Adaptive Ethics for Digital Transformation

AI and robots–when thinking about the ethical problems of technology and businesses in a digital age, these are the types of problems most people nod about and contemplate. This book is not about those. Because AI isn't where the true ethical quandary resides–not to say that AI isn't an ethical quandary, it is. It's just not the one businesses really need to get a jump on before we all explode in a fiery ball of ethicsagedan. No, it's not AI. It's… bureaucracy. Yes, bureaucracy. And the ethics of bureaucracy are no longer working in the twenty-first-century post-COVID-19 world, and businesses are suffering. But there is an ethical model that can guide leaders to ethically sound business, it's an ethics that centers on people–which has a nice side benefit of keeping a business competitive in the marketplace, too. This book isn't a tomb of indigestible, philosophizing, it's wry and full of the fun only Mark Schwartz can bring. Schwartz guides readers through the current and historical ethical landscape–both of business and of the world in which it operates. With humor and keen insight, he explains why immediate change guided by ethics, is the only realistic option for business in the twenty-first century. Throughout the book, Schwartz covers everything from values, stakeholder engagement, employees, supply chain, environment, community, customers, and marketing–and even AI, sustainability, and robots. By the end of the book, business leaders will rethink what it takes to be an ethical organization and will have gained the understanding that a change on ethics is not only desirable but essential.

Digital transformation doesn't just raise ethical issues, it—in itself—is an ethical shift. Business leaders today are struggling to manage conflicting imperatives, those of the emerging digital world and those of the bureaucratic world of the past. The act of digital transformation requires a deep change in the moral outlook and ethical assumptions of a business. But how do we get there? Enterprise strategist and author Mark Schwartz shows how we need to learn to think differently about relationships with customers and employees. That the ethics of digital transformation is a matter of cultivating and applying virtues rather than applying rules. Ethics is not just a matter of refraining from doing bad things. It's a matter of building the world we want, and it's the job of company executives. Featuring a chapter on bullshit, a handy chart of excuses for bad behavior, and Schwartz's typically paradoxical blend of deep insight and pasta jokes, this book guides business leaders as they struggle to adapt their bureaucratic framework of ethics to the emerging landscape of the digital world. By the end of the book, business leaders will rethink what it takes to be an ethical organization.