Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2: The Future and Changing Paradigms

By Pierre Massotte

This book, the second of two volumes dedicated to ethics in social networking and business, presents the future and changing paradigms related to ethics, and morality in our interconnected society.

This volume analyzes advanced topics, including new technologies, transhumanism and uberization, to provide a more complex, shared and collective environment into why business ethics is essential for managing risks and uncertainties.

The Ethics in Social Networking and Business series is the result of a cross-integration of real experiences (from IBM, society and the Rotary Club), transdisciplinary works in decision making, and advances at the boundaries of several scientific fields.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781119457039

Book preview

Introduction

In this introduction, we recall some theory and practices introduced in Volume 1 [MAS 17a]. The objective is to have a common understanding about these practices either in the enterprises or in the organizations leading to the corporate culture specific to the various populations in some different countries.

Furthermore, we may find some weaknesses and shortcomings that we will try to refine or enhance in the second volume, in order to better face the new challenges of our environment.

I.1. Main principles and definitions used in Volume 1

The first book (Volume 1 [MAS 17a]) is dedicated to the conventional approach of ethics, as developed by the ancient Greeks: due to our rationality, we keep looking for items, facts, approaches, causes and implementations that govern the design and governance of a new business world.

We have focused on the operationalization of business ethics either in the Rotary or in industry and organizations. To summarize our approach and to avoid any misunderstanding, in the future, we will consider the following concepts.

– Ethics: ethics is part of the philosophy related to the meaning of all the aspects of human behavior. Theoretical ethics considered in the book is a part of what is called normative ethics (based on the notions going from right to wrong). It is supremely intellectual and refers to personal consciousness, as a branch of philosophy, rational in nature. It applies to any human population behavior.

As often recalled, it is an alternative each time no laws, no rules and procedures are available. However, it is of help when developing codes of conducts, rules and principles (norms) by which executives and others in positions of responsibility will judge and guide meaningful decision-making.

– Business ethics: business ethics (BE) is also called corporate ethics or professional ethics. It is a subset of ethics, but that used most often in the usual fields of activities.

BE covers the ethical and moral principles and problems that arise in a business environment. It is expressed through written and unwritten codes of principles and values: it governs decisions and actions within an organization. In most cases, BE makes the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right according to the consciousness of the decision maker.

To be more precise and to make it easier to understand BE, we will provide a rule that we have applied across the two volumes: according to the level of the structure to be considered, we denote personal ethics (the kind of ethics used on a microscale such as very small SME, entrepreneurship, small team work, etc.), professional ethics (on an intermediate scale such as a production unit, etc.), and corporate ethics (on a macroscale such as a large company, etc.). All three levels are intricately related as in a fractal structure [MAS 06].

I.1.1. Comment: the different kinds of ethics

When specialists or philosophers try to classify ethics, they generally use a qualitative clustering, based on psychological, mental, or philosophical variables. Therefore, when analyzing the available documentation, in most case studies, one considers three or four different types of ethics [YAN 14].

Here, as an example, we will consider four main ethical segmentations based on individualism, utilitarianism, Kantianism or virtues, relevant to an action or decision that can be seen as ethical or unethical:

1) Individualism: individualism states that the main goal of a business is to maximize profit for a part or all of the stakeholders….or customers. The objective is to act in order to maximize a profit. In doing so, the executive only chooses to keep the cheaper and more efficient solutions to boost some profits. This is what happens, for example, with big department stores. The damages can be significant as they can harm the producers and providers, and develop non-sustainable practices. Ultimately, this a non-ethical behavior.

2) Utilitarianism: utilitarianism’s main intent is to make everyone happy. Here specialists consider the societal environments that are developing in the area of hedonism and eudemonism. This was developed in Business Ethics Volume 1, but also in [MAS 15a].

Utilitarianism theory consists of bringing happiness or justice to everyone and acts in the interest of the overall good. When doing so, people put their cooperation in jeopardy, but are trying to make the best from a bad situation.

