research title about technology and business

54 Most Interesting Technology Research Topics for 2023

May 30, 2023

Scrambling to find technology research topics for the assignment that’s due sooner than you thought? Take a scroll down these 54 interesting technology essay topics in 10 different categories, including controversial technology topics, and some example research questions for each.

Social technology research topics

Whether you have active profiles on every social media platform, you’ve taken a social media break, or you generally try to limit your engagement as much as possible, you probably understand how pervasive social technologies have become in today’s culture. Social technology will especially appeal to those looking for widely discussed, mainstream technology essay topics.

How do viewers respond to virtual influencers vs human influencers? Is one more effective or ethical over the other?
Across social media platforms, when and where is mob mentality most prevalent? How do the nuances of mob mentality shift depending on the platform or topic?
Portable devices like cell phones, laptops, and tablets have certainly made daily life easier in some ways. But how have they made daily life more difficult?
How does access to social media affect developing brains? And what about mature brains?
Can dating apps alter how users perceive and interact with people in real life?
Studies have proven “doomscrolling” to negatively impact mental health—could there ever be any positive impacts?

Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology research topics

Following cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has been a rollercoaster the last few years. And since Bitcoin’s conception in 2009, cryptocurrency has consistently showed up on many lists of controversial technology topics.

Is it ethical for celebrities or influential people to promote cryptocurrencies or cryptographic assets like NFTs ?
What are the environmental impacts of mining cryptocurrencies? Could those impacts ever change?
How does cryptocurrency impact financial security and financial health?
Could the privacy cryptocurrency offers ever be worth the added security risks?
How might cryptocurrency regulations and impacts continue to evolve?
Created to enable cryptocurrency, blockchain has since proven useful in several other industries. What new uses could blockchain have?

Artificial intelligence technology research topics

We started 2023 with M3GAN’s box office success, and now we’re fascinated (or horrified) with ChatGPT , voice cloning , and deepfakes . While people have discussed artificial intelligence for ages, recent advances have really pushed this topic to the front of our minds. Those searching for controversial technology topics should pay close attention to this one.

OpenAI –the company behind ChatGPT–has shown commitment to safe, moderated AI tools that they hope will provide positive benefits to society. Sam Altman, their CEO, recently testified before a US Senate He described what AI makes possible and called for more regulation in the industry. But even with companies like OpenAI displaying efforts to produce safe AI and advocating for regulations, can AI ever have a purely positive impact? Are certain pitfalls unavoidable?
In a similar vein, can AI ever actually be ethically or safely produced? Will there always be certain risks?
How might AI tools impact society across future generations?
Countless movies and television shows explore the idea of AI going wrong, going back all the way to 1927’s Metropolis . What has a greater impact on public perception—representations in media or industry developments? And can public perception impact industry developments and their effectiveness?

Beauty and anti-aging technology

Throughout human history, people in many cultures have gone to extreme lengths to capture and maintain a youthful beauty. But technology has taken the pursuit of beauty and youth to another level. For those seeking technology essay topics that are both timely and timeless, this one’s a gold mine.

With augmented reality technology, companies like Perfect allow app users to virtually try on makeup, hair color, hair accessories, and hand or wrist accessories. Could virtual try-ons lead to a somewhat less wasteful beauty industry? What downsides should we consider?
Users of the Perfect app can also receive virtual diagnoses for skin care issues and virtually “beautify” themselves with smoothed skin, erased blemishes, whitened teeth, brightened under-eye circles, and reshaped facial structures. How could advancements in beauty and anti-aging technology affect self-perception and mental health?
What are the best alternatives to animal testing within the beauty and anti-aging industry?
Is anti-aging purely a cosmetic pursuit? Could anti-aging technology provide other benefits?
Could people actually find a “cure” to aging? And could a cure to aging lead to longer lifespans?
How might longer human lifespans affect the Earth?

Geoengineering technology research topics

An umbrella term, geoengineering refers to large-scale technologies that can alter the earth and its climate. Typically, these types of technologies aim to combat climate change. Those searching for controversial technology topics should consider looking into this one.

