Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2

Pierre MASSOTTE, Pr. HDr.Ing., has long worked for IBM in Quality then Advanced Technologies (AoT), then as scientific director in EMEA Manufacturing, to improve European Manufacturing plants and Development Laboratories competitivity. Lately, he joined "Ecole des Mines d'Alès" as Deputy Director within the Nîmes EMA Laboratory. His research and development topics are related to complexity, self-organization, and issues on business competitiveness and sustainability in global companies. He is the co-author of several books in production systems management. He is now involved, as senior consultant, in various 'inclusive society' projects.

Foreword xiii

List of Acronyms xvii

Introduction xxi

Chapter 1 Evolution and Impact of Advanced Technologies on Humankind and Business 1

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Evolution of technologies 2

1.2.1 A challenge 5

1.3 The United Nations: concerns and recommendations 7

1.4 Evolution of production systems 10

1.4.1 Question: Innovation and usefulness 11

1.4.2 Question: Anticipation 12

1.4.3 Toward personification 13

1.5 Emergence of nanotechnologies 16

1.5.1 Characteristics of nanotechnologies 16

1.5.2 A paradigm change 17

1.5.3 Perspectives, prospective and comments 19

1.5.4 Questions of ethics: a new way of thinking 20

1.6 Development of biotechnologies 21

1.7 3D printing and the future of manufacturing 23

1.7.1 Impacts of innovation 23

1.7.2 Some applications of 3D printing 24

1.7.3 Basic questions of ethics 26

1.7.4 How to fulfill ethics with 3D printing? 27

1.8 The future: wedding of transdisciplinary technologies 29

1.9 New opportunities: precision and sustainability 30

1.9.1 Bio-wasting 31

1.9.2 Importance of the precision process 32

1.9.3 Application: oenology of “precision” and the sustainability 34

1.10 The current digitization strategy 35

1.11 Robotics, how and for which purpose? 37

1.12 Cognitive sciences, cognitivism 38

1.12.1 Weak artificial intelligence 39

1.12.2 Strong artificial intelligence 39

1.12.3 False artificial intelligence 41

1.13 NBIC: innovation business models 41

1.13.1 Vertical integration of the technological innovations 41

1.13.2 Horizontal integration of the technological innovations 42

1.13.3 Organization: the new business model 43

1.13.4 “Data is centric” 45

1.14 How to link ethics and innovation 48

1.14.1 Introduction 48

1.14.2 Some practices in innovation 49

1.14.3 Ethical frameworks for innovation 51

1.14.4 Conclusion on ethics and innovation 53

1.15 Conclusion 54

Chapter 2 Ethics and Transhumanism: Control using Robotics and Artificial Intelligence 57

