Ethics

Consideration of ethical issues in the networking fields is very vital in the success of a network system design process. Networks systems design is a complex process that need to ensure that the system designers pay close attention to the diverse and unique ethical issues that relate to specific network systems being designed (Allen and Morton 1994). Questionnaire administration, research interviews, and study of the existing information that regards to the ethical issues in network systems design would be done. Both closed and open ended research questions would be employed to ensure that adequate information is gathered from the respondents. Interview, though rare, would be employed in collection of data in cases where administration of questionnaires would have been considered unsuitable. On the other hand, secondary sources of data would facilitate better understanding of the research topic and in the identification of any existing loopholes that ought to be addressed.

Introduction
The process of designing network systems entails integration of computer systems, organizational needs, and the people needs and expectations. Jonas (1979, 110-156) elaborates on the fact that there are a number of ethical issues which are related to networking and the concept of designing networks. In the modern world, Borgatti, Molina (2002, 210-317) believes that the need for the integration of professionalism in the network systems designed has become direr than before. Ethics entails being professional in whatever is done, remaining focused on the attainment of the set goals, avoiding commitment of evil at all costs, while at the same time maintaining the highest possible credibility, authenticity, and standards in the design process (Gotterbarn, Anderson, Johnson, and Perolle (1993, 73-106). The continued evolution of network system design over the last twenty years has continued to make the entire process more challenging. The monolithic design process has been abandoned while the modern object oriented design and the protocol stacks systems have continued to be preferred. This research proposal lays down the various mechanisms and processes through which a number of ethical issues related to the design of network systems could best be discussed. The research methodology, the research question, the literature review, and the research plan have been discussed in this research to ensure that, during the research, all the ethical issues in networks systems design are fully exploited.

Research Question
The modern business world faces the dire need to integrate distributed and other forms of networked systems in the daily business operations through networking. Ethical issues are very critical for the efficient, cost effective, and professionalism of a networked business environment. What are the major ethical issues that are vital for the overall process of designing network systems

Literature Review
Network systems design is a complex process that demands that efforts from all the stakeholders are integrated to enhance the overall success of the system design process. There are various challenges that always ought to be integrated in order to ensure that acceptance of the designed system is made in the most efficient and effective way possible (Gotterbarn, Anderson, Johnson, and Perolle 1993, pp. 73-106). The technical process of designing networked computer systems is normally done by the people with a lot of technical expertise in the system design process. According to Hennessy, Patterson (1996, pp. 35-321), human resource personnel in an organization tend to ignore the fact that the overall success of the designed system greatly depend on their input from all the system stakeholders.
The norms and traditions of a given people greatly influence the technical process of designing a network system. There are a number of ethical actions in the design process which are normally perceived to be unethical (Allen and Morton 1994). In a networked system, there are always layers which are normally integrated to facilitate proper communication within a system. Encapsulation of the networked system details demand efficient analysis of the system is done. At times such networked systems totally lack compatibility hence the raising other ethical challenges which if not addressed normally lead to total rejection of the system and the users partially refusing to embrace the entire system.

Error detection in a network system, based on the Imperative ethical issues and responsibilities (Jonas, 1979, 110-156) demand that certain human and technical aspects of system design are addressed. Detection of errors within a system always ought to be done in an in-depth manner with the core intention of ensuring that the designed system fully addresses all the possible errors that could hinder the success of the system being designed. It is evident that network systems share critical, private, secured and non secured and non private data. Privacy has of data and information being shared on a network system always ought to be enhanced. According to Andersen, Balakrishnan, and Morris (2001, pp. 22-346), terrorism and other related cybercrimes have in the recent past proved to be huge challenges that have faced the internetworked and distributed systems. The process of designing computer networks by network designers, computer scientists, and other expertise has to be very challenging due to their failure to adhere to the need to enhance the privacy of the individual and organizational data and information being shared (Behrman 1988, pp.45-78 Webster and Robins 1996, pp.33-219). Loopholes in the network design process have in the past led to leakage of very strategic and private information to business competitors (Allen, and Morton 1994 Terrell 2000, pp.45-77).

Modern technological advancements have resulted into the need to network systems in organization in order to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and to reduce the high cost of business operations (Borgatti and Molina 2002, pp.210-317). The worldwide increasing rate of flow of information in computerized systems has led to biasness in the information accessed in the networked systems. Indeed certain functions in a network design process need to accorded higher priority in order to ensure their success. The need to determine the rate and direction of information flow in a network system is crucial in ensuring priority in information flow and access is accorded to more sensitive sections of an organization. Argyris, Putnam, McLain (1985, 5-17) explains that rather than according high priority to more sensitive departments and central individuals within an organization, network system designers have been known to ignore the need to prioritize the information being exchanged within and outside an organization.