3) Kantianism: Kantianism is based on making rational decisions and allowing others to do the same for themselves. There is no lying or deceit of any kind or the use of people without their rational consent; also, people must act from a sense of duty in order to be sure to go the right way. This consists of treating the situation as a mere means but rather globally and always as an end. This is seen as a non-ethical approach, with regard to Kantian theory, when the people need to be given the necessary knowledge to act only on their own rational being. So deviances, in the behaviors can be observed, if the consequences of actions that make a decision right or wrong are not evaluated. It is also non-ethical, from Kant’s perspective, when a decision process, is conducted against, or in a clear violation for, the motive and consciousness of the decision maker.

4) Virtue theory: virtue theory focuses on four main characteristics: courage, honesty, self-control and fairness. (We have great similarities with the cardinal virtues as defined by Plato: courage, justice, prudence and temperance.) Therefore, generally speaking, a business must act while keeping these characteristics in mind. They must be willing to take a stand for the right ideas and actions.

Virtue theorists recommend being honest in the mutual agreements and relationships with both employees and customers. Also, people must work hard, produce quality, have good ideas and should be fair in their practices. Finally, people are required to be courageous in their actions they merely conform to the nominal security.

For the sake of simplicity, in our book we did not consider such philosophical classifications. Several times we said it was necessary to use our best judgment according to our consciousness considering the following three factors: lack of skills, ignorance and greed. It is a kind of social ethics that causes the death of a civilization, or any type of organization, and inevitably leads to exclusivity. In the framework of the Rotary, or even in social networking or businesses, it may cover most of the encountered situations.

I.1.2. Objectives of this book

Volume 1 presented an overview of what is happening in the working world. Theory, practice and current recommendations were developed through examples issued from the Rotary or industrial companies.

In it we spoke primarily of our experience in ethics and BE. We described some notions of complexity and evolution, and we could better understand why and how ethics is becoming essential for the sustainability of our systems.

Moreover, we saw how BE can be implemented in current enterprises according to a corporate and societal culture, the geographical context, etc. Thus, in this book, we are both in the present and in the short-term horizon.

BE is linked to system complexity and evolution theory. In its more mundane context, BE expresses the fact that responsible people and executives are afraid of losing control of complex phenomena. It is associated with the need to preserve a situation in the face of apparently irreversible changes. This is the reason why integration of BE becomes so important.

Also, concerning the intrinsic system complexity and the growing complexity of nature: we stated in this book that simplexification was necessary to manage, monitor and control complex systems. I will add that simplexification enables us to understand complexity. Indeed, as often said in the Advanced Technology Group, within IBM EMEA, the simple modeling of a complex system is able to generate 50% of the solution about a given problem, while re-engineering provides the remaining part of the solution: everything starts with an organization, everything ends with another.

In this book, some people will find that a lot of things are wrong. This may be true, but some of them will be useful: it is a positive statement, since the whole content is not just a survey and review of conventional and various integrated processes.

Finally, concerning learning principles and the need for diversity developed in the book, we will recall two points:

– it is only the one doing nothing who is never wrong;

– in a complex situation, we do not learn efficiently if we are simply trying not to commit any error.

I.2. Main changes and trends in ethics: toward new ways of thinking

I.2.1. Paradigm changes

In this book, we consider that the world is changing. We are living in a very dynamic environment following Moore’s Law. The future will again impose a paradigm shift.

This is mainly related to the new context, with the impact of new technologies, advanced sciences and societal evolution. Thus, we will talk about the extension of concepts related to the dissemination and intrusive impact of the advanced sciences.

Indeed, ethics (BE) will now manifest itself along several directions:

The new technologies considered and described in Chapter 1 are related to the general concept of NBIC. NBIC refer to Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Information technologies and Cognitive sciences.

Thus, it will here be very important to describe this new context, in order:

– To anticipate the emergence of any improvement that affects human performance and sustainability. More specifically, this concern is related to robotics and the development of artificial Intelligence (the role and influence of humankind is both enlarged by and subject to transhumanism, but all of this can come at a loss).

