It's only words - Impacts of information technology on moral dialogue

New forms of information technology, such as email, webpages and groupware, are being rapidly adopted. Intended to improve efficiency and effectivenes s, these technologies also have the potential to radically alter the way pe ople communicate in organizations. The effects can be positive or negative. This paper explores how technology can encourage or discourage moral dialo gue -- communication that is open, honest, and respectful of participants. It develops a framework that integrates formal properties of ideal moral di scourse, based on Habermas' (1984) theory of communicative action, with pro perties of informal communication that help sustain good moral conversation s (Bird, 1996; Johannesen, 1996). Ten criteria distilled from these works f orm the basis of a template that can be used for assessing the positive and negative impacts of emerging information technologies on moral dialogue.