Previous researches in the ethical issues concerned with network system design have indicated the designers assume self imposed consent in performing certain design issues. The opinion of Behrman (1988, pp.45-78) is that designers of the network system ought to adhere to the set timelines and areas of their jurisdiction in order to avoid conflicts which may arise due to the infringement of peoples privacy. The design of a networked system in an organization should be done with close attention being paid to the ethical issues which normally arise from the industry and internal organizational practices (Cross, Borgatti, and Parker 2002, 25-46 Herman 2004, 4-89). These issues include the manner in which the final networked system would address the needs of the customers, the security and privacy issues of information, the effectiveness of the designed process, working and living conditions of the stakeholders, and the competitors in the industry. Based on the argument of Webster, Robins (1996, pp.33-219), it is evident that network designers should always ensure that they leverage the network existing functionalities that are provided by the network structures and layers such as the transport communication protocol (TCP) in order to ensure that the system developed is faster, much easier to implement and use with minimal or no ethical challenges at all. Ethical auditing of network systems could be done to ensure that the designed network systems strictly adhere to the diverse ethical needs stipulated. However, ethical auditing is normally considered unethical due to the strong belief in the networking field that some laid down ethical standards compromise the attainment of the set network goals and design issues (Jonas 1979, 110-156 Gotterbarn, Anderson, Johnson, and Perolle 1993, pp.73-106).

In some instances, the need for anonymity and un-coerced active or passive participation in the design process have been breached by designers in various network systems thus leading to conflicts that interfere with the success of the set network design goal of given systems. Hennessy, Patterson (1996, pp. 35-321) explains that network system designers have been known to ignore the user needs and specification of the systems and instead concentrate on their own perceived correct system needs. The need for constant communication between the system users and the network designers which is supposed to ensure that design goals are achieved is usually ignored due to poor planning, shallow pre-design research, and ignorance of some of the crucial ethical issues in the network system design (Terrell 2000, pp.45-77).

Research Methodologies
Administration of questionnaires and interview sessions would be conducted together with an in-depth study of the secondary sources of data. Interviews and administration of questionnaires would be vital methods employed in the research process with the intention of ensuring that the collected data is relevant to the research questionnaire (Behrman 1988, pp. 45-78). To fully understand the various ethical issues that are related to the research question, questionnaires would be employed in order for the research population to give information that would enable the research to under all the relevant issues in an in-depth manner.

Questionnaire
Uniform questionnaire that targets the designated research population would be utilized for the research process. Both closed and open ended questions would be used as away of ensuring that the respondent shared more relevant information with the researcher. Closed ended questions in the questionnaire would be aimed at ensuring that the respondents only give certain predetermined answers through the available options in the research process. To enhance reliability and accountability of the data collected, individual persons, both large and small organizations, and volunteer groups would be targeted to respond to the research questionnaires designed. The questionnaire to be drafted would have dichotomous, ordinal, nominal, and bounded types of questions in order to ensure that the respondents have an opportunity to not only give the strict required information and their personal views, but also to be in a position to express their personal sentiments on some of the ethical issues in the network systems design that they consider vital for the network design success. The open ended questions would then be coded into a response scale in order to facilitate easy analysis of the collected information. This would also be achieved through the usage of positive statements, questions that would be interpreted similarly by the diverse members of the research population.

In order to ensure that more individuals would be in a better position to respond to the questionnaires to be designed, computerized adaptive administration, face to face mode, and the pencil and paper methods of questionnaire administration would be integrated into the data collection process. Personal administration of questionnaires would however mainly be employed due to its ability to enhance rapport with the concerned respondents and usage of detailed questions hence a better response rate. Telephone administration of questionnaires would be employed to cater for the distanced respondents.

