Paragraph summary of sub-environments of business followed by a table devoted to each one.
- Technology including hardware, software, designs, prototypes, products, or services. Examples of engineering projects in Puerto Rico are provided in the PR STS grid. In the Therac-25 case, the hardware is the double pass accelerator, in Hughes the analogue-to-digital integrated circuits, and in Machado the UNIX software system and the computers in the UCI laboratories that are configured by this system. Because technologies are structured to carry out the intentions of their designers, they embed values.
- Physical Surroundings. Physical surroundings can also embed values. Doors, by their weight, strength, material, size, and attachments (such as locks) can promote values such as security. Physical surroundings promote, maintain, or diminish other values in that they can permit or deny access, facilitate or hinder speech, promote privacy or transparency, isolate or disseminate property, and promote equality or privilege.
- People, Groups, and Roles. This component of a STS has been the focus of traditional stakeholder analyses. A stakeholder is any group or individual which has an essential or vital interest in the situation at hand. Any decision made or design implemented can enhance, maintain, or diminish this interest or stake. So if we consider Frank Saia a decision-maker in the Hughes case, then the Hughes corporation, the U.S. Air Force, the Hughes sub-group that runs environmental tests on integrated circuits, and Hughes customers would all be considered stakeholders.
- Procedures. How does a company deal with dissenting professional opinions manifested by employees? What kind of due process procedures are in place in your university for contesting what you consider to be unfair grades? How do researchers go about getting the informed consent of those who will be the subjects of their experiments? Procedures set forth ends which embody values and legitimize means which also embody values.
- Laws, statutes, and regulations all form essential parts of STSs. This would include engineering codes as well as the state or professional organizations charged with developing and enforcing them
- The final category can be formulated in a variety of ways depending on the specific context. Computing systems gather, store, and disseminate information. Hence, this could be labeled data and data storage structure. (Consider using data mining software to collect information and encrypted and isolated files for storing it securely.) In engineering, this might include the information generated as a device is implemented, operates, and is decommissioned. This information, if fed back into refining the technology or improving the design of next generation prototypes, could lead to uncovering and preventing potential accidents. Electrical engineers have elected to rename this category, in the context of power systems, rates and rate structures.
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Component |
Description |
Examples |
Frameworks |
More Frameworks |
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Techno- |
Hardware: Machines of different kinds |
Door (with tasks delegated to it such as auto- |
Value Discovery (identifying and locating values in STS) |
Social Construct-ionism: Restoring interpretive flexibility to reconstruct a technology to remove bias and realize value |
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Code that configures machines around human purposes |
Power generating technologies based on renewable and non- |
Value Translation (Operation-alizing and implementing values in a STS by designing and carrying out a procedure) |
Identifying and mitigating complexity in the form of tightly-coupled systems and non-linear causal chains |
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Technology can constrain business activity by de-skilling |
Auto- |
Value Verification (Using methods of participatory observation to determine how effectively values have been realized.) |
De- |
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Technology, especially software, can instrument human action |
Microsoft Office, Firefox Browser, Google Chrome, Google Docs, Social Networking software |
Transpers-pectivity: Discovering strands of construction of current STS; identifying possibilities for reconstruction |
Designing to avoid the technological imperative and reverse adaptation (where humans abandon ends and serve the ends of technologies |
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Component |
Description |
Examples |
Frameworks |
More Frame- works |
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Ethical Envi- |
Moral Constructs: Spheres of justice where distribution takes place according to context-dependent rules (Rules) |
Basic Moral Concepts: rights, duties, goods, values, virtues, responsi-bility, and justice |
Utilitar- Happiness is tied to maximizing the satisfaction of aggregated preferences. |
Basic Capabilities: life, bodily health, bodily integrity |
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Social Constructs: Power and its distribution among groups and individuals |
Inter- |
Rights: Capacities of action that are essential to autonomy, vulnerable to standard threats, and correlated with feasible duties |
Cognitive Capabilities: Sense, Imagination, Thought; Emotion; Practical Reason |
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Right: A right is a capacity of action, essential to autonomy, that others are obliged to recognize and respect. |
Privacy: If the information is directly relevant to the relation to the holder and the seeker, then it is not private. |
Virtues: Settled dispositions toward choosing the mean between extremes of excess and defect. (Courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessness) |
Social Capabilities: Affliations, Other Species |
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Duty: A duty is a principle that obliges us to recognize and respect the rights of others. |
