RESPONSIBILITY AS THE ANSWER TO OUR PROBLEMS

Responsibility has become a key word of modernity. Whatever the deeper reason, the success of the term responsibility results from the fact that the normative challenges to human action under the conditions of modernity are growing. New developments need to be reflected constantly, with regard to their normative implications and responsibility is seen as a moral construct that can meet the challenge. This is why Hastedt (1994, p. 176) can state that modern societies need to rely on a general assumption of responsibility. The ascription of responsibility is the functional equivalent of legal or moral norms in such situations in which general norms are no longer applicable because of the complexity of the situation (Kaufmann, 1990, p. 71). The reason for the success of responsibility is thus the increasing awareness of the complexity of reality. This complexity leads to difficulties in applying traditional norms and thereby to a decrease of the collective validity of traditional morality. This development can of course backfire on responsibility, as a certain rest of accountability is necessary if responsibility is to be ascribed. So, while responsibility is a result of increasing complexity, it is at the same time dependent on the reduction of complexity to beviable (Spaemann,1975,p.331f). This is a general problem to which we will return in later chapters.

The facts that we talk about here are not new. It is one of the oldest ethical propositions that one should think about what one does and consider the results. What is new about it is that the reflection in our complex civilisation is hard scientific work (Sachsse, 1972, p. 124). As we have seen, the scientific attempts to tackle uncertainty and complexity can be found under the label of risk. If the rise of importance of the term responsibility is linked to uncertainty and complexity, and responsibility is seen as a moral answer to them, then the concept of responsibility should be viewed as the solution to moral problems posed by risk. Indeed, one can often find this view. From a general norm that each person is responsible to those whom his actions affect, and he is morally bound not to harm others unless there is some overriding reason for doing so (De George, 1999, p. 308), we progress to the postulation of responsibility for risk. Responsibility gains its specific relevance where classical tools of implementing norms fail (cf. Bayertz, 1995b; Kaufmann, 1995). It is important to note that since risks have to do with uncertainty, they are necessarily future occurrences, and therefore responsibility for risks is a specific form of responsibility, prospective responsibility, or responsibility ex ante . This sort of responsibility that will be discussed in more detail during the next chapter is the reason why responsibility is perceived as a potential solution for the normative problems produced by risks of technology (cf. Bayertz, 1995a, p. 45; Ricoeur, 1995c, p. 69).

Interestingly enough, the relationship between responsibility and risk is mutual. Not only is responsibility often perceived as a solution for moral questions of risk, but at the same time every ascription of responsibility is a risky endeavour. Risk is inseparable from responsibility, and it can even be said to constitute one of its most important ingredients (Etchegoyen, 1999, p. 149). Responsibility usually has some aspect pointing to the future and tends to be connected to some sort of sanction , which always comprises the possibility of going wrong, of ascribing actions or results on wrong grounds, according to non- viable norms, etc., so that the process of ascription can be said to be risky in itself. This also means that responsibility by its very foundations is a fallible construct.

We can now see why responsibility is related to business information technology and why it makes sense to address the moral problems of IS using the term responsibility. Both business and technology produce risks and are at the same time ways of dealing with them. Information technology has the express purpose of helping us deal with the increase of information that constitutes the reason for the increase in risks. IT is a tool for dealing with complexity and reducing it. It should help us understand larger amounts of data and transform them into information that is useful to us. In this sense IT is one of the factors that turn uncertainty into risk. This is true for general risks as well as for specifically economic risks. Information systems, we can summarise, create risks at the same time that they reduce them. If this is true and we accept the property of responsibility as being a remedy for the moral problems of risks, then the ascription of responsibility emerges as the preferred method for dealing with ethical and moral problems created by IS.

Apart from this argument there are several other reasons why responsibility may appear as a good solution for moral problems of IS.