A computing system to assist business leaders in making ethical decisions

Abstract

This paper explores whether it is possible to build a computing system that can make ethical decisions autonomously, and if it is possible, then what it takes to build such a system. Firstly, this paper introduces ethical business decision-making, and also explains the reason for building an autonomous computing system that can assist business leaders. Secondly, a literature study is presented on the existing models for ethical decision-making; from the literature study, and with the help the stakeholder analysis (ethical theories that are relevant to the business environment), a new model is proposed. Thirdly, based on the new model, this paper proposes building an autonomous computing system; the proposed system has a layered architecture. This paper concludes that if such a system is built then inherently it has to be an adaptive system in order to cope with ever changing environment. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.