AN ANALYSIS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY (ACM) CODE OF ETHICS

Abstract

As the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Code of Ethics has an important guiding role in embedding ethics into computing practice, both in the United States and around the globe, its content is important. This paper considers a way of analyzing the Code into ethical categories, inspired by a soft systems 'rich picture' Information Systems (IS) framework. A list of seven stakeholder categories, together with the major components of applied ethical theory, are used to map the elements of the ACM Code. While such an analysis is imprecise due to human interpretation, so also is the art of applied ethics. Yet, by framing the ACM Code according to stakeholder roles and basic ethical analysis tools, the ACM Code of Ethics becomes more useful in various ways. Overlaps and gaps can be identified, various interpretations of word meanings can be more easily identified and debated, and, perhaps, most importantly in the global ethical arena, a better comparison of the ACM with other codes of ethics is facilitated.