THE ADVANTAGES OF REFLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The business use of information technology produces ethical and moral problems. For these problems responsibility can and will be ascribed. There is no possibility to opt out. Whether the responsibility is of legal, moral, role, or other nature, whether its goal is punishment or reward, whether it aims at retribution or education, responsibility is inevitable. In the light of this, decision makers will ask themselves how they can deal with the responsibilities that are heading in their direction. The traditional approach of defining responsibilities from an ex ante and solipsist viewpoint and hoping that these will be enough has a low probability of success. It will also overburden managers who are necessarily incapable of finding out all of the responsibilities that they will be subjected to. The alternative is to actively search for the participation of the stakeholders in a discursive manner.

We have reiterated the advantages of reflective responsibility several times, and we will try to summarise these advantages now for a last time. Reflective responsibility allows managers (who are at the centre of attention in this chapter, but the argument is of course not limited to managers) to transcend the limits that usually preclude individuals from successfully assuming responsibility in a modern society. This modern society, characterised by risk, uncertainty, and contingency, structured and governed by social and sociotechnical systems, does not allow individuals to assume responsibility for important developments because individuals lack the knowledge and the power to influence them. This is true for societal developments, but it goes down to relatively minor decisions in an organisational context. One part of this development is caused by the change from uncertainty to risk, by the fact that the reach of our responsibilities grows with our knowledge while the individual does not have the ability to catch up with all of the knowledge that is available. New social actors such as corporations or NGOs gain in importance, but traditionally it is unclear in how far they can be responsible.

The solution to these problems that we developed in this book is the idea of reflective responsibility. Reflective responsibility emphasises the three features developed from a discussion of responsibility: openness, affinity to action, and a teleological background that aims at the improvement of our circumstances. The methodological trick of reflection, the attempt to apply these three features to the concept of responsibility, has allowed us to draw several conclusions regarding the application of responsibility. We were able to show that the idea of reflective responsibility is related to the stakeholder approach and the discursive approach that we find in contemporary business ethics. Reflexive responsibility was developed as a formal approach which has an ethical basis that relies on the answerability, on communication. It implies an ethical standpoint because it takes the stakeholder seriously.

Acting responsibly in our sense is therefore a moral thing to do, but it is at the same time a smart thing to do in an economic sense. While responsibility discourses do not offer the guarantee of success and may come at a steep price, they will often be the only way in which responsibility can be realised at all. Adhering to the formal structure of including stakeholders in a discourse about discussions will in many cases be the only way in which a manager can act responsibly. The reflective approach is not only moral, but it is also the most promising way of acquiring the necessary knowledge and participation to change things.

Furthermore, we have seen that the responsibility discourse will in most cases have to rely on certain characteristics of the participants and will most likely come to certain results. Responsibility discourses must rely not only on the willingness of the participants to participate, but also on a high level of prudence and good judgment. In the course of the discourse, the normative rules relevant to a specific case will be developed, but at the same time the application of these rules to given facts must be decided. Moral, legal, and other rules will play a part as well as cultural norms and understandings.

Responsibility discourses in large multi-national organisations will therefore run into unexpected problems. Among the results of these discourses, there will have to be clear structures that will allow the ascription of objects to subjects. Since this will happen in an environment of uncertainty, it is clear that part of the solution will consist of institutions that allow the ascription. These will be institutions that can have every form imaginable and will have the task of producing accountability. Accountability in this sense means that the preconditions of an ascription are cleared up. The discourse and resulting institutions will have to clarify, for example, what the temporal reach of a given ascription is, how far side effects will be considered , what sort of subject is admissible , etc.

Finally, reflective responsibility must take its own fallibility into account and keep in mind the modesty that lies at the root of the concept. One of the important features of reflective responsibility that distinguishes it from the traditional approaches is that the combination of consequentialism and the aim of the good life allows it to become active where there is a chance that it will lead to results that improve human life, independent of whether ascriptions are perfect and fully defined. It is this characteristic of reflective responsibility that allows us to overcome the traditional limitations by saying that an ascription that will most likely improve our lot is justified, even if we know that it is fallible and that we may have to retract to it later. During all of our attempts to ascribe responsibility, during the creation of institutions of accountability, during nonoptimal discourses, this fact must remain present. The reason why the discursive process of reflective responsibility can produce any acceptable results at all, despite its inability to live up to the standards of discourse theory, is exactly this intellectual modesty.

Let us return for a last time to our central example in this book, to the question of privacy and surveillance. As was demonstrated earlier, the reflective approach allows the CIO, whom we have supposed to be the central subject, to combine different responsibility ascriptions based on the decision to introduce a surveillance system. We have seen that there is a multitude of different arguments that speak for and against such a system. An individual like our CIO would be hard pressed to identify all of the relevant angles and would most likely fail. The result would be that she might be able to live up to some ascriptions, but would be vulnerable to others because of a lack of awareness and preparation. To continue the example, we can now state that the reflective approach allows not only the identification of different subjects, objects, norms, and therefore different ascriptions. It also allows the combination of the different aspects discussed in this chapter, of responsibility because of, for, and through IS. If the process of responsibility ascription starts, which will include the discussion of the different validity claims, of truth, norms, and authenticity, then all of the aspects of responsibility will be covered. This means that not only the different possible subjects, norms, and objects are discussed, but also the temporal aspect, the question of what responsibility for past or future action means, and how the two are connected. In the context of the norms and sanctioning authority, the question of institutions will have to be addressed and institutions of accountability will be discussed to facilitate the ascription. A shared view of the good life, at least some aspects of it, will be necessary to come to any conclusion and the viability of the result requires that the process be open and lead to results. Finally, the fallibility of the process necessitates that it be open , that structures be put into place that allow the revision of results and the modification of ascriptions when the stakeholders views change.