authors. For Etchegoyen (1999), the principle of responsibility is the opposite of a heroic but impotent morality. This is why, for him, the true morality mocks traditional morality which neglects this point ( La vraie morale se moque de la morale ” tre responsable ). Responsibility as the true morality concentrates on consequences and thus especially on its own consequences. That, on the other hand, means that moral excuses, such as that of a good idea that was badly applied, are no longer valid. It is not possible to rely exclusively on the good will.

L ¼bbe (1990, p. 206) reflects on the conditions of the efficacy of responsibility and mentions some of the points that will be analysed in the next few sections. Among them there are institutions that must enable us to act responsibly, mechanisms of social control and sanctions, personal qualities, and power as the limit of responsibility. His conclusion, however, is rather negative because he uses the analysis to unmask the rhetoric of responsibility as a pathetic moralism used to cover its own practical incapacity.

Reflective responsibility must take the same problems into account, but instead of choosing L ¼bbe s path and in order to lead to consequences, it should try to develop ways to overcome them. From a reflective point of view, responsibility must be construed in such a way that the entire system of responsibility ascriptions is realistic and efficient, that number and intensity of responsibilities remain such that the actors can live up to them (cf. Birnbacher, 1995, p. 170). The most important ideas discussed in the next few sections ” accountability, the role of institutions, and the process of imputation ”are meant to support the realisabiltiy of responsibility.

Accountability

Reflective responsibility must not remain a theoretical abstraction if it wants to live up to the second and third characteristics, to the affinity to action and to consequentialism. Reflectivity in this case means that the process of responsibility ascription is analysed with regard to what will happen as a result. If the ascription does not lead to action, does not alleviate the problem, react to the broken norm in question, or leads to some other sort of manifest result, then it misses the point of responsibility. In order to be able to lead to action, however, the relevant parties, causal relationships, and norms have to be clear. Rules have to be understandable and applicable, and the underlying facts must be identifiable. This will only be possible within certain limits, but the attempt to do so is what accountability stands for. In this sense accountability means that the preconditions for the practice of prudent judgments are met. Part of accountability will therefore be the clarification of norms as described above.

Another part addresses epistemological and practical obstacles to responsibility.

Accountability is often used synonymously to responsibility. This leads to some very broad definitions such as that to say that someone is accountable is to say that the person is the appropriate agent to respond (i.e., to give an account) for an event or incident or situation (Johnson, 2001, p. 173). Others see accountability as one possible type or meaning of responsibility (cf. Spinello, 1997, p. 16). This meaning usually encompasses certain types and sanctions of responsibility, mostly those that we so far called moral responsibility. Accountability refers to the perception of defending or justifying one s conduct to an audience that has reward or sanction authority (Beu & Buckley, 2001, p. 61). Accountability then stands for questions of blameworthiness and punishment (Weckert & Adeney, 1997, p. 89).

In this text accountability is understood in narrower terms. It stands for the securing of the foundations of responsibility, in order that it can bear consequences. Accountability stands for the part of responsibility that has to do with tracing the causes of actions and events, of finding out who is answerable in a given situation (Goodpaster & Matthews, 1982, p. 133). A good definition is suggested by Laudon and Laudon (1999, p. 457):

Accountability is a feature of systems and social institution: it means that mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action, who is responsible. Systems and institutions in which it is impossible to find out who took what action are inherently incapable of ethical analysis or ethical action.

This definition of accountability concentrates on the social side of responsibility which will be discussed later on under the heading institutions. However, there is also an individual side to it. The task of determining who is responsible for what will in large part have to be shouldered by collective institutions, but that does not mean that there is nothing left for the individual to do. In order for these institutions to work, the individuals have to make sure they work, and for that they have to create the necessary conditions. In the first place that means that they have to develop the ability and the knowledge to be able to constitute institutions and to function within them. This is the least that individuals can be required to do in the context of accountability. Creation of individual accountability as a result of the reflective application of responsibility can in turn be seen as a moral responsibility. A person has a moral responsibility to understand the station he or she occupies in society at large and in more restricted groups (French, 1992, p. 78).

Apart from the individual and collective requirements of accountability, an important aspect is the epistemological one, which relates to knowledge as a condition of responsibility. Lack of knowledge is one of the most frequently used excuses, and a theory of responsibility that takes its consequences seriously has to address the problem. In some cases lack of knowledge is irrevocably part of the game, such as in the case of future developments. We will never know what the future holds in stock. This is no excuse, however, for not trying to determine scenarios or probabilities and for not making use of the facilities that are there. Accountability here means that all the tools for forecasting are used in order to allow calculable decisions which will then allow an accurate ascription of responsibility.