Property: That with which I mix my labor is mine. Intellectual property is non- |
Capabilities Approach: For Nussbaum, capabilities answer the question, “What is this person able to do or be?” For Sen, capabilities are “'substantial freedoms,' a set of (causally interrelated) opportunities to choose and act.” |
Capabilities that address vulnerabilities: Play and Control over one's environment |
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Physical Surround- |
Description |
Examples |
Frameworks |
Frameworks |
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Physical environment imposes constraints (limits) over actions that restrict possibilities and shape implement-ation. |
Influence of rivers, mountains, and valleys on social and economic activities such as travel, trade, economic and agricultural activity, commerce, industry, and manufact-uring. |
Classroom environment Enables or constrains different teaching and learning styles. For example, one can pair off technically enhanced and technically challenged classrooms with student entered And teacher-centered pedagogical styles and come up with four different learning environments. Each constrains and enables a different set of activities. |
The physical arrangement of objects in the classroom as well as the borders created by walls, doors, and cubicles can steer a class toward teacher centered or student-centered pedagogical styles. |
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Stake- |
Descript- |
Examples |
Frameworks |
Frameworks |
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Any group or indivi- |
Market Stake-holders: Employees, Stockholders customers, suppliers retailers/ wholesalers, creditors |
Non-Market Stakeholders: communities, activist groups and NGOs business support groups, governments, general public (those impacted by projects who do not participate directly in their development |
Role: The place or station a stakeholder occupies in a given organizational system and the associated tasks or responsibilities. Interests: Goods, values, rights, interests, and preferences at play in the situation which the stakeholder will act to protect or promote. |
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(Distinction between market and non-market stakeholders comes from Lawrence and Weber, Business andSociety: Stakeholders, Ethics,Public Policy, 12th edition. McGraw-Hill, 14-15. |
Alliances are discussed by Patricia Werhane et al., Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships: Globalization, Markets, and Economic Wellbeing. Routledge (2009). |
Relation: Each stakeholder is related to other stakeholders in an alliance and each relation is tied to goods and values. |
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Proce- |
Description |
Examples |
Framework |
Framework |
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A series of interrelated actions carried out in a particular sequence to bring about a desired result, such as the realization of a value. Procedures can schematize value by setting out a script for its realization. |
Hiring a new employee: (a) settling on and publishing a job description; (b) soliciting and reviewing applications from candidates; (c) reducing candidate list and interviewing finalists; (d) selecting a candidate; (e) tendering that candidate a job offer. Other procedures: forming a corporation, filing for bankruptcy, gaining consent to transfer TGI and PII to a third party (Toysmart: opt-in and opt-out procedures). |
Value Realization Process in Software Engineering:(a) Discovery: Uncovering values shared by a given community; (b) Translation: operationalizing and implementing values in a given STS; (c) Verification: using methods of participatory observation (surveys and interviews) to validate that the values in question have been discovered and translated. |
Challenging theStatement ofValues: (a) A stakeholder group raises a conceptual, translation, range, or development issue; (b) Group presents their challenge and response to other stakeholders; (c) If other stakeholder groups agree, then the challenge leads to a revision in the SOV; (d) Community as a whole approves the revision. |
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Laws, Statutes, |
Description |
Examples |
Frameworks |
Frameworks |
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Laws differ from ethical principles and concepts in that laws prescribe the minimally moral while ethical principles and concepts routinely explore higher moral "spaces." |
Criminal Law: Applies to individuals; interested party in a criminal trial is society, not the victim. |
Civil Law: Torts concern wrongful injury. The objective of a tort is to make the victim "while" after an injury. |
US and British law work through a common law system where current decisions are based on past decisions or precedent. |
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Ethical principles challenge and criticize laws by bringing into question their normative content. |
Involves proving a mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reus (guilty or law-breaking act) and that the mens rea caused the actus reus. |
To prevail in a tort one ust prove (in order of severity) negligence, recklessness, or intent. |
The Puerto Rican system of law is based on the Napoleonic code where decisions relate directly to existing law and statute and precedent plays a weaker role. |
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Laws can challenge ethical principles and concepts by raising issues of practicality. Also, as in responsi-bility theory, the law can structure and inform the moral discussion. |
Criminal law does not apply to corporations because they "have no soul to damn and no body to kick" Baron Thurlow |
Negligence involves proving that the defendant failed to meet some standard of due care. |
Question: How does the statutebased Napoleonic system in PR constrain and enable business practice in relation to other systems such as the British and American common law systems? |