– To see how the business and human environment evolves: where are we going? What are the benefits for human beings?

– To better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and artificial intelligence, in terms of task optimization, transhumanism, Asimov, etc. (Chapter 2).

– To better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and logistics, transportation, the shared economy, and new work organization (Chapter 3), including uberization of the business (the economy of sharing) with the development of new ways of consuming products and services.

– To better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and social networks, the sharing of ideas, the emergence of new needs and innovation, the new working modes based on cooperation and collaboration (Chapter 4). More generally, social networking based on the emergence of new patterns and orders will produce the development of new business models which we may suffer without being able to control.

– The handling of big data and cloud computing inevitably leads to data breaches, glitches and data hacking that lead to loss of control in large databases and to the generation of the whistleblowing effect associated with risk and alarms management (Chapter 5).

– Finally, in the same way, the world becomes spiritual: relations to virtue (and religions) raise new problems concerning the evolution and adaptation of BE; this will be addressed in the last chapter of Volume 2.

This is consistent with the following results concerning a review of the main challenges involved in sustainable (then ethical) systems.

I.2.2. Global challenges of ethics in advanced sciences

The 15 Global Challenges report, updated annually, is a good introduction to the key issues of the early 21st Century in professional areas and vocational services [MAR 16].

Figure I.1. Interconnected challenges Network

In Figure I.1, the last challenge (Global Ethics, #15) is in fact the most important one. Here, ethics is a comprehensive concept, covering, influencing, or relating to the whole word. As usual, the whole word is considered as a set of elements closely interconnected through telecommunications networks, and as being interdependent economically, technically, socially, and politically. The description of the above figure, with a range of views and actions to address each issue, enriched with regional views and progress assessments have been updated each year since 1996 and published in an annual status report [MAR 16]

In The 15 Global Challenges, a framework to assess the global and local prospects for humanity is provided. We can briefly describe these 15 challenges through a set of questions as follows:

1) How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?

2) How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?

3) How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?

4) How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?

5) How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives?

6) How can the global convergence of information and communication technology work for everyone?

7) How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?

8) How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and pathogens be reduced?

9) How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?

10) How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism and the use of weapons of mass destruction?

11) How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?

12) How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?

13) How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?

14) How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?

15) How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?

The challenges studied and covered in Volume 1 are those included between 1 and 11.

In Volume 2, we will address the challenges 12, up to 15.

Whatever the volume considered, and considering the complexity theory, we can say that all the challenges are interdependent: an improvement in one makes it easier to address others; in the same way, the deterioration in one makes it harder to address others. No challenge is more important than the other: they are transnational in nature and trans-institutional in solution. They cannot be addressed by any executive or institution acting alone. The best fitted or balanced solution is the result of a consensus obtained through auctions or game theory approaches.

I.2.3. An iterative process

The development of new concepts of ethics is the result of several steps and feedback loops in an evolutive process. In the case of the impact and influence of advances and progress in our society, we could think about the following graph.

Figure I.2. Main Interacting factors involved in the BE evolution

In this graph (Pierre Massotte), the regulation is not coming from the legal or moral laws, but from mother nature which is guided by a whole sustainability relevant to the code types that underpin evolution in the nature [MAS 15a].

In Volume 2, BE should draw our inspiration from another world. It is a type of perspective, concept, advice and recommendation that we will detail and integrate in order to develop a more global and realistic paradigm leading to the whole ethics.

Therefore, the whole ethics concept will become a more consistent concept.

I.3. Global ethics

According to [CAR 02] and Figure I.1 related to the 15 challenges of ethics, the final objective is to obtain a global ethics within a full sustainable environment.

Figure I.3. One world: the ethics of globalization [CAR 02]

Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization; in his book, ‘One World: The Ethics of Globalization’, Peter Singer [CAR 02], explains its moral meaning. The world has been fully transformed in recent years by phenomena affecting us all: digitization and globalization.

Today, national borders have less meaning regarding issues of trade, environment and health. Associated with the most important technological advances, they left us with a legacy of connectedness that we cannot ignore since it surrounds us.