Another limit of knowledge and of responsibility are side effects. We have seen the epistemological problem that there is by definition an infinity of incalculable effects that result from every action. It is impossible to consider all of them for responsibility purposes. From the point of view of accountability, this fact has to be acknowledged , but again some of the difficulties can be overcome. The first one is the determination of results for which responsibility is ascribed. Which are the main effects of an action and which are the side effects? This question can be answered by returning to the original intention. Let us take a look at a technological example, at the generation of nuclear energy. It can be said that the main and intended effect of nuclear power plants is the production of energy while the production of nuclear waste is a side effect. Similar observations can be made with regard to computer technology. Computers are mostly bought because they will facilitate some kind of task and it may be easier to do them with a computer. The same is true for the networking of society. These intended main effects do not tell us anything about the side effects. As Weizenbaum (1995, p. 549) points out:

the direct societal effects of any pervasive new technology are as nothing compared to its much more subtle and ultimately much more important side effects. In that sense, the societal impact of the computer has not yet been felt.

Accountability in this context means that the distribution of main and side effects must be questioned, and that responsibility ascriptions are facilitated not only for the intended result but also for non-intentional results, at least for those that were foreseeable.

The determination of which effect is intended and which is a side effect is also at the heart of a discussion that reflective responsibility has to take into account, the discussion of external effects. External effects can be defined as those results of an action that affect others in an unforeseen way (Priddat, 1994, p. 38; K ¼ng, 1997, p. 317; Galtung, 1998, p. 240), which would correspond to the side effects. The interesting thing about external effects is that they are an increasingly recognised field of economic sciences. Unlike side effects, external effects are accepted as an attributable result of actions. They therefore require the development of attribution instruments which is exactly what the idea of accountability in reflective responsibility demands. The economic dealing with external effects tries to integrate effects that used to be neglected into economic thinking. The natural environment is certainly the most important example of this. For a long time environmental resources were not factored into economic decisions. Air and water, for example, were seen as resources for which the laws of scarcity did not apply. This led to the pollution of air and water, and consequently to the identification of environmental protection as something that the economic system had to take into account. The idea is now to internalise external effects, which in economic terms means to impute a price to them (Hausman & McPherson, 1996, p. 10). The next question would have to be how to do that, and there are presumably no simple answers to this. However, the internalisation of external effects is one approach to the production of accountability as the process of facilitating responsibility ascription.

External effects and accountability problems exist not only in the environment but also in technology and especially in IT. For Weckert and Adeney (1997, p. 98), the reason that accountability is important with regard to IT is that it leads to more care, which is important because of our increasing reliance on it. De George (1998, p. 50) sees accountability as the only way to provide a break on computers outpacing human beings and on humans blindly relying on computers to do what humans want. Rotenburg (1995, p. 136), then president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, emphasises individual accountability as the cornerstone of computer ethics. But while there seems to be a general consensus that accountability is necessary and useful in the field of (business) computing, it is also difficult to realise. After doing an analysis of the accountability of computer decision systems designers for outcomes resulting from use of their systems, Johnson and Mulvey (1995, p. 64) concluded that it depends on norms of behaviour in a field where norms are poorly articulated , if at all. Nissenbaum, having done a comprehensive study of accountability in computing, concludes that there are some systematic barriers that are specific to the field. The four that she discusses in detail are:

1) The problem of ˜many hands ”because computer systems are created predominantly in organizational settings, 2) bugs ” because bugs not only cause problems but commonly are conceived of as a fact of programming life, 3) the computer as scapegoat ”because it can be convenient to blame a computer for harms or injuries, and 4) ownership without liability ” because in the clamor to assert rights of ownership over software, the responsibilities of ownership are neglected (Nissenbaum, 1995, p. 528f)

All of these problems have already been discussed in one form or another under the different conditions and problems of responsibility. A theory of reflective responsibility will have to address all of them, because as long as they impede the accountability of actions and thus the process of ascription, responsibility will be without result and, from the reflective viewpoint, useless.

Institutions

One conclusion that can be drawn from what was said about reflective responsibility so far is that it will certainly have to depend on the support of institutions of one sort or another. This follows from the fact that it must be realisable as well as from the idea of accountability. The discussion of the limits of responsibility has shown that the most important obstacle to the success of the term is that those entities that play the role of subjects in many cases no longer fulfil the requirements that subjects are generally believed to need. Especially the individual agent no longer has the necessary power, knowledge, and other capacities to assume responsibility. From this, one can either conclude that responsibility has become a useless term or one can try to change the circumstances in such a way that it becomes realisable again, which is the idea behind the reflective use of responsibility. In order to achieve this goal, responsibility ascriptions will need to enlist the help of institutions.

