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This study aims to investigate the ethical issues related to the internet of Things (IoT) deployment in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from an individual employee's perspective. To provide researchers and practitioners with concrete tools for examining these matters, an ethical framework dedicated to IoT is introduced.

First, the applicability of Mason's original privacy, accuracy, property and accessibility (PAPA) framework is studied in the IoT context. Second, issue category additions are proposed based on the identified coverage limitations of PAPA.

While the original PAPA framework can be utilised as a generic ethical evaluation tool, it lacks coverage of several IoT-specific issue areas. To thoroughly address the ethical risks associated with IoT, two additional categories are introduced.

The new framework requires further validation to ensure its applicability and to identify potential modification requirements in continuously evolving IoT ecosystems.

Considering the lack of ethical IoT frameworks, this study provides organisations with a practical framework for analysing the ethical issues in IoT deployment.

Ethical standards for IoT have not been sufficiently addressed in the current literature and frameworks, making the ethical considerations dependent on subjective stances. Thus, there is an acute demand for a practical framework that outlines the general ethical standards, helping its users to thoroughly address the potential ethical issues.

While the use of IoT keeps growing in SMEs, there is an apparent lack of ethical guidelines. This study contributes to the gap by introducing a preliminary framework for both practical use and further theoretical development.

The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint and analyse ethical issues raised by the dual role of artificial intelligence (AI) in relation to climate change, that is, AI as a contributor to climate change and AI as a contributor to fighting climate change.

This paper consists of three main parts. The first part provides a short background on AI and climate change respectively, followed by a presentation of empirical findings on the contribution of AI to climate change. The second part presents proposals by various AI researchers and commentators on how AI companies may contribute to fighting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from training and use of AI and by providing AI assistance to various mitigation and adaptation measures. The final part investigates ethical issues raised by some of the options presented in the second part.

AI applications may lead to substantial emissions but may also play an important role in mitigation and adaptation. Given this dual role of AI, ethical considerations by AI companies and governments are of vital importance.

This paper pinpoints practical ethical issues that AI companies and governments should take into account.

Given the potential impact of AI on society, it is vital that AI companies and governments take seriously the ethical issues raised by the dual role of AI in relation to climate change.

AI has been the subject of substantial ethical investigation, and even more so has climate change. However, the relationship between AI and climate change has received only limited attention from an ethical perspective. This paper provides such considerations.

Voice assistant (VA) technology is one of the fastest-growing artificial intelligence applications at present. However, the burgeoning scholarship argues that there are ethical challenges relating to this new technology, not the least related to privacy, which affects the technology’s acceptance. Given that the media impacts public opinion and acceptance of VA and that there are no studies on media coverage of VA, the study focuses on media coverage. In addition, this study aims to focus on media coverage in Indonesia, a country that has been underrepresented in earlier research.

The authors used critical discourse analysis of media texts, focusing on three levels (text, discourse practice and social practice) to study how VA technology was discussed in the Indonesian context and what power relations frame the representation. In total, 501 articles were collected from seven national media in Indonesia from 2010 to 2020 and the authors particularly focus on the 45 articles that concern ethics.

The ethical topics covered are gender issues, false marketing, ethical wrongdoing, ethically positive effects, misuse, privacy and security. More importantly, when they are discussed, they are presented as constituting no real critical problem. Regarding discursive practices, the media coverage is highly influenced by foreign media and most of the articles are directed to well-educated Indonesians. Finally, regarding social practices, the authors hold that the government ideology of technological advancement is related to this positive portrayal of VAs.

First, to provide the first media discourse study about ethical issues of VAs. Second, to provide insights from a non-Western context, namely, Indonesia, which is underrepresented in the research on ethics of VAs.

Computing ethics represents a long established, yet rapidly evolving, discipline that grows in complexity and scope on a near-daily basis. Therefore, to help understand some of that scope it is essential to incorporate a range of perspectives, from a range of stakeholders, on current and emerging ethical challenges associated with computer technology. This study aims to achieve this by using, a three-pronged, stakeholder analysis of Computer Science academics, ICT industry professionals, and citizen groups was undertaken to explore what they consider to be crucial computing ethics concerns. The overlap between these stakeholder groups are explored, as well as whether their concerns are reflected in the existing literature.

Data collection was performed using focus groups, and the data was analysed using a thematic analysis. The data was also analysed to determine if there were overlaps between the literature and the stakeholders’ concerns and attitudes towards computing ethics.

The results of the focus group analysis show a mixture of overlapping concerns between the different groups, as well as some concerns that are unique to each of the specific groups. All groups stressed the importance of data as a key topic in computing ethics. This includes concerns around the accuracy, completeness and representativeness of data sets used to develop computing applications. Academics were concerned with the best ways to teach computing ethics to university students. Industry professionals believed that a lack of diversity in software teams resulted in important questions not being asked during design and development. Citizens discussed at length the negative and unexpected impacts of social media applications. These are all topics that have gained broad coverage in the literature.

In recent years, the impact of ICT on society and the environment at large has grown tremendously. From this fast-paced growth, a myriad of ethical concerns have arisen. The analysis aims to shed light on what a diverse group of stakeholders consider the most important social impacts of technology and whether these concerns are reflected in the literature on computing ethics. The outcomes of this analysis will form the basis for new teaching content that will be developed in future to help illuminate and address these concerns.

The multi-stakeholder analysis provides individual and differing perspectives on the issues related to the rapidly evolving discipline of computing ethics.