Secondary Data Collection
Secondary data would be done on the available information that relates to the already collected and published ethical issues in network design and related networked computerized systems. A detailed study would be done on both the qualitative and the qualitative secondary sources of data such as journals, diaries, statistics, information on various websites, information in the national archives and the various books written on the research topic. Diverse books and published journals that relate to various networking challenges would be studied and vital information to the research utilized in the actual research process. This would be fundamental in ensuring that the actual research does not dwell so much on the already existing ethical issues but rather concentrate on the loopholes in the researches. The information collected would also guide through the qualitative and content analysis of the existing data and the collected from the sample population (Halen Vezzoli and Wimmer 2005, pp. 401-531). The secondary data collection methods would save time, effort, and money. Due to the computerized nature of network design systems, official statistics would be used due to their efficiency and highly standardized manner.

Interviews
Based on the scope of the research on the ethical issues in network systems design, interview research method would be a very crucial research tool to be employed. To reduce the overall cost of the research process, telephone interviews would mainly be used. This would drastically reduce the cost of travelling to the location where the interviewees are located.  Interviews would also facilitate the availing of network systems design information that is mainly considered to be private and which if revealed is perceived to undermine the proper functioning of the research process. Interviews would also facilitate firsthand data collection which is likely to be more reliable.

The interviews would be employed as a qualitative research method in order to fill gaps that that would not have been catered for in the usage of questionnaire sampling and the secondary methods of data collection. Informal and conventional interviews would be employed in some situations in order for the research interviewer to remain adaptable and open to the interviewees nature, priorities, and environment. However, in cases where face to face interviews would be conducted, an environment with the least destructions would be chosen inn order to adhere to the confidentiality norms and regulations of the research. Only research assistants that have clear conscience, knowledgeable in network design systems, gentle, steering the course of the interview, remembering, and with a strong interpretive abilities would be employed as interviewers. In order to fully address the research question, the stages of interview investigation which include thematizing, designing of the research questions, interviewing, transcribing, analyzing, verifying, and reporting would all be used.

Project Plan
The project outline would guide in the research process execution and control in order to achieve the desired goals.

Work to be done
The research project would ensure that it fully exploit all relevant issues related to network system design. This would then ensure that networked systems that are designed not only meet the set computer ethical code of ethics, but also cater for the social and human aspects of networking for both the users and the network design team. Rejection of systems and resistance to the networked system would ultimately be avoided ones all ethical aspects of network systems design are addressed in the research.

The Research Team
The research team would include the project researcher with three research assistants and two research advisors. Data entry clerks would help in entering the data which would have been collected from the research questionnaires into a computerized system. The data analyst would offer guidance to the junior data clerks, in the absence of the key project researcher, on the diverse ways of interpreting the collected data (Halen Vezzoli and Wimmer 2005, pp. 401-531). Additionally, the information technology experts would be crucial team members in the research as they would offer guidance on various research related information technology and ethical issues in network systems design. Furthermore, financial management experts would be involved in the project to enhance accountability and proper allocation of the collected funds. Other individuals who are likely to be part of my research team include, but are not limited to fellow researchers in the IT industry, research coordinators, business ethics and human resource personnel experts, and research administrative assistants. The research team to be involved indicate that the correct combination of the members on the team with unique skills, personality types, and abilities would facilitate the achievement of collaborative tension would be of essence (Jonas 1979, 110-156).

Research Timeline and Expected Outcomes
The research process is estimated last for seven months from the time of inception to the period when the results are published. The research timetable details are as indicated below

Table 1 Summary of the Research Timing and the expected Outcomes
DurationActivityResearch Deliverables4 weekWriting of the research proposal and presenting it to the sponsors and key research advisors, proposal (tactical issues) call for research-Written research pre-proposal3 weeks- Approval of the research proposal and commitment of sponsors
-Assembling of the research team, orientation and training-finalized research proposal
-complete research team1 weekPreparation for the research Literature, subscribing to dailies, journals, advisor consultation, and drafting questionnaire-detailed understanding of the research process and topic9 weeksResearch Start theoretical framework start -Research theoretical framework5 weeksAdministering questionnaires and Receiving the completed questionnaires and selection of authentic ones-Completed questionnaires3 weeksData entry, analysis of the findings and interpretation-Computerized findings tables, charts, figures3 weeksDocumentation and Presentation of the research findings to various stakeholdersComplete documented research project results

Conclusion
Privacy of individuals and personal property is normally compromised whenever uncontrolled security surveillance is undertaken. To avert the ethical challenges that hinder attainment of set goals in the network design process, various measures would be undertaken in the research process to ensure that diverse ethical issue related to networking and network design process are exploitatively dealt with. The research project on the various ethical issues would hence increase objectivity, both internal and external validity, reliability, authenticity, cost effectiveness, and acceptance of the network systems designed.