Corporate Digital Responsibility in Service Firms and Their Ecosystems

Abstract

Digitization, artificial intelligence, and service robots carry serious ethical, privacy, and fairness risks. Using the lens of corporate digital responsibility (CDR), we examine these risks and their mitigation in service firms and make five contributions. First, we show that CDR is critical in service contexts because of the vast streams of customer data involved and digital service technology’s omnipresence, opacity, and complexity. Second, we synthesize the ethics, privacy, and fairness literature using the CDR data and technology life-cycle perspective to understand better the nature of these risks in a service context. Third, to provide insights on the origins of these risks, we examine the digital service ecosystem and the related flows of money, service, data, insights, and technologies. Fourth, we deduct that the underlying causes of CDR issues are trade-offs between good CDR practices and organizational objectives (e.g., profit opportunities versus CDR risks) and introduce the CDR calculus to capture this. We also conclude that regulation will need to step in when a firm’s CDR calculus becomes so negative that good CDR is unlikely. Finally, we advance a set of strategies, tools, and practices service firms can use to manage these trade-offs and build a strong CDR culture.