If we want to move the burden of rendering responsibility realisable to institutions, the first step will be to define them. For Ricoeur (1991a, p. 242), institutions are the forms of social existence which govern the relationships between human beings in a normative way. As examples he notes the legal systems but also, in a wider sense of the word, politics represents institutions. For the purpose of facilitating responsibility, institutions can be understood in a wide sense such as we find it in institutional economics. For our application of responsibility in business information technology, this holds the added advantage that it refers to the economic side of the problem. From the point of view of institutional economics, institutions are formal or informal rules of the game of societies which govern and limit people s actions(Wieland,2001a,p.25). Examples would be codified law or uncodified morality. Wieland (1999, p. 117) emphasises that modern societies are institutional societies as opposed to personal ones. Today s societies are governed by institutions rather than individuals. Again this links in nicely with the problem of responsibility because responsibility is a characteristic feature of modern societies and an answer to the problems that modernity produces. While responsibility requires institutions to be manageable, it seems on the other hand that institutions are sometimes instantiations of responsibility or at least an expression of the wish for responsibility.

This idea is confirmed by Priddat s (1994, p. 167) definition of institutions as collective arrangements of mutual stabilisation of expectations. This mutual stabilisation can be interpreted in terms of responsibility as the mutual duty to answer to one another, which is the etymological root of responsibility. Priddat points out that institutions require a certain amount of consensus as well as trust in their validity in order for them to remain stable over time. Institutions thus have the function of a moral order that they discharge by synchronising the expectancies of their members .

If these characteristics of institutions were indeed valid and viable, then reflective responsibility could use them in order to facilitate individual, collective, or other responsibility ascriptions. This is Grunwald s (1996, p. 200) conclusion when he demands the rational establishment of institutions [18] and it is also the central idea of this chapter.

The idea of institutions as an expression of the willingness to realise responsible responsibility can become clearer when one looks at what they are supposed to achieve. Institutions generally have the purpose of disburdening humans, to free them from having to orient themselves over and over again. This disburdening should facilitate the people s becoming socially active (Lenk, 1998, p. 23). How can people be disburdened? To answer this we should recall what the problems are that impede responsibility ascriptions. The first problem is that of knowledge or the lack of it which is caused by complexity. If the complexity of a situation is greater than what the subject can manage, then responsibility is jeopardised. Institutions therefore have to ensure that complexity is reduced (Spaemann, 1975, p. 331f). One way of doing this is to define intentional and side effects, so that the subject can concentrate on the former. As we have seen, the number of potential side effects is infinite. Determining which ones are the ones that responsibility is ascribed for and which ones are not is a necessary precondition for a successful discharge. This means that the subject becomes free to ignore the side effects, but it also implies that a new responsibility is created, namely the responsibility for what was formerly the side effects. Arguably, the institutions themselves will have to assume this responsibility because there will not be anybody else to do so. A brief example should make this point clear. The responsibilities of a computer programmer tend to be limited to questions of correct performance of her work. This means that there are in fact institutions in place that shield her from having to worry about all other results of her activity. These institutions are our legal system as well as public perception, which allow the programmer to do what she does. This is necessary because it allows her to concentrate on the small area of her expertise.

On the other hand there are countless side effects of computers that now go without anybody s taking responsibility for them. The entire area of social or psychosocial effects that the programmer s work may entail is not taken care of. Following this theory of institutions, the result would be that the institutions themselves would have to assume the responsibility. This is of course no easy task. How could the law or public opinion assume responsibility for things it may not even know about? The answer to this can probably be found in other institutions. Institutions could create institutions with the explicit purpose of facilitating responsibility that would otherwise be forgotten. The legal system, for example, could define institutions ”this means laws ”that would ensure that foreseeable side effects are taken care of. So, while it might disburden the individual programmers from the task of thinking about the social impacts of her work, it might burden the company or the industry with assuming this exact responsibility. This of course leads back to some of the problems discussed earlier in the context of collective responsibility. Can institutions be responsible? And if so, how? While this is no easy question to answer, the idea of institutions allows one approach that might calm critics by defining collective responsibilityintermsofindividualresponsibility.Institutionscouldforexample determine which individual or individuals are going to suffer the sanctions in case of a collective mistake.

It becomes clear that we have to distinguish between two fundamentally different sorts of institutional responsibility. On the one hand institutions facilitate responsibility by defining it in such a clear and precise way that the individual regains his ability to assume it. On the other hand institutions must in this process assume responsibility themselves as collective agents . These two types of institutional responsibility are closely linked. Institutions can only facilitate individual responsibility by assuming their own collective responsibility. Yet, collective institutional responsibility will in most cases only lead to tangibleresultsifitisretranslatedintoindividualresponsibility.Institutionsmust shape the individual s reality in such a way that he or she feels capable of living up to the normative standards that define responsibility. As we have seen this includes the definition of intended versus side effects and thus the definition of the object. It includes the definition of acceptable conditions in terms of knowledge, complexity, causality, freedom, etc. Responsibility is a social construct, and institutions play an important role in constructing this social reality. They act as mediators between different realities, norms, and perceptions with the aim of allowing responsibility ascriptions to come to fruition. To borrow an expression from Preuss (1999, p. 408), there are boundaries beyond which individual ethics have to be reinforced with institutional ethics. Institutions make sure that the individual s capacities for moral action are not overstretched as they would be if they had to continually keep in mind the wellbeing of society.

