Digital Ethics – Methods

Based on feedback to date, here is my refined perspective for consideration:

Research Questions with an attempt to narrow the focus of my research:

• “how do contemporary corporations define and approach the topic of digital ethics?”
• “what are the strengths and gaps of the current approach?”

Methodology:

• As there does not, to my understanding, exist a quantitative way to define and measure “digital ethics” a more qualitative methodology would be more beneficial to answer my research questions.

Methods:

To answer the first question of “how do contemporary corporations define and approach the topic of digital ethics?”, I propose to leverage the following methods:

• Field study – one on one interviews with organizational leaders across multiple sectors with the goal to create a baseline of contemporary understanding of “digital ethics”.
• Case study – from the field study, identify one organization with more advanced thinking on “digital ethics” with the aim to understand in depth how this topic is defined and applied to operations.
• Literary study – review of existing academic writings on “digital ethics” within corporations to assimilate existing documented research beyond the field study and case study on this topic.

To answer the second question, “what are the strengths and gaps of the current approach?” it will require my evaluation of the existing understanding of “digital ethics”. With that context, I propose leveraging the following methods:

• Case study – evaluate one company or industries approach to an ethical topic to understand the success factors or pitfalls at such a nascent stage of issue development. Perhaps environmental ethics or worker health and safety? The intent would be to understand if there are applicable lessons to be learned from a comparable topic’s development arc.
• Analytical autoethnography – as my research topic is difficult to define and a developing field, I believe it will be beneficial for both critical evaluation of my research and future research on “digital ethics” to record the “why” of the choices I make as a researcher whether it be on data included and excluded in the research, how I came to certain conclusions and, more broadly, the decisions I took to tackle this ambiguous topic.