Digital Ethics reflects on and intervenes in the zone where technological innovation, economic organization and moral responsibility overlap. At the interface between these domains emerge new questions, challenges and dilemmas of ethics: how does decision making change when AI-powered machines frame and structure the decision-making process? Who is accountable for actions when technology mediates decisions and enhances capacity to act such as in drone warfare? In how far are digitally mediated platform organizations responsible for actions of its users? How do trust and transparency ensure or undermine the legitimacy of digitalization? And how do we negotiate boundaries between surveillance and freedom in data-driven public and private systems? In this course we will focus on these concerns through (1) developing a vocabulary that allows to articulate challenges and dilemmas and through (2) enhancing our repertoire to act on these challenges and dilemmas. The course acts as bridge between ethics, technology and economy, providing tools for thinking about and working with digital ethics.     

2.2.2024: 12:00 - 18:00 

Course Opening:  Introduction Digital Ethics 

• Core concepts of digital ethics
• Relevancy for organizations and society, significance for research and science

Conversation 1: Foundations of ethics

• Conceptual clarification & definitions
• Frameworks and key ideas 

3-4pm Guest talk Elmira van den Broek, Stockholm School of Economics

Conversation 2: Ethical theories: tools for thinking

• Approaches to ethics and morality

• Dilemmas, questions, problematizations
• Application of theories to digital context 

3.2.2024: 09:00 - 16:00 

Conversation 3: Doing Ethics

• Propositions to build (digital) ethical organizations
• Ethics in practice
• Managerial implications  

12.00-1.00pm Guest talk: Maya Pindeus, Co-Founder at Humanising Autonomy

1.00-4.00pm Self-organized study

7.6.2024: 12:00 - 18:00 

12.00-2.30pm   Guest case study: Algorithms and HR Decision Making

• Sebastian Wieczorek, Vice President Artificial Intelligence Technology and Global Lead of AI Ethics SAP

3.00-4.00pm     Reflection & discussion

4.00-5.30pm    Guest talk: Elise Berlinski, Neoma Business School, France, “QAnon, technology and ethics”

5.30-6.00pm    Reflection & discussion

8.6.2024: 09:00 - 16:00 

9.00-11.00am Challenge # 1: AI & decision making – group assignment 

• Group presentations
• Problematizing decision making and algorithms 
• Work in break out rooms
• Presentation and discussion

11.00am-1.00pm Challenge # 2: Ethics of platform organizations – group assignment  

• Group presentations
• Problematizing digitally enhanced organizational forms and responsibility of organizational actors
• Work in break out rooms
• Presentation and discussion

1.00-3.00pm    Challenge # 3: Digital technology and surveillance capitalism – group assignment  

• Group presentations
• Problematizing technology and power      

• Work in break out rooms
• Presentation and discussion

3.00-4.00pm    Reflection, discussion

• Conclusion, feedback