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Key Principles of Ethics in Technology: An Organizational Technology Ethics Checklist

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South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT 2023)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1878))

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Abstract

The evolution of digital technologies enables organizations to optimize business operations through digital transformation programs. The deep integration of technology into organizational processes and ways of work, increases an organization’s capacity to act. However, this capacity to act and the powerful digital tools applied in organizations (e.g., artificial intelligence), may place employees in a situation where they must take decisions not required before. Prior to digitalization, decision outcomes were involuntarily constrained by human capability. There is no standardized framework to guide organizations in terms of ethical computing. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate ethics in technology towards defining a checklist for organizations. We extracted 10 key principles from two datasets – a corpus of academic research and a popular press dataset – and categorized it to an ethics framework to derive the checklist. By applying such a checklist, organizations can ensure that they integrate ethics in technology thinking into all digital transformation programs and empower employees with ethical thinking to the practical concerns of technology.

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  1. University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, Pretoria, 0028, South Africa

    Hanlie Smuts & Lizette Weilbach

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  1. Hanlie Smuts
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  2. Lizette Weilbach
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  1. University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa

    Aurona Gerber

  2. North-West University, Auckland Park, South Africa

    Marijke Coetzee

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Smuts, H., Weilbach, L. (2023). Key Principles of Ethics in Technology: An Organizational Technology Ethics Checklist. In: Gerber, A., Coetzee, M. (eds) South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. SAICSIT 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1878. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39652-6_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39652-6_16

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