What benefits can solar geoengineering provide? Can they outweigh the severe risks?
Compare solar geoengineering methods like mirrors in space, stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, and other proposed methods. How have these methods evolved? How might they continue to evolve?
Which direct air capture methods are most sustainable?
How can technology contribute to reforestation efforts?
What are the best uses for biochar? And how can biochar help or harm the earth?
Out of all the carbon geoengineering methods that exist or have been proposed, which should we focus on the most?

Creative and performing arts technology topics

While tensions often arise between artists and technology, they’ve also maintained a symbiotic relationship in many ways. It’s complicated. But of course, that’s what makes it interesting. Here’s another option for those searching for timely and timeless technology essay topics.

How has the relationship between art and technology evolved over time?
How has technology impacted the ways people create art? And how has technology impacted the ways people engage with art?
Technology has made creating and viewing art widely accessible. Does this increased accessibility change the value of art? And do we value physical art more than digital art?
Does technology complement storytelling in the performing arts? Or does technology hinder storytelling in the performing arts?
Which current issues in the creative or performing arts could potentially be solved with technology?

Cellular agriculture technology research topics

And another route for those drawn to controversial technology topics: cellular agriculture. You’ve probably heard about popular plant-based meat options from brands like Impossible and Beyond Meat . While products made with cellular agriculture also don’t require the raising and slaughtering of livestock, they are not plant-based. Cellular agriculture allows for the production of animal-sourced foods and materials made from cultured animal cells.

Many consumers have a proven bias against plant-based meats. Will that same bias extend to cultured meat, despite cultured meat coming from actual animal cells?
Which issues can arise from patenting genes?
Does the animal agriculture industry provide any benefits that cellular agriculture may have trouble replicating?
How might products made with cellular agriculture become more affordable?
Could cellular agriculture conflict with the notion of a “ circular bioeconomy ?” And should we strive for a circular bioeconomy? Can we create a sustainable relationship between technology, capitalism, and the environment, with or without cellular agriculture?

Transportation technology research topics

For decades, we’ve expected flying cars to carry us into a techno-utopia, where everything’s shiny, digital, and easy. We’ve heard promises of super fast trains that can zap us across the country or even across the world. We’ve imagined spring breaks on the moon, jet packs, and teleportation. Who wouldn’t love the option to go anywhere, anytime, super quickly? Transportation technology is another great option for those seeking widely discussed, mainstream technology essay topics.

Once upon a time, Lady Gaga was set to perform in space as a promotion for Virgin Galactic . While Virgin Galactic never actually launched the iconic musician/actor, soon, they hope to launch their first commercial flight full of civilians–who paid $450,000 a pop–on a 90-minute trip into the stars. And if you think that’s pricey, SpaceX launched three businessmen into space for $55 million in April, 2022 (though with meals included, this is actually a total steal). So should we be launching people into space just for fun? What are the impacts of space tourism?
Could technology improve the way hazardous materials get transported?
How can the 5.9 GHz Safety Band affect drivers?
Which might be safer: self-driving cars or self-flying airplanes?
Compare hyperloop and maglev Which is better and why?
Can technology improve safety for cyclists?

Gaming technology topics

A recent study involving over 2000 children found links between video game play and enhanced cognitive abilities. While many different studies have found the impacts of video games to be positive or neutral, we still don’t fully understand the impact of every type of video game on every type of brain. Regardless, most people have opinions on video gaming. So this one’s for those seeking widely discussed, mainstream, and controversial technology topics.

Are different types or genres of video games more cognitively beneficial than others? Or are certain gaming consoles more cognitively beneficial than others?
How do the impacts of video games differ from other types of games, such as board games or puzzles?
What ethical challenges and safety risks come with virtual reality gaming?
How does a player perceive reality during a virtual reality game compared to during other types of video games?
Can neurodivergent brains benefit from video games in different ways than neurotypical brains?

Medical technology

Advancements in healthcare have the power to change and save lives. In the last ten years, countless new medical technologies have been developed, and in the next ten years, countless more will likely emerge. Always relevant and often controversial, this final technology research topic could interest anyone.

