Digital Ethics: Challenges, Theory, Practice.

Introduction

Welcome to Digital Ethics: Challenges, Theory and Practice. This is a thorough and thought-provoking new text on the important and topical subject of digital ethics. It is aimed at practitioners, managers, and other non-technical professionals whose lives are increasingly affected by digital technologies.

Digitalisation and digital transformation are sweeping across most organisations. The transformative power of digital technologies is immense, both inside the organisation and beyond. And with great power comes great responsibility to develop, deploy and use digital systems and the capabilities they create in a responsible way. Simultaneously, the global and corporate focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, thrusts the broader ethics and responsibility agenda into the spotlight. Yet although digital responsibility may be recognized as being important, it is not well understood and systematic models to address it are lacking.

This book systematically addresses the concept of digital ethics from its three constituent roots, namely the philosophical foundations of ethics, digital technology and ethics from that perspective, and business ethics. We start by reviewing the location of ethics in relation to values, morals, and conduct. We then explore the theoretical foundations relating to technology and society, and to business ethics. We extract from these the implications for digital ethics, in the form of eight necessary factors of digital ethics maturity. These eight factors lay the foundations for a comprehensive, actionable to advance the understanding and practice of digital ethics in organisations. Each of these eight factors is explored and sub-factors or indicators are presented. We then apply capability maturity model methods to these factors of digital ethics maturity to construct an initial digital ethics maturity model. v

Organisation of this book

The book is organized in four parts as follows.

Part I gives a broad-ranging introduction to the digital ethics and discusses some contemporary challenges.

• Chapter 1 introduces the purpose and scope of the book and makes the case why digital ethics are important, now. It highlights some challenges inherent in this topic, which needs to be both universal and specific; philosophical and practical; human and technological. The chapter concludes by laying out the approach and organisation of the book.

Part II presents five selected areas where the development of digital technologies and related services is exposing new risks and hazards, both tangible and moral, latent and patent, now and anticipated in the future. This takes us to new frontiers in our understanding of business and technology ethics, and takes most organisations into uncharted territory of how best to navigate these risks and hazards. It also requires new frameworks, methodologies and tools to help us mitigate these risks, and be confident that we are doing so. Part II comprises six chapters, as follows:

• Chapter 2 explores social media and the challenges of untruthful, harmful and hateful content.
• Chapter 3 discusses surveillance and behavioral modification, often discussed under the banner of “surveillance capitalism”, with its challenges to human autonomy and human rights.
• Chapter 4 presents the case for automation, and then explores its possible impacts on employment, employee safety and wellbeing, and the role of human judgement and values in decision-making.
• Chapter 5 explores the digital divide, and what it means for fairness, justice and equality, and why this is important for business, not only sociologists and policy-makers.
• Chapter 6 introduces the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It starts by summarizing the recent explosion of AI capability and where this is headed in the near future. We explore the present ‘here-and-now’ risks it introduces, as well as possible future existential risks.
• Chapter 7 moves on to summarize governmental and other institutional responses to recent developments in AI and explores current regulatory approaches and responses. It concludes by highlighting some tension in the various approaches to the regulation of AI.

There are other areas we could zoom into, but these five areas bring into focus the key dimensions we need to consider when formulating responses and frameworks for improving ethical practices for the digital era.

Part III introduces the key theoretical foundations for digital ethics from its three constituent roots, namely the philosophical foundations of ethics, the ethics of digital technology, and business ethics. It comprises four chapters, as follows:

• Chapter 8 reviews the location of ethics in relation to values, morals, and conduct.
• Chapter 9 then explores the philosophical foundations of ethics, unpacking the roots of deontology, consequentialism/utilitarianism and virtue-based ethics.
• Chapter 10 presents a summary of four main theoretical frameworks of business ethics, and explores their relevance and applicability to the topic of digital ethics. The four theories covered are: stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, social contract theory, and integrative social contract theory.
• Chapter 11 concludes Part III by developing the theoretical foundations relating to technology and society. This chapter covers technological neutrality and determinism; technology affordances and constraints; the agency and moral agency of technology; possible harms of technology; and critical enquires of technology.

Part IV extracts from the theoretical foundation the implications for digital ethics, in the form of eight necessary factors of digital ethics maturity.

• Chapter 12 is a short chapter which summarises all the implications of the theoretical discourse of Part II, outlines the approach to identifying the sufficient and necessary set of factors of digital ethics, and present an overview of the framework for digital ethics. vii
• Chapter 13 discusses each of the eight necessary and sufficient factors of digital ethics in some detail, and develops specific recommendations for each of them.
• Chapter 14 presents a capability maturity model for digital ethics which provides a practical, actionable framework for organisations to a) articulate their digital ethics aspirations; b) assess how they are progressing towards those aspirations; suggest areas for possible improvement, and d) compare themselves to peers.

Approach and Contribution

The approach and intention of this book is partly theoretical and methodological, but primarily practical. It is hoped that this book makes a number of contributions to the understanding and practice of digital ethics. A first contribution is the extension of general business ethics theory and technology ethics theory into a detailed, decomposed, theoretically grounded framework for digital ethics. This has both theoretical and methodological aspects: theoretical, in explicating the intersection of the theoretical bases in each of the business ethics and technology ethics dimensions; and methodological, in the deductive logic of progressive interrogation of the extant theory in each dimension. The approach starts with a clarification of the broader theme of social morality and ethics, then zooms in to business ethics, and then garners out of these general business ethics theories the relevant principles and foundations for digital ethics.

