Industry-academia partnerships are common in the IT field because they benefit both parties. Research on moral issues in these relations is scarce, and this case study is aimed at increasing knowledge in this area by investigating moral problems in a form of partnership, a collaborative IT project with a university. Twenty-one client representatives from IT firms or organisations were interviewed during a project course in information systems. The analysis was inspired by phenomenography. The results show that concern for the beneficial objectives of the client organisations typically conflicts with concern for students and their learning objectives. A two-dimensional structure constituting six types of moral problems was determined. The results are compared with the existing literature, and recommendations for practice and research are presented.
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Vartiainen, T. (2007). Moral Problems in Industry-Academia Partnership – The Viewpoint of Clients on a Project Course. In: Wojtkowski, W., Wojtkowski, W.G., Zupancic, J., Magyar, G., Knapp, G. (eds) Advances in Information Systems Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-70802-7_17
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