Which ethical issues might arise from editing genes using CRISPR-Cas9 technology? And should this technology continue to be illegal in the United States?
How has telemedicine impacted patients and the healthcare they receive?
Can neurotechnology devices potentially affect a user’s agency, identity, privacy, and/or cognitive liberty?
How could the use of medical 3-D printing continue to evolve?
Are patients more likely to skip digital therapeutics than in-person therapeutic methods? And can the increased screen-time required by digital therapeutics impact mental health

What do you do next?

Now that you’ve picked from this list of technology essay topics, you can do a deep dive and immerse yourself in new ideas, new information, and new perspectives. And of course, now that these topics have motivated you to change the world, look into the best computer science schools , the top feeders to tech and Silicon Valley , the best summer programs for STEM students , and the best biomedical engineering schools .

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Mariya holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the Pratt Institute and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at the University of California Davis. Mariya serves as a teaching assistant in the English department at UC Davis. She previously served as an associate editor at Carve Magazine for two years, where she managed 60 fiction writers. She is the winner of the 2015 Stony Brook Fiction Prize, and her short stories have been published in Mid-American Review , Cutbank , Sonora Review , New Orleans Review , and The Collagist , among other magazines.

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Technology Research Topics

Table of contents

1 What are Technology Research Topics?
2 Tips for Writing Technology Research Papers
3 Computer Science and Engineering Technology Research Topics
4 Energy and Power Technology Research Topics
5 Medical Devices & Diagnostics
6 Pharmaceutical Technology Research Topics
7 Food Technology Research Topic
8 Educational Technology Research Topic
9 Controversial Technology Research Topics
10 Transportation Technology Research Topics
11.1 Conclusion

Have you ever wondered what interesting technology topics for research papers mean? Then this article will provide you with the answer and topic examples that you can research and write on.

Have you ever wondered what interesting technology topics for research paper mean? Then this article will provide you with the answer and topic examples that you can research and write on.

Tech-related topics are among the vastest categories for college students, experts, and researchers. The field covers everything development majorly. The good thing about technology is that it cuts across every business sector and education field. It is important in Sciences, Socials and Fine Arts.

There have been many technology research topics about technology and development of sciences in the 21st century. This is due to the massive scope of this field. Researchers and thesis students have continued to research the foundation of every development. Triggering new findings that contribute to the overall improvement of the field. There have been many thesis papers on technologies, and there will still be more over the years. This is because the field has witnessed the highest and fastest growth among other disciplines and sciences.

This article seeks to take the research of technology and its concepts to a higher level. By considering very recent topics in line with the evolution and revolution of the field. The topics suggested in this article are divided into various categories to give readers a very good understanding of the latest technological concepts.

What are Technology Research Topics?

A technology research topic is a research or thesis title that gives a researcher or expert an idea of what to work on. While in certain instances, people who make technology research will have their topic scribbled out for them, most of the time, they will need to get a topic themselves. These topics make it easy for them to work on.

Generally, a topic based on the technological field will be very formal. It must contain researched data and facts. The topic must have a final aim of projecting a solution, answer, or knowledge to the targeted audience. With this being the case, getting a technology research title requires more than just picking any topic. What will pass on as the best topic for research title will be one that can be researched and provides a solution to a problem that the target audience needs. In certain instances, both the problem and the solution may be completely new to the target audience.

However, the ability of the writer to make their target audience know that there is a problem and a corresponding solution could do the thesis and project a pathway to ground-breaking research. Hence, a research title must open the researcher, thesis student, and expert to opportunities that could trigger landmark solutions.

Based on the importance of a research title to an entire technology thesis or research, a potential writer must ensure that they know what it takes to draft an excellent technology and scientific research paper title. The good thing is that tips are available to draft an excellent thesis topic.

Tips for Writing Technology Research Papers

There are very important steps that must be followed for a writer to make an excellent thesis topic. One major tip is that any topic selected must include at least one recent technology. A thesis topic that needs today’s basic technology as a roadmap has a higher probability of coming out much more successfully than one that does not include any current or new technology. It is also possible to buy a research paper based on technology to avoid all the processes of learning new technology concepts. Below are the top tips for writing excellent technology Research projects.

