Professionalism and ethics: is education the bridge?

Abstract

In today's fast-paced world, where more and more emphasis is being placed on ethics and ethical behavior in the workplace, the IT industry remains such an area where little or no evidence has been presented to sustain claims by employees on whether pre-conceived notions of ethics lead to professionalism among employees. To this effect this chapter tests the knowledge of IT professionals on ethical issues such as usage of email, net surfing, net privacy, copy rights and others as recognized by professional societies such as ACM, IEEE and ACS. The study further investigates the root cause of unethical behavior at workplaces as pre-knowledge, or knowledge gained through high school and university education.