Institutions are thus part of reflective responsibility because they give an answer to the question of how responsibility can be realised. They do this by disburdening the individual and by helping to construct the social realities that constitute responsibility. They also play a role in establishing accountability. Institutions can be used as a means for the end of imputation. This is part of the social construct, but it is a part that deserves special attention. One of the reasons why responsibility in modern technological contexts often seems misplaced is that there seems to be no way to establish a relationship between subject and object, that there is no plausible imputation possible between the two. Institutions can and must be created that overcome this problem if responsibility is to be viable. An example might be the software faults or bugs that are a normal part of computer life and that every computer user knows better than they would like. The reasons why there is no bug-free software are manifold , but it seems that bugs are intrinsic to software as we know it. These bugs can have high moral relevance. A crashing business system or the failure of a safety critical device can have serious consequences. But who is responsible? According to a classical theory of responsibility, one would have to establish a causal relationship to an individual and then impute blame and punishment to this person. However, this is usually impossible due to the complexity of the software and the different tasks in developing it which are held by different persons. Responsibility ascriptions thus do not take place; this leads to a situation where a normative problem is not addressed. In this situation institutions allowing the creation of imputation would be helpful and they are therefore what reflective responsibility would require. An example for an institutionthatmightalleviatethesituationistheideaofstrictliabilityasweknow it from the American legal system. It allows the imputation of responsibility in complex cases by disregarding some of the classical conditions such as clear causality and takes the pragmatic standpoint that effectiveness in these cases is more important than theoretical stringency.

Thedevelopmentofinstitutionsofimputationisnecessarytoletindividuals know what they should or should not do, and it is necessary to facilitate responsibility ascriptions (L ¼bbe, 1998, p. 153). It is also necessary to change seemingly natural processes to controlled processes, or, to return to the beginning of the book, to change uncertainty to risk, for which responsibility can be taken.

Good institutions, to summarise this section, are characterised by the fact that they enable responsibility (Hastedt, 1994, p. 262). Some authors go so far as to say that responsible action is only possible in an institutional context (Priddat, 1994, p. 244). One of the reasons for this is that responsibility depends on some continuity. The subject must realise that it is responsible and that this is a state of a certain temporal duration (cf. French, 1992, p. 19). This can again be explained by the moral nature of responsibility, by the fact that it takes others moral rights into account, that it is a form of answering to the other. As long as the subject is in the position where it has to answer, responsibility remainsinplace.Itcanthereforebeinterpretedasasortofself-institutionalisation of the moral intention (Priddat, 1994, p. 244).

Another area where institutions are of crucial importance for responsibility ascriptions is the final result ”the sanction or the punishment. The ascription of sanctions and the subsequent enforcement is also something that in most cases must be institutionalised in order to be effective (L ¼bbe, 1990, p. 206). This is obviously true for legal responsibility where the courts of law, the police, and the penitentiary system work together. It is also true for other, softer forms of responsibility. Moral responsibility also needs institutions that can enforce sanctions such as the revocation of reputation, even if these institutions are less clear-cut than their legal counterparts.

Even though institutions play a central role in reflective responsibility, they are no panacea and they produce some problems of their own. Institutional responsibility in the sense of collective responsibility can produce all of the problems discussed earlier. As soon as individuals feel they are not held responsible individually but collectively, there often develops the phenomenon of the risky shift, the fact that groups are willing to take higher risks than individuals (B hret, 1987, p. 9). Another problem is that responsibility can become a routine organisational matter, and the actual moral duty to answer is neglected. An important problem is the replacement of the individual.

Institutional responsibility can be used as an excuse by individuals for not living up to their responsibility or even as a reason for the general abolition of individual responsibility. Again, this is a problem that was already discussed in the chapter about collective responsibility. The solution is to realise that collective, institutional, and individual responsibility are not to be interpreted as contradicting alternatives but as mutually supportive. Responsibility must be facilitated by institutions and in institutions (Hastedt, 1994, p. 262). One should also realise that the apparent alternative between individual and institutional responsibility is a false one because the two sorts of responsibility are categorically different. Institutional responsibility refers to the possibilities of individual action whereas individual responsibility refers to the actions themselves (Hubig, 1994, p. 157).

There is another categorical problem with institutional responsibility. If we see institutions as a necessary condition of individual responsibility, then the next question is: Who is responsible for the institutions? Who maintains them and before all, who creates them? In some cases individuals can probably be credited with erecting an institution, but in most cases the task would be to great for any single human being. This brings us back to the start: who is responsible for institutions is a question that apparently can only be answered by institutions. That means a society would need something like institutions of a second order which in turn would be responsible for the creation of institutions. In fact, in democratic societies the elected representatives and parliaments can be interpreted as just such second-order institutions charged with building institutions. Philosophical completeness would now demand to know who is responsible for the second-order institutions; a possible answer might be: third-order institutions. This obviously leads to an infinite regress, which is why we will leave it here, with the idea of political systems as institutions of a second order. This idea also has some plausibility because democratic governments link the institutional responsibility back to the constituents and thus back to individual responsibility. The entire topic is presumably more complicated than this, but for our context of responsibility and IS, it can be seen as sufficient because IS usually operates within given states and institutions.