Understand The Research Assignment This step is very important and will determine whether you need to purchase a research paper or not. You have to understand the assignment to be asked to research if you seek to give out great quality work. You need to ensure that you know the problem being projected to you and what is needed as a solution. The best research paper topics technology are those the writers fully understood and created.
Get the Topic Idea You can only carve out a topic for an assignment that you understand. This is why the first step is imperative and why this one must follow. Understanding the topic that currently and comprehensively covers the assignment and its solution will help you develop a catching title. Even if you seek to purchase research papers for sale , you will need to fully understand the assignment and the relevant fitting topic before purchasing. You will get value for your money and wow your target audience.
Choose a Scope to Research If you are writing your research yourself, you should know that getting a topic is not just enough. A topic may cut into very vast areas, and it would be impossible for you to research all of these areas before your submission deadline. So the best way to ensure that you give quality research assignments is by specifying the scope of your topic. Identify which questions you want to provide answers for and focus on them. That way, your effort will be concentrated with a better output.
Get Good Links Knowing how to get great links for your work is very important as that will help you give out excellent work. Relying on established sources for important theories will help you establish a more convincing solution to the problem your research is about.

This article will consider major research topics on different technology research topics so that researchers and students planning to write a thesis or research paper can select from them and start their project immediately.

Computer Science and Engineering Technology Research Topics

Computer Science is one of the widest fields of Technology projects. As such, there are multiple writing topics to explore following the consistent and continuous development of the sector. As for Computer Science, there are many research works on computer engineering and more to explore. Thanks to the growth in better computer hardware and the more seamless management systems developed over time.

This section consists of 15 different research topics that thesis and college students can work on and get approval from their supervisors.

All the topics are recent and in line with global needs in 2023 and the next couple of years. They include:

Blockchain technology and the banking industry
The connection between human perception and virtual reality
Computer-assisted education and the future
High-dimensional data modeling and computer science
Parallel computing Languages
Imperative and declarative language in computer science
The machine architecture and the efficiency of code
The use of mesh generation for computational domains
Persistent data structure optimization
System programming language development
Cyber-physical system vs sensor network
Network economics and game theory
Computational thinking and science
Types of software security
Programming language and floating-point

Energy and Power Technology Research Topics

Unlike many technology-related topics, Energy and Power is one that cuts into the spheres of politics, economics, and pure science. In the areas of Economics, Energy and Power are the second most arbitrated cases. It’s only behind Construction disputes.

However, energy and Power in Science and Practicality are not for the sake of disputes. In recent years, there has been more harmony between energy and other tech-related disciplines. This has triggered many research projects, and writing research assignments is not out of the equation.

So do you have an energy/Power research assignment to handle, then this section provides you with amazing topic ideas and scopes that you can choose and pick from? All the topics are very recent and in line with the needs of today’s assignments.

Get topics that focus on Cars, power industries, chemicals, and more.

The use of fuel cells for stationary power generation
Energy density
Lithium-air and lithium-ion battery
The better between gasoline and lithium-air batteries
Renewable energy technologies
The pros and cons of renewable energy usage
Algae and biofuels
Solar installations of India
The use of robots in adjusting solar panels to weather
Create energy and inertial confinement fusion
Hydrogen energy and the future
Alternative energy sources amidst gas price increase
The application of energy transformation methods in respect to hydrogen energy
AC systems and thermal storage
Loading balance using smart grid

Medical Devices & Diagnostics

Medical devices and diagnostics are fast-growing fields with many opportunities for researchers to explore. There are thousands of devices that aid doctors in treating and managing patients. However, it cannot be emphatically stated that all of these devices offer the best results, where research assignments come into play.

As medical devices, medical diagnoses are also A very concentrated research area. Diagnostic research is highly related to medical devices because diagnoses are carried out with modern gadgets being produced by experts.

This section will consider top medical devices and diagnoses research titles in line with recent needs.

