Exploring ethical values in software systems: A systematic literature review

Ethics has attracted considerable attention in the field of software engineering. The prevalence of software-intensive systems and how they become an integral part of people’s lives makes it essential for software engineers to care about the potential impacts and injustice of software systems on people. The influence of systems’ social and ethical implications on the values of individuals and society plays an important role in the study of software engineering ethics.
Objective:
The overall aim of this paper is to study the state of the art concerning ethics in software engineering and create an understanding of ethical considerations in software design and development.
Method:
We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) with an initial sample of 623 articles, of which 85 articles were selected as primary studies.
Result:
We created a body of knowledge on stakeholders and software engineering ethical values. More specifically, we provided a stakeholders map to identify different system stakeholders and presented a value model to categorize ethical values and recognize the value relations.
Conclusion:
This SLR sheds light on the state of software engineering ethics. It highlights challenges such as the identification of indirect stakeholders, lack of attention to their concerns, and the need for stakeholder classification. The review emphasizes the importance of considering stakeholders’ concerns to uncover ethical values and discusses methods for value extraction, with a focus on the value model. However, there is room for improvement in addressing certain ethical values, resolving value conflicts, and operationalizing ethical values in software design. These findings offer valuable insights for future research and practice, encouraging a more comprehensive integration of ethical aspects into software engineering.