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Contract law concerns the violation of the terms of a contract. |
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Market Envi- |
Descript- |
Examples |
Frameworks |
Frameworks |
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Business takes place within different markets that shape supply, demand, and price. Globalization frequently requires that a business be adept at operating across different markets |
Laissez Faire: Each economic unit makes choice based on rational (enlightened) self-interest. (Private ownership of goods.) |
Assumptions of a Free Market System: (a) Individual decisions are aggregated. (b) Information flows through price structure. |
Recent economic studies of the limits of laissez faire markets: |
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Liberal use made here of notes from Economics class taught by CR Winegardner, University of Toledo, 1971-1972 |
Liberal Democratic Socialism: Limited government intervention is needed to improve upon the choice of individual economic units. (Mixture of private and public ownership) |
(c) Free association. (d) Absence of force or fraud. (e) Individual agents are rational utility maximizer |
(a) Information Asymmetries (as studied by Stiegliz). (b) Monopolies which, in the absence of competition, can dictate standards of price, product and service. |
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Materials also take from Natural Capitalism from Lovins and Hawkings. |
Communist, |
(f) Governments should adopt a hands-off stance because interference disrupts the ability of markets to produce utility-maximizing conditions. (4,4) |
Animal spirits deflect economic decision-making away from perfect utility maximizing. They include confidence, fairness, corruption, money illusion, and stories. (4,5) |
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(5,1) |
(5,2) |
(5,3) |
(5,4) |
Ghoshal: bad management theories are destroying good management practices as they become selfful filling prophecies. Ghoshal is especially critical of agency theory, compliance/
punitive approaches to corporate governance, and the theory of human nature he calls "Homo Economicus." |
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Inform- |
Description (1,2) |
Examples (1,3) |
Frameworks (1,4) |
Frameworks (1,5) |
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(2.1) |
How data and information is collected, stored, and transmitted along with ethical issues such as informed consent and privacy that accompany information management (2,2) |
Informed Consent: Obtaining consent from information holder when collecting, storing, and transferring personal identifying information or transaction generated information. (2,3) |
Privacy in Context (2,4) |
Data Transferand Informed- |
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(3,1) |
(3,2) |
Belmont Report: (a) Principles: Respect for persons, beneficence, and justice; (b) Application 1: Informed consent as "subjects to the degree that they are capable be given the opportunity to choose what shall or shall not happen to them;" (c) Application 2: assessment of risks and benefits; (d) Application 3: Selection of subjects for experiment. (3,3) |
(a) Identify individuals in groups in a context; (b) Identify the roles played by these individuals and groups. (3,4) |
Opt-in: Information is not transferred unless data-holder expressly consents; Opt-out: Data will be transferred unless holder expressly refuses or withdraws consent. (3,5) |
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(4,1) |
(4,2) |
Conditions of Informed Consent Information, Comprehension, Voluntariness. (4,3) |
(c) Identify context-relative norms that guide activities within context and between one context and another. (Materials on privacy in context are taken from Helen Nissembaum in her book, Privacyin Context (4,4) |
Fair Information Practices: (a) Notice: full disclosure and redress (way to resolve problems); (b) Choice: Choice about how information is to be used; (c) Access: access to stored and about to be disclosed information; (d) Security: ways that information will be kept secure and unauthorized access prevented in collection, storage, and transfer of information. (4,5) |
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Natural Envi- |
Description (1,2) |
Examples (1,3) |
Frameworks (1,4) |
Frameworks (1,4) Frameworks (1,5) |
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(2,1) |
Wicked Problems (2,2) |
Principles of Sustaina- |
Four Theoretical Approaches to Environmental Ethics (2,4) |
Environmen- |
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(3,1) |
(a) Difficulties in formulating and structuring problem; (b) Non- |
Precaut- |
(a) Extensionism: Peter Singer's extension of Utilitarianism to cover sentient beings; (b) Tom Regan's ascription of rights to select animals. Biocentrism: Taylor's attribution of moral consideration to all teleological centers of a life. (3,4) |
Willingness- to- pay: Resource in question would go to the highest bidder, that is, value is dependent on most intense preference and the disposable income to assert that preference (3,5) |
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(4,1) |
(c) Wicked problems are "non- |
Safe Minimum Standard: "save the resource provided the costs of doing so are bearable" (Norton 346) (4,3) |
Land Ethics: A thing has value or is good insofar as it promotes the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. Biotic community
includes humans, nonhumans, species, and ecosystems all interacting as a system. From Aldo Leopole, Sand County Almanac; Virtue |
Willingness- to sell: Resource is owned by the public so its value is determined by its selling rather than buying price. This frees bid from disposable income. Now value becomes more reflective of the identity conferring beliefs and attitudes of a community and its members. (4,5) |
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