Difference between Medical Devices and Drugs
How Diagnostics helps treatment in 2023
The Era of genetics Diagnostics and Discovery of Hidden Vulnerabilities
How are Medical Smart Carts changing the game of Medicine?
The Eventuality of AI in Smart Medical Devices
The Regulation of Medical Devices
Should Private Diagnoses Be Used for Making Critical Medical Decisions?
Diagnostic Devices, Genetic Tests, and In Vitro Devices
3D & 4D Printing in Biomedicine
Innovation in Minimally Invasive Therapies, Screening and Biosensing: Complex Networks, Data-driven Models
Are medical Devices turning the Health Sector into a small interconnected powerhouse?
Advances in Methods of Diagnostic & Therapeutic Devices
What are Intra-Body Communication & Sensing?
Smart Gadgets Data Collection in terms of Neuroscience
The Contribution of Smartphone-Enabled Point-of-Care Diagnostic & Communication Systems

Pharmaceutical Technology Research Topics

Medicine has continued to improve, with technology in this area spiking in the last 20 years than it did centuries before. Pharmaceutical technology is one of the major flag bearers of this growth. As the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, the potential of pharmaceutical technology knows no bounds as long as there is continuous research in the field.

With that being the case, there are multiple research titles and projects available to take on in this field, with the opportunity almost endless. This section lists some of these topics to help research students get great topics that they can work on for the best effect. While they are only 15, they all cover a large scope of inexhaustible topics, leaving the researcher to make their choice.

The technologies of pharmaceuticals and their specialty medications
The technology and trend of prior electronic authorization in pharmacy
Medication therapy management and its effectiveness
Electronic prescription of a controlled substance as regards the issues of drug abuse
Health information exchange and medication therapy management
How efficient and effective is a drug prescription monitoring program?
The script standard of NCPDP for specialty pharmacies
The patient’s interest in real-time pharmacy
AIDS: development of drugs and vaccines
Pharmaceutical technologies and data security
The DNA library technology: an overview
The impact of cloud ERP in the pharmaceutical industry
Cannabidiol medication in pain management and the future
Pharmaceutical research with phenotypic screening
The benefits of cloud technology for small pharmaceutical companies

Food Technology Research Topic

Food research assignments and thesis have been going on for decades and even centuries due to their importance to living organisms. In 2023, this trend is expected to continue with more research topics to explore. Here are some amazing topic ideas that you can choose from and offer a mind-blowing research assignment.

The types of machines used in the food industry
3D printing and the food industry
Micro packaging and the future
The impacts of robots as regards safety in butchery
Swallowing disorder: 3D printed food as a solution
Food technology and food waste: what are the solutions
Biofilms and cold plasma
Drones and precision agriculture
Food industry and the time-temperature indicators
Preservatives, additives, and the human gut microbiome
Hydroponic and conventional farming
The elimination of byproducts in edible oil production
The baking industry and the newest technology
Electronic nose in agriculture and food industry
Food safety

Educational Technology Research Topic

As far as college students are concerned, technology in education and its subsequent research is the biggest assignment and thesis they have to consider. Education technology has continued to grow, with many gadgets and smart equipment introduced to facilitate better learning.

This section will consider some of the major education research titles that technology students can pick and provide excellent research.

How is computational thinking improving critical thinking among students
The effect of professional learning for college student
The impact of technology in educational research
The relevance of technology in advancing scientific research
Virtual reality and its role in helping student understand complex concepts
Global learning through technology and how it affects education standards
Data centers and their role in education
Cultural competence and socio-emotional learning
Artificial intelligence and educational system
Is the development of sufficient national capacities related to science, technology, and innovation possible?
How inclusive is the architecture of learning systems?
Student-centered learning
The impact of connectivity for schools and learning, especially in rural environments
Energy sources: their technological relativity and use in education
Community college: advantages and disadvantages

Controversial Technology Research Topics

As the name suggests, Controversial technology topics are among the most researched in science. How good is technology considering its effects on the global world and nature? This argument is the foundation of Controversial technology topics. See 15 different technology topics to choose from as you start your research assignment.

