This paper focuses on the ethical perspective of information and communication technologies known as information ethics. It discusses the foundation of information ethics focusing on the work of Norbert Wiener which is then followed by an overview of the key definitions of information ethics. This in turn leads to a discussion on the practical relevance of information ethics for the strategists, developers and implementers of ICT. Three key issues of privacy, property and crime are considered from an ethical standpoint.

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An interview-based study of moral exemplars in the computing profession in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia reveals that moral excellence in the profession is not a unidimensional construct. There are at least two documented approaches to making moral concerns the center of one's career in computing, and almost certainly more than two. The PRIMES model of influences on moral excellence presented here (Personality, Integration of Morality into the Self, Moral Ecology, Skills and Knowledge) has implications for both practice and pedagogy.

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In business information systems, many of the questions of both ethics and business benefit can be usefully considered in terms of levels and type of openness to be applied. In this paper, I examine both the ethical implications of such choices, and also the business benefits to be gained from choosing a more open path. Software licensing issues, communication protocols, data formats and customer relations are all considered through this lens.

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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.

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Many business organisations have made an attempt to provide individual consumers with the customised information services, which requires the development of dataveillance systems that continually collect and use personal information. However, the architecture of dataveillance systems decides what kind of the information individuals can access or receive. In this situation, social sorting based on personal information processing by dataveillance systems occurs and the intellectual freedom of individuals is restricted without their awareness. Under these circumstances, the ability to control the information resources that individuals had gained thanks to the widespread availability of the Internet seems to have shifted into the business organisations which operate dataveillance systems. In this study, based on the observations of relevant business cases, social influence of the dataveillance systems is examined, and the concept of "the counter-control revolution" is proposed.

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In this paper, a promising way of forming and penetrating security sense among employees in Japanese firms is clarified through the case study of Japanet Takata. The Personal Information Protection Law enforced in 2005 has raised customers' privacy protection awareness among businesspeople. Establishing proper information security measures for protecting customers' information privacy has become very important for firms. Once firms make trouble concerning security of personal information, it becomes urgent for them to set up and implement the recurrence prevention plans. Nevertheless, there exist firms in which information security incidents such as personal data leak happened repeatedly. On the other hand, Japanet Takata surmounted the incident of customer information leak and has become one of the most trustworthy firms in terms of personal information security. This has resulted in a significant increase in their sales.

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Since the mid-1990s, Internet business has flourished around the world. Nowadays, many companies come to focus their attention on effectiveness of communication with diverse stakeholders using information and communication technology (ICT). Rapid development and permeation of the Internet allowed people to use the interactive media for non-business purposes in a convenient and comfortable manner. However, due to the widespread availability of ICT, the classic and new crimes of "cyberstalking" are reported very often. The versatility of the Internet technology has made it possible that new forms of cyberstalking are developed beyond traditional stalking. This paper examines how ICT transforms traditional stalking, and what characteristics cyberstalking has, focusing on gender and ICT in the first place. Furthermore, we also examine how ICT obfuscates the boundary between real space and cyber space. Hence, because social norms in real space can function as "social reality" imprinting people with specific norms, online communities have a certain kind of influence on people's formation of social norms.

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In Korea, with the rapid spread of the Internet, "cyber violence" has been a social problem such as the spread of a falsehood, revealing of a real name and personal information on the Net. The suicide of a famous actress in October 2008 caused by cyber violence led the Korean government to propose "a cyber contempt charge" that imposed a severe punishment of a slander on the Internet. In this paper, based on the investigation of socio-cultural background of cyber violence in Korea and the trend of law development by the Korean government, the author examines the propriety of the cyber contempt charge. Furthermore, on the basis of consideration of the recent court cases of libel on the Internet in Japan, the author proposes a recommendation of the method for protecting the freedom of speech on the Net from the viewpoint of "information ethics".

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Network communication is now the most familiar communication tool for people, at least in the business world and the schoolyard. Despite its convenience, people sometimes worry about the media and devices which automatically receive messages. Some people have found that such network communication media are sometimes addictive, resulting in an adverse influence on performance of the students and employees. Then, some organisations, such as schools and companies, banned using or carrying these devices. However, the effect of network communication is not only to encourage excessive use but also having a stressful influence on users. This paper shows the circumstances causing such stress and proposes "network leave," during which one is away from network communication and one's familiar people know one cannot respond to incoming messages.

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Clarifying the disincentive factors and its structure impeding enterprises from implement information security measures contributes to promote information security. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey about disincentives that affect the implementation of information security measures. Using the answers from the 915 respondents, we conducted exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) and came up with a disincentive structure concerning information security measures. Based on this structural model, we examined commonality and difference between the group of large enterprises and that of small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of information security disincentives.

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This paper argues how a firm incorporates information systems into the differentiation system as a resource or activity, and how information systems affect business performance. Information systems often have an indirect effect on business performance/competitive advantage, but it does not mean that this condition cannot be analyzed. Information system is an element of "Differentiation mechanism," and this mechanism can be analyzed as a cause of business performance/competitive advantage. As a case study, we selected Seven-Eleven Japan, which has excellent information systems, and discuss how the company established its business superiority.

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Business innovation aims at transforming business frameworks, models, processes, or other elements related with business activities in order to create value. Considering that IT is a key driver of business transformation, the CIO is expected to play an important role in business innovation. However, does the CIO actually make a significant contribution to it? This study indicates that the existence of the CIO has a positive impact on business innovation and that this impact becomes clearer when the CIO has an executive position and is truly functioning in the role of CIO. In this paper, we present a three-layer model for roles of the CIO to explain the trend of a shift in roles from the CIO as Innovation Enabler to Innovation Driver and finally to Innovation Strategist. The data for the study has been primarily derived from the evaluation of CIOs by their employees through two web-based questionnaires and from self-evaluations conducted in interviews with 22 CIOs of relatively large companies in Japan.

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There are several diagram methods for data modeling like a class diagram. It is very hard to describe a big data model of a large enterprise system into one diagram. It is necessary how to keep consistency among data models. We introduce algebraic structure for syntactical and semantical merger operations on class diagrams and the consolidation condition. We also show associative law and commutative law of the syntactical and semantical merger operations for the class diagram algebra that keeps avoiding inconsistency depending on order of merging.

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