The most important institution guaranteeing responsibility is without a doubt the legal system. It is not only the origin of the word responsibility, it is also the best example of how responsibility can be realised with the help of institutions. The law also shows some of the difficulties of responsibility in and through institutions. There is for example the problem of the moral foundation of the normative background of responsibility. It was said earlier that all sorts of responsibility are inherently moral. In the case of legal institutions, this leads to the question of where morality enters the game. In order to answer this question, one would have to give an exhaustive discussion of ethics and law which will not be possible here, but it should suffice to state that the law must have some moral foundation in order to be legitimate . Immoral law would be illegitimate and would be hard to enforce. Whether ethics stands over the law and directs it, or whether it is a procedure that somehow migrates into the law (Habermas, 1998b, p. 568), it is an institution that makes attributions feasible. The law is also a good example for institutions because it contains all of the other aspects of institutions mentioned before. It defines who or what can be a subject, who or what the object might be, and which sorts of objects are not part of the ascription because they could not be considered. The legal institutions state clearly how the process of ascription has to take place, who decides about the consequences, and how they can be enforced. This clarity of the legal system is presumably the reason why the emphasis in normative questions moves from ethics to the law.

Another interesting theory concerning the normative use of institutions which can be interpreted in terms of responsibility is a theory that sees business ethics located in the economic framework. This theory that in Germany is closely linked to the name Karl Homann states that in the economic system, individuals have to act according to the rules of the system. The single person may be morally motivated, but this motivation will not come to fruition if it contravenes against the imperatives that govern the economy. The idea is that if the individual has to adhere to economic rules, that is if she has to act on her preferences under given constraints, then the institutional setting must be modified in such a way that the preferences reflect what is morally desirable. Homann calls this an incentive ethics ( Anreizethik) (Homann, 1997, p. 16). Homann s approach to business ethics therefore asks whether conflicts can be retraced to institutional causes (Homann & Blome-Drees, 1992, p. 188). If this is so, then the change of the institutions is a much more promising approach to solving the conflicts than any sort of moralising might be. Moral norms in Homann s theory can only be effective if they are beneficial to individuals. Homann thus propagates an economic theory of morality, which studies how proposed moral norms can be made beneficial and immoral behaviour disadvantageous (Preuss, 1999, p. 410). As Pies (2001, p. 196) puts it, the theoretical alternative is to either implement ethics against or through economic incentives. This idea that ethics must be realised by institutions refers mostly to those situations where classical morality does not seem to work any more. These are typically the situations where big and anonymous groups are concerned . In these cases where individuals do not know each other, moral rules may be unknown, and even if they are known, the temptation of free riding is great. The institutional ethics approach would then try to change the environment in such a way that individual and collective utility coincide (cf. Scheuch, 1990, p. 92; Kliemt, 1990, p. 74).

Interestingly, this approach can lead to the elimination of ethics out of the ethical theory. If one follows the idea that institutions can and must be modelled in order to allow the individual s interests to coincide with the greater good, then the question becomes a rather technical one. Do the institutions live up to their promises and do they facilitate the desired behaviour? Asking these questions means that one interprets institutions as mechanisms that regulate actions. Such mechanisms can best be judged in terms of means of ends (Grunwald, 1996, p. 200), in terms of economic rationality. The question of what this greater good is, this morality that they are supposed to protect or to facilitate, is not necessarily a part of such a theory. The proponents of this approach therefore have to rely on other theories to provide them with the ethical content that they then try to implement. Wieland (1999) simply proposes that society has a reservoir or morality that can be used for this purpose. Whetherthisistrueisdoubtful,andthemaincriticismoftheideaofinstitutionalising ethics in social systems is therefore that it is not an ethical theory at all but rather an economic theory. For our purposes, namely the idea of reflective responsibility, this does not appear to be too serious a problem because, as was stated earlier, reflective responsibility has to reflect on its normative foundations in the context of the theoretical clarity of the notion. For theoretical purposes we can therefore suppose that the ethical background is clarified or at least that the lack of clarity is clear.