Can Human Trials Improve Drugs and Medicines Faster?
The Legality of Euthanasia and Assisted Killings in Medicine
Why Kids should not be exposed to the Internet and Social Media Gadgets in Their Earlier Years
How Is Technology Destroying the World’s Ecology?
Is Technology Leading the Destruction of the World’s Climate?
How Has Technology Increased Radiation and the Depletion of the World?
Does Technology Increase Gang Initiation due to Internet Access?
How Social Media Increases the Rate of Children and Young Adults Death?
The Relationship Between Technology and Depression
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR): Editing the Human Genome
The Possible Devastation of World from High-Tech Military Weapons
Space Colonization: How it is Good and Bad for Mother Earth
Are Law Enforcement use of Hidden Cameras an Encroachment of Privacy?
How Virtual Reality Can Become the New Reality If Developed?
The Wins of Cochlear Implant Research

Transportation Technology Research Topics

Transportation technology research titles are among the hottest categories for students currently. See 15 best research topics for tech and science-related research to pick from.

Are Computerized self-driving Cars Safe?
The development and Advantages of hybrid cars and Electric cars
How to Protect your smart car from hijackers and Car Thieves?
Will the next-generation Cars Have Reliable GPS devices and Replace Drivers?
The Evolution of High-speed rail networks and How They Change Rail Transport
Driving and Using Cell phones: The Global Stats of Cell Phone Related Auto Accidents
Is Teleportation an Impossible Physics?
Will Gyroscopes be the new convenient solutions for public transportation?
Will Logistics Companies be More Efficient With Electric Trucks?
How Carbon fiber Serves as an optional material for unit load devices
The Benefits of Advanced Transport Management Systems (TMS)?
Can Solar Roadways Become More Cost-Effective?
Does Technology Provide the Possibility of Water Powered Cars?
How AI has Penetrated the Transport System and Make It More Effective
Speed and Safety: How Technology Has Revolutionized Transport Systems

Information Communication Technologies (ITC) Research Topics

ICT is arguably the biggest field of technology, thanks to the amazing developments that have been achieved over the years in the field. ICT plays a major role in different areas of human life. This includes the area of TELECOMs, Education, Family, and Industries.

This section will consider 15 major technology titles on ICT to help students get topics to work on.

How is technology improving Humans reading ability?
Do online formats of readable information encourage readers to skim through instead of Understanding the Topics?
How has technology made it extremely easy to get information in Seconds: a good or bad development?
The Misconception of Gauging Intelligence?
How are Internet Search Engines changing us?
The introduction of ICT and new technologies in Education and How they improve Students’ learning
Is it worrisome that schools and Colleges now educate students via iPads, social media, Smart Boards, and other new Applications?
Did the Digital Age trigger any loss of information and Unique Intelligence that conventional and Traditional Learning and research methods provided in the Old era?
Do Search Engines and Web2 Platforms censor information, leave users blindsided, and Keep them in the Dark?
Should Encyclopedia sites such as Wikipedia be Regulated because of the High Risk of it Providing Wrong Information to the Public?
Are Blogs and Online Websites Better than Books?
The Importance of Traditional Researching and learning in a Highly Digital World
Do PDFs and Other Electronic Books Promote Short Attention Span?
Are Tech-Savvy generations dumber or Smarter?
Should Schools Become Fully Digitalized?

This article shows that technology research papers require a good understanding of technological and scientific concepts. That way, people can easily understand the basis of an assignment. They know how to draft the topic and scope. They also get excellent resources for completing the projects.

This article explained what technological research papers are. It explained how to write them and listed many topic examples people can use for their projects. Therefore, if you follow all the information discussed in this article, you will get top technology ideas for research.

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The Top 10 Most Interesting Technology Research Topics

With technological innovation streamlining processes in businesses at all levels and customers opting for digital interaction, adopting modern technologies have become critical for success in all industries. Technology continues to positively impact organizations , according to Statista, which is why technology research topics have become common among college-level students.

In this article, we have hand-picked the best examples of technology research topics and technology research questions to help you choose a direction to focus your research efforts. These technology research paper topics will inspire you to consider new ways to analyze technology and its evolving role in today’s world.

Find your bootcamp match

What makes a strong technology research topic.

A strong research topic is clear, relevant, and original. It should intrigue readers to learn more about the role of technology through your research paper. A successful research topic meets the requirements of the assignment and isn’t too broad or narrow.

Technology research topics must identify a broad area of research on technologies, so an extremely technical topic can be overwhelming to write. Your technology research paper topic should be suitable for the academic level of your audience.

