"Corporate Digital Responsibility", A Study on Managerial Challenges for AI integration in Business.

Sammanfattning: Digitalization is changing the conventional face of business, posing ethical questions with regards to how businesses create, collect, use, and store data as part of their everyday business activities. Moreover, because of the pervasiveness of data technologies and unpredictability of their effects on society at large, the complex network of stakeholders affected by data handling is increasing exponentially. In this regard, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) models and approaches constitute a reference point for businesses to integrate ethical principles across corporate action. However, the spectrum of corporate responsibility seems to be lacking a strong foundation for the formulation of ethical business behaviour in a digital context. A recent study (Lobschat et al., 2019) conceptualized a Corporate Digital Responsibility framework, highlighting all the stakeholders and interfaces between them, and initiating the discussion on digital responsibility of businesses. The purpose of this thesis is to explore corporate responsibility in the digital context. Based on a multimethod approach, the researchers conducted a literature review of CSR approaches to digitalization and AI, and semi-structured interviews with AI experts and managers. The findings of this thesis show where CSR and CDR approaches differ and intersect in the digital context, address the concept of agency of technological artifacts and elaborate on the managerial challenges for the integration of AI. First, four outlooks on the connection between CSR and digital responsibility are presented. Second, the agency of digital artifacts is refused, however the implication of their “actions” on other stakeholders are further explored. Lastly, the managerial challenges to the integration of AI, based on the chosen research criteria, are given and discussed. This thesis presents a new framework to tackle the managerial challenges related to the integration of AI in decision-making processes across corporations. The researchers advance the discussion around the agency of digital artifacts and underline the importance of an ethical approach to digitalization.