Where does this leave us in terms of responsibility and IS? A first answer to this question is that a reflective use of responsibility in IS must take institutions into account. If responsibility is to play a role in this area at all, it must be supported and facilitated by institutions. Many of the current approaches to computer or information ethics rely heavily on individual responsibility. Marc Rotenberg, president of the influential Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, for example emphasises individual accountability as the cornerstone of computer ethics (Rotenberg, 1995, p. 136). In light of what was said so far, this sort of approach must be seriously reconsidered. Even if individual responsibility remains the centre piece of the normative setting, it must be recognised that first of all the necessary institutions, organisations, or procedures must be created that will facilitate this responsibility. In this sense the use of information technology within or outside of the realm of business is only one example of the fact that modern technology raises moral problems and that it is generally realised that institutions must play a central role if we are to address these problems successfully (cf. Hubig, 1995, p. 122; Schmidt, 1992, p. 170; Ropohl, 1987, p. 170; Hastedt, 1994, p. 262). A difficult question with no general answer is what these institutions should look like. If they have the purpose of reducing complexity for the individual in such a way that the individual is able to grasp the situation and to assume responsibility, then the form of the institution depends very much on the situation as well as on the individual in question. One sort of institutional arrangement that is frequently discussed in relation to the use of computers and IT is that of professional codes of conduct. These can indeed be interpreted as ways of institutionalising individual responsibility (cf. Eckard & L ffler, 1991, p. 286; De George, 1999, p. 205). In this sense they would be an expression of reflective responsibility. On the other hand codes of ethics or codes of conduct produce their own problems and dynamics.

As a last aspect of reflective responsibility before we come to the more specific problems of IS, the process of imputation deserves a closer look. Institutions are meant to allow imputation of responsibility and therefore it makes sense to ask how this can be done in a fashion that would maximise its utility.

Imputation

The last general consequence resulting from the reflective use of responsibility that we will discuss here concerns the process of imputation or ascription itself. We have seen that responsibility is defined as the process of imputation, and it is of interest whether and in what way the three characteristics of openness, affinity to action, and consequentialism affect the nature of the process. The starting point for reflective responsibility must be to ask how the ascription can be realised in a way that it facilitates the three characteristics. How can one ascribe responsibility in such a way that it is open, that it leads to action, and that the consequences of the actions as well as the ascription itself are taken into account?

Given that there is a virtual infinity of ways of ascribing and this virtual infinitycanbeappliedtotheactualinfinityofcaseswhereresponsibilitycanplay a role, an easy answer to the question is not to be expected. However, there are two prominent theories of business ethics that seem to point in the direction that responsibility has to take if it wants to be open, active, and consequentialist. These two are the discourse ethics and stakeholder approaches. The decisive feature that the two share and that will lead to a fulfilment of the requirements of reflective ascription is that they both try to maximise the participation in the imputation process.

The discursive approach is based on discourse ethics as developed by Apel and Habermas (cf. Apel, 1980, 1988; Habermas, 1983, 1991). Discourse ethics is based on the idea that within every speech act, there lie several validity claims without which the speech act would be meaningless. Whatever a speaker says, she claims truth, (normative) correctness, and veracity or authenticity. This does not mean that these claims are fulfilled, only that we have to assume them if we are to communicate meaningfully. These validity claims can be doubted, in which case they have to be defended in a rational discussion in front of all of the affected people, in a discourse. The discourse is a counterfactual construct where the discourse community can theoretically discuss every argument in a power-free environment until the reasoning leads to a consensus. Even though this sort of discourse will never happen, it is the regulative idea that guides our real-life discourses. Discourse ethics understands itself explicitly as an expression of an ethics of reason in the succession of Kant. At the same time it can be interpreted as an expression of a responsibility viewpoint, due to the fact that the answer, the response is the central idea of discourses.

This concept can be used fruitfully for all sorts of different applications of responsibility. Despite the fact that it is rather abstract and refers to a counterfactual ideal situation, it can be interpreted to give us clear rules of action. For Ulrich (1997, p. 90), responsibility in the economic system can be demonstrated using discourse ethics when people try to live up to the conditions of discourses. To act responsibly the subject must face up to the criticism and claims of all of the affected persons, and it must take these positions into account when acting. That means that the view of responsibility as a lonely decision in front of one s own conscience is not acceptable.

It is a difficult question whether discourse ethics is applicable at all. Both Apel and Habermas emphasise the importance of real discourses, well knowing that these will never fulfil the legitimising conditions of the ideal discourse. The result of real discourses is thus always fallible, and it is hard to determine under what circumstances it is binding and under which ones it requires a new discourse. Another problem would be that it is often impossible to lead real discourses because of time constraints or because the affected parties are not available. Since real discourses are the instantiation of discourse ethics, it can be argued that the weaknesses of real discourses endanger the moral foundation of the entire theory. Fortunately for our purposes of reflective responsibility, these objections are not of the highest importance. We can stick with the idea that the attempt to realise discourses is an expression of responsibility. This attempt may be fallible, like the entire construct of responsibility, but as we have seen before, reflective responsibility is a modest concept. Its inherent consequentialism demands that the consequences of ascriptions be good, but they do not have to be perfect. In this sense the use of discourses as a tool is possible in responsibility settings, as long as it can be shown that it is better to have them than not to have them. And this seems to be a rather simple task.