Tips for Choosing a Technology Research Topic

Make sure it’s clear. Select a research topic with a clear main idea that you can explain in simple language. It should be able to capture the attention of the audience and keep them engaged in your research paper.
Make sure it’s relevant. The technology research paper topic should be relevant to the understanding and academic level of the readers. It should enhance their knowledge of a specific technological topic, instead of simply providing vague, directionless ideas about different types of technologies.
Employ approachable language. Even though you might be choosing a topic from complex technology research topics, the language should be simple. It can be field-specific, but the technical terms used must be basic and easy to understand for the readers.
Discuss innovations. New technologies get introduced frequently, which adds to the variety of technology research paper topics. Your research topic shouldn’t be limited to old or common technologies. Along with the famous technologies, it should include evolving technologies and introduce them to the audience.
Be creative . With the rapid growth of technological development, some technology research topics have become increasingly common. It can be challenging to be creative with a topic that has been exhausted through numerous research papers. Your research topic should provide unique information to the audience, which can attract them to your work.

What’s the Difference Between a Research Topic and a Research Question?

A research topic is a subject or a problem being studied by a researcher. It is the foundation of any research paper that sets the tone of the research. It should be broad with a wide range of information available for conducting research.

On the other hand, a research question is closely related to the research topic and is addressed in the study. The answer is formed through data analysis and interpretation. It is more field-specific and directs the research paper toward a specific aspect of a broad subject.

How to Create Strong Technology Research Questions

Technology research questions should be concise, specific, and original while showing a connection to the technology research paper topic. It should be researchable and answerable through analysis of a problem or issue. Make sure it is easy to understand and write within the given word limit and timeframe of the research paper.

Technology is an emerging field with several areas of study, so a strong research question is based on a specific part of a large technical field. For example, many technologies are used in branches of healthcare such as genetics and DNA. Therefore, a research paper about genetics technology should feature a research question that is exclusive to genetics technology only.

2. Children’s Use of Social Media

Nowadays, parents allow their children to use the Internet from a very young age. A recent poll by C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital reported that 32 percent of parents allow their children aged seven to nine to use social media sites. This can expose them to cyber bullying and age-inappropriate content, as well as increase their dependence on technology.

Kids need to engage in physical activities and explore the world around them. Using social media sites in childhood can be negative for their personalities and brain health. Analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the use of technology among young children can create an interesting research paper.

3. The Risks of Digital Voting

Digital voting is an easy way of casting and counting votes. It can save the cost and time associated with traveling to the polling station and getting a postal vote. However, it has a different set of security challenges. A research paper can list the major election security risks caused by digital voting.

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Research on eco-friendly food packaging can discuss the ineffectiveness of current packaging strategies. The new food technologies used for packaging can be costly, but they are better for preserving foods and the environment.

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Genetic engineering is also used for therapeutic cloning, which clones an embryo for studying diseases and treatments. DNA technology, gene editing, gene therapy, and similar topics are hot topics in technology research papers.

10. Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health Care

Mental health is a widely discussed topic around the world, making it perfect for technology research topics. The mental health care industry has more recently been using artificial intelligence tools and mental health technology like chatbots and virtual assistants to connect with patients.

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Artificial intelligence has the potential to improve the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. It can help a health care provider with monitoring patient progress and assigning the right therapist based on provided data and information.

Technology Research Questions

Is using technology in college classrooms a good or bad idea?
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Choosing the Right Technology Research Topic

Since technology is a diverse field, it can be challenging to choose an interesting technology research topic. It is crucial to select a good research topic for a successful research paper. Any research is centered around the research topic, so it’s important to pick one carefully.

From cell phones to self-driving cars, technological development has completely transformed the world. It offers a wide range of topics to research, resulting in numerous options to choose from. We have compiled technology research topics from a variety of fields. You should select a topic that interests you, as you will be spending weeks researching and writing about it.

Technology Research Topics FAQ

Technology is important in education because it allows people to access educational opportunities globally through mobile technologies and the Internet. Students can enroll in online college degrees , courses, and attend online coding bootcamps . Technology has also made writing research papers easier with the tremendous amount of material available online.

