NABET, NABET 2015 Faculty Conference

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Big Data Ethics: A novel approach for supporting ethical standards
Carolyn LaMacchia, Loreen Powell

Last modified: 2015-09-28

Abstract


Ethics help to define a business model that will thrive even in adversity. Strong ethical policies that go beyond upholding the law can add great value to a brand, whereas a failure to do the right thing can cause social, economic, and environmental damage that undermines a company’s long-term prospects. Therefore, ethics should be embedded in business models, organizational strategy, and decision-making processes.  Once adopting an ethical approach, companies often find there are financial benefits from demonstrating high ethical standards. Big Data refers to extremely important techniques and tools to advance an organization and even society in finding hidden relationships within a large data set. Big data has transformed how we live, how we work and how we think. The strategic value of Big Data for business and government is unquestioned. The negative ethical issues associated with Big Data including privacy concerns, predictive profiling, and an increasing reliance on algorithmic decision–making is an active area of research. However, Big Data can play a positive role when incorporated in the decision-making process to support an individual’s or an organization’s ethical code.  This research describes a novel approach for incorporating ethical considerations in individual and enterprise decision-making scenarios.


Keywords


Data Science, Big Data, Ethics, information systems