2.1 Introduction to transhumanism 57

2.2 Ethics, robotics and artificial intelligence 58

2.2.1 Differences between computer, human brain, artificial intelligence and thinking 58

2.2.2 We cannot predict the future, as we are living in a complex system 60

2.2.3 People who fear risks are predicting reproducible robots 64

2.2.4 Ethics: why scientists are so worried 64

2.2.5 Ethics and safeguards in business 66

2.3 Ethics and robotics 67

2.3.1 Introduction 67

2.3.2 Some characteristics about the weapons sciences: intelligent robots and wars 68

2.4 Artilects 71

2.5 The world: a hybrid planet with robotics and living species 72

2.5.1 Application of the cobots 73

2.5.2 From the drone to the autonomous car 74

2.5.3 A necessary adaptation 76

2.6 Ethics and the elementary rules of Asimov in robotics 77

2.6.1 Ethics and sustainability 78

2.6.2 General comments 78

2.7 Conclusions and perspectives: the problems that could arise from robotics 79

Chapter 3 Ethics and the New Business and Labor Organizations 81

3.1 Preamble 81

3.2 The context: new BDIs of the population, new opportunities 83

3.3 Major changes in the shared and collaborative economy 84

3.4 Concepts: some definitions and recollections 85

3.4.1 The WTS is a modern market organization 85

3.4.2 Web-to-Virtual Store 86

3.4.3 Characteristics of the new ways of working 90

3.5 Key factors of the new economic models 91

3.5.1 Networking and the uberization of operations 92

3.5.2 Positive and negative impacts of uberization? 94

3.5.3 The problem of consumer–producer and producer–consumer 95

3.5.4 Underlying mechanisms: differences with the present economic systems 96

3.5.5 A social hypocrisy? 98

3.6 The P2P management rules 99

3.6.1 Ethics, liberalism and autonomy 100

3.7 Assignments of means and resources 101

3.8 Uber: a resources allocation problem 102

3.8.1 Ethics 103

3.8.2 Simplexification 104

3.8.3 Complexification: influence of the cognitive approaches 104

3.9 Business ethics: a resources allocation problem 106

3.9.1 Business ethics and goods assignment 107

3.9.2 Modeling ethics with utility theory 108

3.10 Ethics in the business: more perspectives 110

3.11 Ethics in Web-to-Virtual Store applications 111

3.11.1 Introduction 111

3.11.2 Ethics in the new transportation and moving opportunities 112

3.11.3 Four other ways Uber is ethically challenged 114

3.12 GIG economy: are the workers at Uber and Lyft happy? 116

3.13 The real price of innovation 118

3.13.1 Digitization 119

3.14 Conclusion 120

Chapter 4 Ethics and Social Networking 121

4.1 Preamble 121

4.2 Introduction: social networking 122

4.2.1 Main characteristics of social innovation 123

4.2.2 Consequences 125

4.3 Some basic social definitions and principles 127

4.3.1 Inclusion: the main principle of social networks 128

4.3.2 Inclusiveness and virtues 129

4.3.3 Principles of emergence 130

4.4 Emergence and reverse engineering 131

4.4.1 The paradigm change: principle of circularity 133

4.5 Moving beyond technology-based solutions to complexity 134

4.5.1 Changing our ways of thinking 134

4.5.2 Changing the operational context 135

4.5.3 Toward a new toolkit 138

4.5.4 Consequences 140

4.6 How to link ethics and social innovation 141

4.6.1 Introduction 141

4.6.2 Some practices in innovation 141

4.7 Ethical frameworks for innovation 144

4.7.1 Utilitarianism: the greatest good for the greatest number 144

4.7.2 Rights: an individual’s rights should not be violated 145

4.7.3 Enterprise: personal involvements 145

4.7.4 Conclusions 146

4.8 Collaboration and cooperation 147

4.8.1 Evolution: the development of cooperation and collaboration 147

4.8.2 Definitions of collaboration and cooperation 148

4.8.3 Main characteristics of collaboration and cooperation 148

4.8.4 Differences between cooperation and collaboration approaches 149

4.9 Comparison of the different modes of management 150

4.9.1 Implementation of the different modes of management 152

4.9.2 Required quality properties for an optimal management of “collective systems” 154

4.9.3 Methodologies and learning in cooperation–collaboration-based systems 155

4.9.4 Some specificities and ethical concerns 156

4.10 Ethics and mimicry: a natural approach to social networking 157

