AAACE 2021 Annual Conference

Digital ethics, HRD, organizational development

It’s an expectation that HRD practitioners are capable of leading organizations in addressing ethical challenges. The objective is to collect participants’ knowledge of how organizations are tackling the new challenges posed by digital ethics and how HRD practitioners have a supportive role in that process. 

Digital ethics, based on existing literature, focuses on the threats that the data science field poses to democracy, privacy, autonomy, and equality. These threats originated in organizations that collect and process data from its users without their knowledge. The data that is collected (surveillance) or how the organizations will use the data (secondary data) is unknown to the user. Data collection processed by algorithms are often used to manipulate people’s behavior, limiting the individual’s autonomy, and “if democracy is predicated on an informed citizenry, then the increasing pervasiveness of computational propaganda is a fundamental problem” (DiResta, 2018, p. 29). Digital ethics issues are caused by organizations’ practices that employ data science and algorithms. We claim, based on the Code of Ethics of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), that HRD practitioners are responsible for leading the organizations to tackle ethical issues regardless of them having internal or external consequences. Considering the rise of relevance of digital ethics in various forums, this session is pertinent because it aims to bring this discussion to the field of professional development in adult education. Our session benefits HRD practitioners by identifying emerging practices within organizations and the HRD field about digital ethics.