Business Ethics
Most companies ought to have an IT department. This appears to be an obvious observation. However, it is worth recognizing that, in the memories of more than half the working population of the United States, a company department organized solely around information technology was unheard of. The IT department has evolved from a narrowly focused data processing element of the accounting department to a function that supports and, in many cases, drives, nearly every area of a company. This has happened in a mere 40 years. Stand-alone IT departments are a relatively recent development. The number of people working in technology-related jobs grew six times faster between 1983 and 1998 than the U.S. workforce at large. Information technology-related industries doubled their share of the U.S. economy between 1977 and 1998. Practically overnight, technology-related services have become a global, trillion-dollar industry.
The principle driver behind this remarkable, rapid creation of a vibrant, sophisticated, and enormous industry and the attendant inclusion of a department dedicated to it in every credible company is the quest for business productivity improvement.
The notion of technology investments as a driver of United States business productivity has a controversial history. The benefits of technology investments (and IT departments) were not always so apparent. Productivity growth in the United States faltered from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, in spite of large technology investments from most major U.S. corporations. The disconnection between heavy capital and expense investment and the theoretically associated improvements in productivity led to a so-called productivity paradox. In reaction to the failure of such large investmen ...