4.10.1 Artificial life and collective thinking science 159

4.10.2 Application: role of feedbacks in mimicry and ascendancy over the others 159

4.11 Conclusion 160

Chapter 5 Ethics: Misuses and Whistleblowing in Big Data and the Web 163

5.1 Introduction 163

5.2 Some statistics 164

5.3 Problematic situation 165

5.3.1 Data privacy and social networking 165

5.3.2 The root causes of data breach 167

5.3.3 The GDPR 168

5.3.4 Where did ethics begin, and is there good or bad ethics? 170

5.4 Accelerating factors 171

5.4.1 Consequences 173

5.5 Whistleblowing 174

5.5.1 Definition of a whistleblower 175

5.5.2 Two types of whistleblowing – same ethics? 176

5.5.3 Notions of ethics in the case of whistleblowing 177

5.5.4 Public support is growing for whistleblowers 178

5.6 Business ethics: elements of methodology and implementation 179

5.6.1 How to discuss new ethical issues in business? 181

5.7 Whistleblower policies and corporate governance 182

5.7.1 Lack of the above processes will erode ethics 184

5.7.2 Benefits of whistleblower policies and procedures 184

5.8 Conclusion 185

5.8.1 Useful links and further information 186

Chapter 6 The Underlying Mechanisms to Improve Ethics: Virtues, Laws and Cultures 187

6.1 Introduction 187

6.2 Examples of unethical behavior in the economy 189

6.2.1 Example 1: the climate, a common idea of “catastrophism” 189

6.2.2 Example 2: ethics and scientific advances 190

6.2.3 Example 3: ethics, risks and uncertainties in the economy 191

6.3 An exclusive or inclusive society: ethics and social relationships 194

6.3.1 Example 4: social relationships and the “inclusive society” 195

6.3.2 The challenge of aging in a company or in our society: proper ethics? 198

6.4 Better ethics? Some constitutive elements 201

6.4.1 Ethics and virtues: a reminder 201

6.4.2 Ethics, virtue and corporate culture in a company 204

6.5 Ethics and Christian culture 204

6.6 Ethics and the evaluation of a corporate culture: application to IBM 206

6.6.1 Consequence and aggregation of the concepts of ethics 209

6.6.2 Elements involved in a corporate ethics 209

6.7 Ethics and the Rotary culture 210

Chapter 7 Uses of Ethics: Between Virtue, Humanism and Illiteracy 213

7.1 Ethics: an attitude between responsibility and conviction 213

7.1.1 A reminder: evolution and the role of antagonisms 213

7.1.2 Notions of responsibility and conviction in ethics 213

7.2 Ethics: between the exact requirements and the intents of the letter and spirit of the law 214

7.2.1 Introduction 214

7.2.2 The letter and the spirit of the law 215

7.2.3 Ethics is not an ideology 219

7.2.4 Ethics: illiteracy, education and learning 220

7.2.5 The global situation of education and training in France 220

Chapter 8 Ethics, Temporality and Spirituality 227

8.1 Introduction: problematics 227

8.2 Truth: general characteristics of ethics and morals 228

8.3 Ethics and morale 231

8.3.1 Ethics: an open door to transcendence 232

8.3.2 Morality as a limited concept in the content of a law 232

8.3.3 Is there a divergence or contradiction between morale and ethics? 233

8.4 Ethics and spirituality 233

8.5 Application: ethics and bioethics 235

8.6 Ethics, spirituality, identity and religion 235

8.7 Synthesis: hierarchy of ethics concepts 238

8.8 Spirituality out of the religion framework 240

8.9 Beyond ethics: the contribution of religious fact to excluded people 240

8.10 Conclusion 241

Chapter 9 Ethics: Perspectives and the Future 243

9.1 Introduction 243

9.2 The crisis is still here 244

9.3 Post-modernism in detail: the story never ends 246

9.4 Consequences: worldwide governance and hyper-democracies 247

9.4.1 Application to a global governance 248

9.4.2 Ethics and worldwide governance 249

9.4.3 Evolution of hyper-collectivities or communities: impact on ethics 249

9.5 Business ethics: new trends and perspective 249

9.6 Ethics of consideration: a new concept 251

9.6.1 The problem 251

9.6.2 Generalization 252

9.7 Toward a more Sustainable Ethics 254

9.8 Ethics: evaluation and measurement 256

9.9 A future vision of networking and Business Ethics 258

9.10 Main conclusions 261

9.10.1 Ethics: difficulties and limits of present approaches Toward which future? 262

9.10.2 Some comments 263

Bibliography 265

Index 275