There are a few advantages to discourses from the point of view of responsibility that do not depend on the theoretical background. First of all discourses are necessary to define the normative basis. What is the morality, what are the rules that the community in question believes in? Without an answer to this, responsibility makes no sense. At the same time discourses never exclusively concentrate on normative questions, but they always consider questions of facts and truth as well. This means that the question of who or what can be a subject or an object can be discussed at the same time. Discourses can even be interpreted as the instance of ascription, because they determine the accusation as well as a potential punishment. Another advantage of discourses is that they maximise the knowledge base. Asking all of the parties in question is a guarantee for finding out the most about potential and probable consequences of an action or decision. In this sense, discourses are eminently consequentialist. They also promise to maximise awareness of side effects, because as far as these are foreseeable, they will be raised by the interested parties (Habermas, 1983, p. 116). This knowledge allows the determination of those norms, practices, or projects that can be seen as legitimate (B hler, 1994, p. 269). All of these facts taken together have a great impact on another aspect of reflective responsibility, on the realisability. Given that there is a maximum of knowledge about results, a shared definition of norms and of potential subjects and objects, the probability of an ascription being viable is maximised. All of these points clearly show that holding discourses in the sense of discourse ethics is a sensible procedure in the context of reflective responsibility. The expected results will generally outweigh the costs of such discourses. Despite the theoretical problems of discourse ethics, the more modest idea of reflective responsibility ”which does not aim for theoretical perfection , just for practical improvements ”will generally be able to profit from discourses.

How would we have to imagine such a discourse? Let us look at an example from IS. Let s say that a manager is thinking about the acquisition of a new human resources information system. The manager wants to act responsibly, but at first sight is hard pressed to say what that means. Following the idea of discourse ethics, there would have to be a discourse in which the validity claims could be checked. Implied validity claims of such an information system might be that it can handle the required tasks better than the system in place right now, that it can save money, that it is more efficient, that it has improved functionality, etc. Apart from these claims of truth, there are normative claims. These might be that the use of the system is good for employees in the HR department because it makes their lives easier. It can be helpful to other employees by providing better information or reacting more quickly. Another normative claim might be that the use of the system does not infringe on anybody s rights. The veracity claim could be the manager s assurance that she really wants to implement these improvements. In order to get a discourse started, the manager would have to identify all of the affected parties. Discourse ethics is different from ideal discourses in that the manager can exert a big influence on the outcome by choosing the representatives in the discourse, but the discourse will have to be started by someone and the initiator of the change is probably a good starting point.

The next problem would be the identification of the participants of the discourse. If the system is to be introduced into a big multinational corporation, then chances are that thousands of employees might be affected. It will be impossible to have all of them participate. Therefore, representatives must be chosen . This is again a step away from the ideal discourse. Apart from the employees, there will be others who have an interest in the process. Those might include management of the company, shareholders, the system supplier, relatives of the employees, trade unions, and special interest groups from all sorts of backgrounds. It is plain to see that realising a discourse that would even try to emulate ideal discourses is hard work and potentially a very costly endeavour. The manager and her superiors might therefore ask: Why bother?

There are different answers to this, but one can try to group them again around the validity claims. The claims of truth are those that have to do with knowledge, risks, and side effects. Even though the initiating manager must have some idea of the objective reality, she runs the risk of having overlooked relevant facts, and that risk is minimised by holding the discourse. It might turn out that the planned system has serious flaws, that it is unable to perform certain relevant tasks, or that there are better comparable systems. The normative claims might also be challenged by pointing out that the new system allows for new sorts of breaches of privacy or that it favours business practices that are not welcome in all of the states where the company operates. Finally the veracity of the manager might be challenged, it might be pointed out that she had a consulting relationship with the supplier or that her motives are clouded by well-known prejudices.

The result of the practical discourse is that the validity claims that emerge from it will look different from the ones it started out with. Given that the discourse itself is by definition flawed, these results can again not claim infallibility. However, they do have the advantage over a mere management decision that, because they are derived using more resources, they are more viable than the starting point. From the point of view of management, this means that the introduction of the new system will have a higher probability of being successful. At the same time the new system will have a higher level of acceptability for all of the parties that participated in the discourse. These results can on the one hand be seen from an economic point of view. Discourses cost resources, but at the other hand they produce a higher probability of a positive outcome. A purely monetary cost-benefit analysis will be hard because many of the factors are intangible. Therefore holding such a discourse is a question of management s judgment. The discourse can also be seen from a moral point of view. It gives an answer to the manger s initial question: If I want to act responsibly, what should I do? The results of the discourse should tell her that and thus allow her to take the course of action with the highest probability of being ethically acceptable.

The discussion of the example of a discourse may have reminded the reader of a different approach to ethical problems that in practice looks very similar, the stakeholder approach. The stakeholder approach first started in 1963 in the Stanford Research Institute and argued that executives needed to understand the needs and concerns of the stakeholder groups in order to fulfil the organisation s objectives (Kujala, 2001, p. 236). It is interesting to note that the original idea was not an explicitly normative one, but was dictated by business interests. In the meantime, however, the concept of stakeholders has been taken up by business ethicists and is used to formulate an ethical viewpoint. Stakeholder management in practice is very similar to the applied discourses just discussed. It requires, as its key attribute:

simultaneous attention to the legitimate interests of all appropriate stakeholders, both in the establishment of organizational structures and general policies and in case-by-case decision making (Donaldson & Preston, 1995, p. 67).