There is significant national interest in tackling issues surrounding the needs of vulnerable children and adults. This paper aims to argue that much value can be gained from the application of new data-analytic approaches to assist with the care provided to vulnerable children. This paper highlights the ethical and information governance issues raised in the development of a research project that sought to access and analyse children’s social care data.

The paper documents the process involved in identifying, accessing and using data held in Birmingham City Council’s social care system for collaborative research with a partner organisation. This includes identifying the data, its structure and format; understanding the Data Protection Act 1998 and 2018 (DPA) exemptions that are relevant to ensure that legal obligations are met; data security and access management; the ethical and governance approval process.

The findings will include approaches to understanding the data, its structure and accessibility tasks involved in addressing ethical and legal obligations and requirements of the ethical and governance processes.

The aim of this research is to highlight the potential use of use new data-analytic techniques to examine the flow of children’s social care data from referral, through the assessment process, to the resulting service provision. Data held by Birmingham City Council are used throughout, and this paper highlights key ethical and information governance issues which were addressed in preparing and conducting the research. The findings provide insight for other data-led studies of a similar nature.

We explored whether employees in smaller, younger firms would be more ethically compromised, and whether employee identification moderates this relationship.We collected survey data from 154 working professionals enrolled in an MBA program in the southeastern United States. We found that employees of smaller, younger firms selected more compromised ethical choices than employees of larger, older firms. Contrary to our expectations, employee identification had no effect in smaller, younger, firms, yet in larger, older firms, identification actually reduced ethical compliance, suggesting that there is not a simple relationship between identification and ethical compliance.

This study is motivated to investigate the ethical challenges facing public relations professionals in today's digital communication environment. Specifically, the authors focused the research on the new ethical challenges in digital practice, the resources relied on when encountering ethical challenges and public relations professionals' efforts in seeking trainings on communication ethics.

An international online survey was designed and conducted in Canada and the USA. The final sample includes 1,046 respondents working full time in the profession of public relations and communication. In addition, the authors prespecified several demographic quotas in sampling design in order to recruit a more representative sample.

The research found nearly 60% of surveyed professionals reported that they faced ethical challenges in their day-to-day work, and there is a wide range of ethical challenges in digital practices. Results also revealed that professionals use various resources to deal with ethical issues. Those resources include ethical codes of practice of professional associations, ethical guidelines of their organizations and their personal values and beliefs. As common as experiencing ethical challenges, over 85% of surveyed professionals reported that they have participated in communication ethics training. However, only 30% of participants indicated that their ethics training took place in the past year.

The research provides solid evidence that the digital communication environment generates more ethical challenges, while it creates new ways of delivering content in corporate communications. Professional associations and organizations shall dedicate efforts in providing timely ethics training to PR professionals at all levels of leadership within and beyond corporate communications.

To succeed in today’s dynamic and unpredictable business world, businesses are increasingly required to gain the trust of and inform the society in which they operate about the social and environmental consequences of their actions. Corporations’ claims regarding the responsibility and ethicality of their actions, however, have been shown to be contradictory to some degree. We define corporations’ deceitful implementation of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies as pseudo-CSR. We argue that it is the moral characteristics of individuals, i.e. employees, managers and other decision-makers who ignore the CSR policies, which produce pseudo-CSR.

This is a conceptual paper.

The authors conceptualize the gap between true CSR and pseudo-CSR on a cognitive individual level as “moral laxity,” resulting from organization-induced lack of effort concerning individual moral development through ethical discourse, ethical sensemaking and subjectification processes. The absence of these processes prohibits individuals in organizations from constructing ethical identities to inhibit pseudo-CSR activities.

This paper contributes to the literature on CSR by augmenting corporate-level responsibility with the hitherto mostly neglected, yet significant, role of the individual in bridging this gap.

This study aims to investigate how living lab (LL) activities align with responsible research and innovation (RRI) principles, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven digital transformation (DT) processes. The study seeks to define a framework termed “responsible living lab” (RLL), emphasizing transparency, stakeholder engagement, ethics and sustainability. This emerging issue paper also proposes several directions for future researchers in the field.

The research methodology involved a literature review complemented by insights from a workshop on defining RLLs. The literature review followed a concept-centric approach, searching key journals and conferences, yielding 32 relevant articles. Backward and forward citation analysis added 19 more articles. The workshop, conducted in the context of UrbanTestbeds.JR and SynAir-G projects, used a reverse brainstorming approach to explore potential ethical and responsible issues in LL activities. In total, 13 experts engaged in collaborative discussions, highlighting insights into AI’s role in promoting RRI within LL activities. The workshop facilitated knowledge sharing and a deeper understanding of RLL, particularly in the context of DT and AI.

This emerging issue paper highlights ethical considerations in LL activities, emphasizing user voluntariness, user interests and unintended participation. AI in DT introduces challenges like bias, transparency and digital divide, necessitating responsible practices. Workshop insights underscore challenges: AI bias, data privacy and transparency; opportunities: inclusive decision-making and efficient innovation. The synthesis defines RLLs as frameworks ensuring transparency, stakeholder engagement, ethical considerations and sustainability in AI-driven DT within LLs. RLLs aim to align DT with ethical values, fostering inclusivity, responsible resource use and human rights protection.

The proposed definition of RLL introduces a framework prioritizing transparency, stakeholder engagement, ethics and sustainability in LL activities, particularly those involving AI for DT. This definition aligns LL practices with RRI, addressing ethical implications of AI. The value of RLL lies in promoting inclusive and sustainable innovation, prioritizing stakeholder needs, fostering collaboration and ensuring environmental and social responsibility throughout LL activities. This concept serves as a foundational step toward a more responsible and sustainable LL approach in the era of AI-driven technologies.