In today’s fast paced environment the need to adapt
to outside circumstances is ever increasing. Adaptability will help you to
create information systems that will get you the information you need to stay
competitive. Parallel to the rapid development of Information Technology is
uprising of certain ethical and professional issues as well as social implications
that raises many professionalism questions of IT people and has made a big
impact not only the way people around the globe communicate but also, it opens
a wide door to information. Internet gave people the freedom to do, find and
share a lot of things and information in the web. It is like going inside a
global grocery store where everything you wanted and needed are there, all you
have to do is put it inside your cart. Consequently, this freedom became the
key for emergence of numerous ethical issues and made different cultures
collide. However, IT professionals like any others, need to act in a
professional way to avoid these collisions.
An IT practitioner needs to have equity. Equity
simply means being fair with others and to act fair is to act ethical. Equity directly
relates to the intellectual property rights which according to Justin Hughes,
an American law professor is characterized as “nonphysical property that is a
product of cognitive processes and whose value is based upon some idea or
collection of ideas.” Intellectual Property is legally protected by copyright,
patents, trademarks, trade secrets and design rights. One common violation of
this right is the rampant uploading or downloading an electronic files through
peer-to-peer sharing (P2P) network and mostly this is without the permission of
the original author. Act likes software piracy is also unprofessional.
Second is privacy. Something that intrudes the
privacy of others is considered unethical. These include accessing one’s email
account, records and personal information such as credit card number, address,
etc.
There are companies who practice monitoring of both personal and business emails, as well as internet usage of their employees. A number of office workers are accessing and using personal email account for business and personal reasons. This often times leads to information leakage and expose the company to unstable situations. Some also collect this information and sell to companies who advertise their products through spam mails. They send un necessary emails to our personal emails accounts. Hacking is also another issue that many IT practitioners are doing to hack information about people, companies etc. This is unprofessional behavior.
There are companies who practice monitoring of both personal and business emails, as well as internet usage of their employees. A number of office workers are accessing and using personal email account for business and personal reasons. This often times leads to information leakage and expose the company to unstable situations. Some also collect this information and sell to companies who advertise their products through spam mails. They send un necessary emails to our personal emails accounts. Hacking is also another issue that many IT practitioners are doing to hack information about people, companies etc. This is unprofessional behavior.
Lastly, IT professionals need to be honest is
honesty which refers to acting with integrity. Generally, everyone knows and
can distinguish what is right from wrong. But, not everyone can act honestly at
all times. Even with the creation of company conduct code or policy, it cannot
stop someone in doing unethical or dishonest habits in the workplace for
honesty is something intrinsic. These are common unethical and unprofessional
business habits and serves as current challenges of most companies. IT
professionals need to be honest when placing software for free download where
many put viruses a program that affects the normal functioning of a computer.
This virus can damage some important files and lead to vital information loss.
An IT professional should act professionally and
never use his IT skills badly or to engage in any unethical act. This will make
him have the dignity of being called a professional as well as not being unjust
to others. One is encouraged to concentrate more on inventions and innovations
that can help people in many ways. Therefore being a professional is not only
having the IT skills but also the ability of one to act ethically and
professionally.
ADAPTABILITY
The ability to adapt to frequent changes in the IT
sector has emerged as a new paradigm for successful IT practitioners and
companies operations. An IT professional should have all the required and extra
skills in his field to be able to cope up with the adaptability that involves
changes in every day to day basis. Every day there is a new software in the
market, a new device and new trends. An IT professional should be able to cope
up with this change through updating himself with the current trends.
Business change is one of the most outstanding and
most pervasive qualities of global economies. There has been some consideration
of business change itself, but less emphasis has been on studying the outcomes
of this change with regard to information technology (IT) and its
interrelation. Organizational change requires the information systems
architecture of an organization to adjust too to be able to adapt to changes in
the IT sector. The so called digital market which involves intense IT
application, needs IT professionals to combat themselves with all the
technology in the field to be able to perform accurately and effectively.
IT professionals also need to adapt to the way of
handling IT project complexity so as to ensure smooth running of projects. A professional
needs to be aware of all the changes occurring in the external markets as well
as internally within the organization so as to be able to handle the complexity
easily without affecting the business and the field at large. Complexity issues
can be societal, organizational, and technological as well as software. Also
one important feature is the enterprise architecture of the business that
determines how the business operates.
IT professionals also need to be very knowledgeable
in their respective fields to enable them to handle IT matters easily. An
undergraduate degree is not enough, with the current trends in the knowledge
fields where more and more post graduates studies are facilitated, one needs to
be able to acquire all the necessary skills and not only theories. In other
words there is a need for a CS professional to know more about networking and
vice versa. By doing so, it will make practitioners adapt to their respective
fields easily and be able to make decisions as well as handle various matters
easily.
References:
Andresen, K., Gronau, N., Schmid, S. (2005): Ableitung von IT-Strategien durch Bestimmung der
notwendigen Wandlungsfähigkeit von Informationssystemarchitekturen.
http://www3.gartner.com/Init,
References:
Andresen, K., Gronau, N., Schmid, S. (2005): Ableitung von IT-Strategien durch Bestimmung der
notwendigen Wandlungsfähigkeit von Informationssystemarchitekturen.
http://www3.gartner.com/Init,