Abstract
Recently, a large majority of development, deployment and use of information and communication technology (ICT) has been carried out by business organisations. Because their behaviour has had strong influence over a wide range of people in the modern market economy and ICT can function as an amplifier of power imbalance, they have to carefully engage in activities of development, deployment and use of ICT and take their social responsibility regarding intentional as well as unintentional outcomes of the activities. As major providers of the technological architecture of the ICT-dependent society, they are expected to overcome nosism of them and to address ethical and social issues caused by their development and use of ICT/ICT-based information systems proactively. However, the fact that business organisations operate in competitive markets often makes it difficult for them to develop an ethical outlook appropriately. In order to get over the difficulty, correct understanding of business ethics and corporate social responsibility is necessary, which requires reconsidering definitions and roles of business organisations, the market economy, liberalism and capitalism from the social viewpoint.
