A STUDY OF THE ETHICAL PERCEPTIONS OF COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS MAJORS AND BUSINESS MAJORS IN COMPUTER- RELATED SITUATIONS

As Information Technology evolves, it continues to raise new ethical challenges. In recognition of this, both the profession, and academic communities have attention on Information Systems ethics.This study examines an important question that has been neglected by previous research studies: Do Business students differ significantly from Information Systems students in terms of their perceptions about ethical issues in Computer-related situations. Eight Business and Information Systems students were surveyed to assess their ethical perceptions on six scenarios and sixteen ethical problems. All six scenarios incorporated computer related problems that are faced by managers and practitioners in the field. Hypotheses were tested for significant differences between the Business majors and Information Systems majors. The results from the participants and data in this research study, suggested that Business students have similar perceptions with Information Systems students except in two scenarios where students who have taken ethics and/or philosophy courses rated the problems higher than the students who have not taken ethics and/or philosophy courses.