The stakeholder theory is today mostly used as a counterargument to the shareholder value theory of businesses (von Weizs cker, 1999, p. 41f; Hank, 2000, p. 272). There are fundamental normative and descriptive reasons why the shareholder theory does not seem adequate. The stakeholder view allows the description of a firm as a multi-purpose organisation and not as the institutionalised interest of the shareholders (cf. Koslowski, 2000). A good account of stakeholder thinking is given by Donaldson and Preston (1995). For them the theory has three aspects that are nested within each other. First of all the theory is descriptive and gives a better account of organisations than a onedimensional theory could. Secondly the theory can be used instrumentally ”it helps make predictions and obtain desired results. At the core , however, the theory is normative. Recognising the legitimate claims of stakeholders is what it essentially is all about.

This stakeholder view can be seen as an expression of reflective responsibility because it recognises some of the same fundamental principles. It looks at the questions of reality, what is realisable, but at the same time it has a moral foundation. The underlying assumption of answerability, the equality of all humans is also the implicit reason for the recognition of the legitimacy of stakeholders. In this sense the stakeholder approach can be seen as an expression of reflective responsibility. Realising the stakeholder approach therefore runs into the same problem we have seen in the case of the other expression of responsibility, of applied discourses.

The fundamental difficulties that the stakeholder approach raises are the justification of the theory and the identification of the stakeholders. The answers to the first question can either be the instrumental or the intrinsic value of the approach. From an instrumental point of view, the stakeholder theory can be seen as advantageous because it allows a better description, prediction, and thus control of the company. The intrinsic strength is that it is built upon the perception of humans as free and equal, and therefore is an expression of the humanistic ethical tradition of enlightenment. For our purposes this question is less relevant because using the stakeholder approach as a means for reflective responsibility means that it is morally charged anyway and the two sorts of answers will both apply.

More difficult to answer is the question: Who do we accept as stakeholders and on what grounds? This question corresponds to the problem in discourse ethics concerning the participants in the discourse. The stakeholder literature offers several answers to the problem. One can distinguish between wider and narrower approaches to the question. Donaldson and Preston (1995, p. 85) for example identify stakeholders through the actual or potential harms and benefits that they experience or anticipate experiencing as a result of the firm s actions or inactions. Another wide definition would be that of any group or individual that can affect or is affected by the achievement of the firm s objectives (Kujala, 2001, p. 236). Some authors have tried to bring a little more order in these potentially infinite groups. We find the distinction between primary and secondary stakeholders, based on the view of the firm as a nexus of contracts (Hendry, 2001, p. 225). Here the primary stakeholders are those who have a formal contractual relationship with the company; the secondary ones comprise everybody else who might be affected by the company (Gibson, 2000, p. 245).

All of these attempts to define stakeholders run into problems. A very wide view that sees everybody who can affect the company as a stakeholder would have to include terrorists and extortionists. A narrower view that would be helpful to management because it might be easier to realise runs the risk of losing its ethical foundation because it may exclude relevant groups. One could therefore follow Ulrich (1998, p. 13) when he says that a stakeholder is someone who has legitimate claims towards the firm, but that it is impossible to deduce an a priori list of those claims.

For our purposes it is less important to determine who stakeholders are in general than to recognise the close connection of the stakeholder approach to the idea of reflective responsibility. The stakeholder theory is close to responsibility because it is open, it relies on communication, it promises relevant action, and it maximises the chances of realisability by including everybody affected by a decision beforehand, thus maximising the factual as well as the normative knowledge necessary to facilitate the attribution of answerability.

This discussion of some ideas concerning the realisation of responsibility ascriptions finishes the theoretical observations of reflective responsibility. In the next chapter we will apply these ideas to the field of business computing and discuss some practical problems and how they can be viewed from the perspective or reflective responsibility.

[16] A related idea can be found in Donaldson and Dunfee s (1999) Integrative Social Contract Theory. There they try to show that efficiency is a hypernorm. That means that the efficient use of resources has a moral quality and that it is even invariant to cultural influences.

[17] A good example for this problem and also for the difficulties of finding a convincing position is offered by Benbasat and Zmud (1999).

[18] Even though we support the idea of the rational and intentional creation of institutions, this has to be taken with a grain of salt. One has to agree with Downy (1972, p. 72) when he says that some of our institutions can less properly be said to have been built up by judgment and decision than to have grown up by custom: we did not so much create them as find ourselves in possession of them. Just as there is a limit and a fundamental fallibility of responsibility, the same can be said for institutions.




Responsible Management of Information Systems
Responsible Management of Information Systems
ISBN: 1591401720
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 52
Authors: Bernd Stahl

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net