Grounding Information Systems Values in Ubuntu Business Ethics

Although there has been interest in the ethical aspects of information systems (IS) since the 1980s, various authors have recently lamented the fact that not enough research has been done in the area and that ethics is often ignored in the IS industry. When one searches for publications on Ubuntu or the decolonisation and Africanisation of IS ethics, relatively few outputs can be found. The main research question that this article addresses is: How can African knowledge systems and ways of knowing inform and enrich IS ethics? The aim of the article is to identify appropriate ethical insights borrowed from Ubuntu-informed ethics, information ethics and business ethics to serve as building blocks for Ubuntu IS ethics. The main focus of the article is to articulate a kernel Ubuntu-inspired IS ethic. In order to justify this endeavour, a wide range of ethical concepts are discussed illustrating the gap in existing research. The concept of Ubuntu IS ethics is also applied to a broad range of IS ethical issues to demonstrate its applicability and relevance. The article is a conceptual study that follows a philosophical approach. The research is a rudimentary attempt to enrich IS ethical theory from an African-Ubuntu viewpoint. The key contribution of the paper is the proposal of a foundation for an Ubuntu-based IS ethics converging into a kernel ethic, which could be used to counteract the hegemony of Eurocentric values embedded in information and communication technology.