Globalization has changed the way societies work and the way individuals think and interact with one another. In such a world, what do we ethically and morally owe to our fellow human beings? This question is of key importance. However, we will not go so far: we will just try to anticipate what is going on, what possible impacts we may have on the human species level, and then we will try to deduce some BECC.

As technologies, advanced sciences, society evolution and globalization move forward, we may ask the following question: how can we govern the ethics of nations and of individuals? How will BECC evolve in all companies? Since we are mainly involved in applied ethics, as described above (in the different types of ethics), we will say that what is important is to stick with our values and morality that have been referred to, in many countries, as the Judeo-Christian inheritance in Europe, for instance.

A person who is able to examine important questions with integrity, rigor, originality, with his own emotions and consciousness, can be described as intellectually astute, morally serious and ethical.

As we can see, we are far from philosophical considerations; we are just trying to be responsive, efficient and effective, and… preparing the big move of ethics.

1

Evolution and Impact of Advanced Technologies on Humankind and Business

1.1. Introduction

The new technologies considered hereafter are related to the general concept of NBIC (Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Information technologies and Cognitive sciences). They anticipate the emergence of any improvement that affects human performance and sustainability, our lifestyles and the way we will act in the future.

Therefore, it is very important to describe this new context, where ethics will play a role of key importance. More specifically:

– this chapter will show how the environments of both business and humankind will evolve: where we are going and what the benefits of new technologies for human beings will be;

– to better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and artificial intelligence, in terms of task optimization, transhumanism, Asimow, etc. (Chapter 2);

– to better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and uberization, logistics, transportation, the shared economy and new work organizations (Chapter 3);

– to better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and social networks, the sharing of ideas, the economy of sharing, the emergence of new needs and innovation, the new modes of working based on cooperation and collaboration (Chapter 4).

It is also important to note that the more we work with the basic biologic systems and the nanomechanisms available in the nature, the more we will be able to go further in the evolution of humankind and our life principles.

For instance, to explain such a paradigm change, we will take the example of the DNA. Many scientists know that the DNA is much more powerful than any computer program: however, how can we apply this capability to our daily lives? There are, in fact, two possibilities:

1) The traditional approach consists of developing new computer programs, taking into account the way a living organism works through mimicry. Therefore, we could develop ANNs (artificial neural networks) to perform classification, clustering or ranking activities in decision-making. ANNs are very useful for deep learning and to develop cognitive robots. There are also genetic algorithms, simulated annealing techniques that can be used to optimize solution search, improve our immune system, control evolutive situations or develop adaptive programs. At last, the study of ants or colonies of bees (collaborative social animals) enable us to see how a collective intelligence can emerge, how we can build a complex structure, etc. In fact, in all these examples lies a transposition of some underlying mechanisms from one field of sciences to another.

2) The new approach consists of remodeling a problem and adapting it to the capabilities of the living DNA organism. Here, it is not mimicry (from information to biology, or vice versa); we use the Turing machine properties of the DNA (molecules or biological structures) to directly exploit a kind of living being computer capability [ROQ 16, DEL 17].

Here, we face an ethical problem different to the one of bioethics or advanced sciences exploitation: we cannot adapt or change something like Mother Nature in order to solve one of our problems, but we entrust to nature the care of defining or finding the solution. We no longer have control of the algorithm!

1.2. Evolution of technologies

In our global world, the way business is conducted is of a dynamic and unforgiving type. Competitiveness is increasingly acerbic (often due to greed) and requires us to be reactive and to protect our business sectors with more and more vigor.

Some people are aware of the need to continually adapt our strategies and ways of thinking. We often talk about new technologies or a technological revolution. In fact, as with the industry, IT is used mainly to automate and formalize existing processes, to save time and to put rigor (e.g. traceability, information control, etc.) into our practices. This desire to improve our processes is already a progress in itself, but it is not enough.

To clarify, it is worth pointing out that in our economy, industry in particular has already undergone many changes and innovations over the past century. We will not go back in time to explain this evolution, but we will focus on what is most important.