A second contribution is the translation of that detailed framework into practical components that organisations can use to assess their digital ethics practices and implement to improve. This draws on a wide range of input material in an endeavour to ensure that the guidelines suggested herein are complete and comprehensive. The approach is a similarly deductive process which progressively refines the implications of technology agency, technology ethics and critical studies of technology to build a foundational framework for digital ethics from the technology perspective. This three-dimensional, deductive derivation of the foundational framework for digital ethics is methodologically novel in this application.

A third contribution is the translation of the framework into a capability maturity model for digital ethics. The primary, very practical, contributions here are made in a) the discussion around the factors which comprise digital ethics and the organisational practices which are required to be consistent with the framework for digital ethics; and b) the presentation of the capability viii maturity model for digital ethics, which affords a means to measure digital ethics maturity, and provides a pathway to improve towards higher levels of digital ethics maturity.

Universal AND Local

Digitalisation and ethics are both universal concepts; however, their application can differ from one context or geography to the another. This arises from a) different perspectives what are truly universal norms of ethical behaviour, and local ‘micronorms’ which are normative at the local level but not so at a universal level; and b) different levels of digital maturity within and between different countries and markets. This makes universal application of the factors and practices of digital ethics impractical and indeed inappropriate. We therefore endeavour to specifically provide for this nuanced local interpretation of digital ethics, both in terms of the development of the theory and the framework for digital ethics maturity, as well as in the examples and practical applications cited.

Challenges with this book

There are several challenges with writing a book such as this. One of these is the sheer breadth of the ground that needs to be covered. We endeavour here to provide sufficient breadth and depth on the key topics of digital ethics. However, it is clearly impossible to cover all of the material in great depth, and so we provide extensive references for readers interested in particular areas to explore further. Another challenge is the rate of change of most of the topics we address. Most of them are very ‘live’ areas of current commercial development, regulatory responses and academic research. The definitive body of knowledge has not been completed. Technology is evolving ever more rapidly, and organisational responses to that process of change are therefore always dynamic and accelerating. We acknowledge that many of the specifics covered herein will therefore date reasonably quickly. Nevertheless, we believe that the underlying principles will be more durable and provide a solid foundation for business leaders contemplating the transformation of their organisations for a digital future. This text is essential reading for our time.

Intended Audience

Digital Ethics has a wide potential audience. It seeks first and foremost to present a holistic view of digital ethics for business and other organisations in the digital era. When we say organisations, we mean a wide array of organisational forms ranging from for-profit businesses and firms to non-profit, ix government, and other public organisations. When we say ‘business’, too, we mean both for-profit business activities as well as others (the business of government, the business of philanthropy, and so forth). Therefore, this book is appropriate and important for managers and members of all types of organisations, technologists, engineers and scientists, business owners, business students, consultants, government leaders, and others who are affected by the ongoing technological revolution of our age. The text not intended to be a technical guide to digitalisation, and, therefore, is not primarily targeted at technical experts in any field (although we hope these would engage with the ethical conversation in this book). Although the book does seek to contextualize the technological opportunities and hazards of our time, and place them into a business and organisational context, these discussions are aimed at organisational leaders and others mentioned above for the purposes of equipping them to lead and manage the wide range of ethical challenges that come to the fore with digitalisation and digital transformation. This edition of Digital Ethics makes extensive reference to this topic within the context of the South African economy and its organisations, while still employing a wide variety of developed world examples. These geographic specificities mean that this version will be especially relevant to South African readers, although the nature of the South African economy suggests strongly that these local elements could be extremely relevant to other emerging market contexts. An international edition will be forthcoming shortly for those wishing a greater emphasis on developed world contexts and illustrations.

About the Author

Professor Brian Armstrong is one of the foremost ICT industry leaders in South Africa, with over 30 years of top-level management experience in Telecommunications, IT, technology R&D and systems engineering, both in South Africa and abroad. He is widely regarded as a thought leader in digitalisation, convergence and business strategy. Brian is currently Professor in the Chair of Digital Business at the Wits Business School. He consults widely to industry and government on technological disruption and digital business and is an acclaimed public speaker on digital transformation and its socio-economic impacts. He is a nonexecutive director of Old Mutual Limited, BankserveAfrica, and the National Transmission Company of South Africa. Previously Brian spent seven years in the Telkom Group, as Group Chief Operating Officer and Group Chief Commercial Officer, where he was part of the leadership team which has been credited with turning Telkom around. In his time with Telkom he also revived the ailing Telkom Business unit, and conceived and led the acquisition of BCX and its integration into the group. He was also responsible for the group’s retail unit, as well as leading group strategy and transformation activities. Before joining Telkom in 2010 Brian was BT’s Vice President for Middle East & Africa with responsibility to oversee and grow BT’s activities across the region. Before that his work experience includes South Africa’s CSIR, ultimately as the Director of the Division for Information and Communications Technology; and South African listed ICT services group AST (now Gijima), as Managing Director of AST Networks. Brian completed a BSc (Eng) and MSc (Eng) at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1982 and 1984 respectively, and obtained his PhD from University College London in 1992.