Toysmart, a dot-com that sold educational toys for children, went bankrupt June 2000. The ethical issues surrounding e-business come into sharp focus as one reviews the creation, operation, and dissolution of this corporation. Student exercises in business and computer ethics form the content of this module which links to the Toysmart case narrative displayed at the Computing Cases Website (http://computingcases.com). Computing Cases is an NSF-funded project devoted to developing and displaying cases studies in computer ethics in an online format. Toysmart along with nine other cases will be published by Jones&Bartlett as Good Computing: A Virtue Approach to Computer Ethics, a textbook in computer ethics. Exercises in this module will provide students with frameworks that allow them to identify key facts, separate relevant from irrelevant materials, and draw from comprehensive historical case descriptions matters to inform decision-making and problem solving. Making use of an analogy between ethics and design in problem-solving, students will (1) specify problems using socio-technical analysis, (2) design solutions to these problems, (3) employ ethics tests to compare, rank, and evaluate solutions, and (4) use a feasibility test to anticipate obstacles to solution implementation. This module is being developed as a part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation, "Collaborative Development of Ethics Across the Curriculum Resources and Sharing of Best Practices," NSF-SES-0551779.
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Introduction
In this module you will study a real world ethical problem, the Toysmart case, and employ frameworks based on the software development cycle to (1) specify ethical and technical problems, (2) generate solutions that integrate ethical value, (3) test these solutions, and (4) implement them over situation-based constraints. This module will provide you with an opportunity to practice integrating ethical considerations into real world decision-making and problem-solving in business and computing. This whole approach is based on an analogy between ethics and design (Whitbeck).
Large real world cases like Toysmart pivot around crucial decision points. You will take on the role of one of the participants in the Toysmart case and problem-solve in teams from one of three decision points. Problem-solving in the real world requires perseverance, moral creativity, moral imagination, and reasonableness; one appropriates these skills through practice in different contexts. Designing and implementing solutions requires identifying conflicting values and interests, balancing them in creative and dynamic solutions, overcoming technical limits, and responding creatively to real world constraints.