During the last century, the industry evolution was subject to five disruptive changes:

1) Mechanization. By the end of the 19th Century, the development of coal and steam engine energy directly fostered the mechanical and textile industry.

2) Agro-chemistry. It is the result of advances in the development of industrial chemistry and war chemistry (bacteriological) that have generated a multitude of new molecules, which have also allowed (by adjacency phenomena) us to positively evolve our practices (in the sense of the general interest).

3) Intensive production. After the Second World War, for strategic reasons (but also economic, geopolitical, etc.), the industrial metamorphosis addressed all the sectors of our economy as well as our society itself. It is the source of productivity and quality.

4) The 1990s and genetics. Just as we know how to control our environment, it is now possible to control the welfare of living species. Quantitatively, qualitatively, and also from sanitary or phytosanitary point of view, it becomes interesting to modify the chromosomal nature of the species. Just as one knows how to make a clonal selection at the level of plants, since GMOs (genetically modified organisms) appeared in 1985. We are entering the era of transhumanism with all the consequences that one can foresee in terms of the benefits for our living species, the evolution of the world and the risks that can arise from this.

This, of course, raises ethical and risk management issues, but it would be good here, rather than adapting a blocked ideological posture, to analyze the in’s and out’s, risks and benefits, and then to manage the situation in a slightly more intelligent way.

5) The present. Since 2010, a new step is being taken with the Industry 4.0 plan of progress. The action plan is based on five factors: (1) the agility of the production system (dynamic volume flexibility); (2) the collaborative working mode and the human factor; (3) a high flexibility (product variability); (4) lean manufacturing to produce more with less resources; (5) optimization or best usage of resources and decision making.

The implementation of the Industry 4.0 concepts naturally implies innovations to be carried out through a large usage of new technologies. In order to simplify this integrated concept, I would call that universal and global concept: High Precision Technology.

It requires a combination of key technologies referred to as NBIC. NBIC refers to a set of complementary technologies: Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Information processing and Cognitive sciences. In other words, Computer Science, Big Data, Internet of Things (IOT), Internet of Everything and Cognitivism (signal processing, knowledge management, artificial intelligence, deep learning). Indeed, they are implemented in the best sustainable way in different tools; we can quote: robotics, sensors, drones (unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)), tablets and computers, Watson, etc.

However, talking about Industry 4.0 is not easy:

– About the technologies to be used, we can state that a lot of advances are still expected to fulfill the requirements and the objectives defined by the executives. To be more specific, and focusing on ethics, we will remind (at this stage of Industry 4.0) the following domains to be enhanced:

- semantic web and metadata;

- identity and security in the information system;

- biometrics;

- radio frequency identification (RFID);

- new generation of smart sensors;

- the geospatial web and geolocalized services;

- mesh networking and social networks;

- grid computing;

- new inspiring technologies: cognitive robotics.

– In parallel, the set of organizational problems to be solved either in logistics (mutual storages), distribution of production units, or PLM, etc. are related to: (1) global resource sharing; (2) security; (3) load balancing; (4) distance neutrality; (5) open standards. They require an acute sense of ethics.

1.2.1. A challenge

What is important here is the fact that we are in a collaborative world, with exchanges of big data, and that we are linked to the notion of hybrid systems: man/machine (hence the notion of transhumanism), and of working with interconnected systems (contrary to what one thinks, the collaborative systems are not open to cooperation but to a strong individual involvement and interest for what is done in a common and coordinated project. We will not debate here this aspect: it can be found in the social networking chapter).

To summarize and refocus on industry or transportation: installing a GPS system and an image processing system associated with a camera and a computer to move correctly between working stations is called automation and represents an improvement in itself.

In the field of production, design and assembly, the monitoring of devices and equipment, driven and controlled with sensors and programmable controllers allows us to better manage an activity. However, all this is local, partial, limited in scope … when applied correctly.

Since the 1990s, computer innovations have allowed us to learn everything about