The IT head-in-the-sand syndrome: Many businesses either fail to realize that we have entered the information age or fail to appreciate its importance.

The move of business to the information age raises many ethical issues, but has received little ethical attention, either from business or from business ethicists. Uncovering the ethical issues that grow out of information technology, facing them, and providing ethical guidelines is the major challenge for business and business ethics at the start of the new millennium.

The rise of the Internet as a locus of business is changing marketing, for instance. It makes possible one-on-one marketing by tracking the customer, recording his or her preferences and proclivities, and presenting the customer with products that he or she is likely to want to buy. Department stores and discount stores, just like TV ads, have to rely on generalizations and average wants and desires. The Internet makes possible an individual fit. As Internet sales climb, they will continue to encroach on, if not yet threaten, department stores and other stores and retail outlets. Many businesses seem not to care or worry, or else do not know how to respond effectively.

Wal-Mart is one of the few traditional firms that realizes it exists in the information age. In a real sense, Wal-Mart is not primarily in the retail business, but in the information business. It's very much like Amazon.com, except that Wal-Mart also owns its own outlets. Like Amazon.com, Wal-Mart has a database that is probably its most important asset. Because of its database, Wal-Mart can customize each of its stores to suit local shoppers and order product to point-of delivery exactly when each store needs it - saving storage and other costs, and changing the way product is manufactured and delivered.

The effect of such time pressure on factories and workers in the plants that supply Wal-Mart, however, is uncharted territory for the business ethicist. The changes are real. But their ethical impact has yet to be assessed. The security of Internet transactions, the return of goods with which customers are dissatisfied, and the delivery of goods ordered all raise issues to be examined, and carry with them ethical implications. Similarly, how, where, and whether to tax online sellers and buyers is an unresolved question that has been temporarily put on hold by legislation. But the tax base of many cities and local communities relies on local sales taxes, which may well diminish considerably as new ways of buying goods develop in the information age. Business via the Internet changes the relevance of location, geography, times during which businesses are open and employees work, how employees are used, and so on.

In area after area, businesses have not yet started to sort out the implications. And society has not decided whose laws should apply; what rules and regulations should be adopted; who is to decide; and who is responsible for enforcement. The pirating of software, music, books and anything that can be put in digital form is symptomatic of a growing nest of problems.

The failure of business to recognize the move into the information age is demonstrated by its procrastination in facing up to the Y2K problem. That information technology and computer people could not get the attention of management long before the approach of the year 2000, to fix a problem the technicians knew existed and would have to be faced sooner or later, is a sad reflection on business managers. Undoubtedly, many did not understand the problem or its scope, and many who did were unwilling to spend the millions of dollars it would take to fix their systems before they had to, even though the delay added to the cost. Companies are now backing into the information age or being pulled by a technology they do not completely understand, even as they become more and more dependent on it. One result is the focus of my second thesis.

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