Yes, technology can take over jobs as robotics and automation continue to evolve. However, the management of these technologies will still require human employees with technical backgrounds, such as artificial intelligence specialists, data scientists , and cloud engineers.

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Technology helps companies manage client and employee data, store and protect important information, and develop strategies to stay ahead of competitors. Marketing technologies, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), are great for attracting customers online.

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Research Article

Bridging the knowledge gap between technology and business: An innovation strategy perspective

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing – original draft

Affiliation School of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Validation, Writing – original draft

Affiliation School of Progress Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Roles Formal analysis, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Pejman Peykani,
Mehdi Namazi,
Emran Mohammadi

Published: April 14, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843
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Decision-makers (DMs) are not sufficiently exposed to concepts such as efficiency and risk in innovative activities from the perspective of organizational strategy. The challenges become even greater when these DMs lack expertise in technology and deal with uncertain circumstances. In this sense, exchanging expert knowledge between DMs and technical teams will strengthen the link between technology planning and strategic management. The purpose of this study is to bridge the knowledge gap between these two groups. It introduces a framework to translate the organization’s strategy into technological decisions at an acceptable innovation risk level. This framework considers aspects such as knowledge, type of innovation, and innovation process. This study focuses on determining whether activities should be accepted or rejected by examining the uncertainty and efficiency of innovation. It also introduces a novel perspective on the hybrid "success-failure" uncertainty of innovation, and a new measure called "efficiency probability," which DMs and technology developers can use to intuitively engage in the innovation process. This paper seeks to propose a practical strategy map for new product development under uncertain conditions. To achieve this goal, the Fuzzy Front-End (FFE) concept, fuzzy data envelopment analysis (FDEA) model, and adjustable possibilistic programming (APP) approach are applied. The results of this study indicate that innovative activities typically have low efficiency and high uncertainty. Therefore, the decision to implement or abandon them requires reviewing and balancing the goals and strategic approach of the organization with technological and business features.

Citation: Peykani P, Namazi M, Mohammadi E (2022) Bridging the knowledge gap between technology and business: An innovation strategy perspective. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0266843. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843

Editor: Xingwei Li, Sichuan Agricultural University, CHINA

Received: November 10, 2021; Accepted: March 29, 2022; Published: April 14, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Peykani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information file.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: No authors have competing interests The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

I. Introduction

The initial phase of the innovation process is the Fuzzy Front-End (FFE). It begins with spotting new opportunities, followed by new business cases and ideas, and closes when companies decide to execute an innovative project in the succeeding stages of the innovation process [ 1 ]. Strictly speaking, FFE embraces all activities accomplished ahead of any formal development of a product’s details or launch [ 2 ].

The front-end is also strategically significant since it assures the coherence between new products and services to business goals by attaching the innovation process to business strategies [ 3 ]. The core of this early phase in the innovation process is decision-making, where agreement is achieved on many important issues concerning features, position, performance, technology, resources, and portfolio alignment of new products and services. Therefore, the abovementioned decisions are packed into proposals and business plans, assisting go/no-go decisions for the succeeding stage of the innovation process, which is development and commercialization [ 4 ]. Van Aken & Nagel [ 5 ] claimed that the FFE has a high level of creativity, ambiguous initiation, various inputs, vague process, and spontaneous participant involvement.

Hence, the FFE is roughly an iterative and ambiguous process. In contrast, the development and commercialization level are relatively a straight and clear process. The quality of FFE is very important for the next phase of the innovation process as product characteristics, constraints, and advantages are established in this phase [ 6 ], so it has a high potential for cost and time savings, quality improvements, and product adjustments when the actual product development and commercialization begins. Table 1 shows the differences between the FFE phase and the development and commercialization phase [ 7 ]:

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t001

Various FFE models are presented in the literature. Koen et al. [ 2 ] illustrated the uncertain and iterative outlook of the FFE in a circular shape, implying that actions in the model can iterate through five steps. However, their model was limited to just one idea selection step and lacked a decision gate as the quality–control checkpoint [ 8 ]. Therefore, Cooper [ 9 ] argued the importance of the go-to development gate as the last step, where an idea could be dropped before starting a costly development phase. Hence, the go-to development gate was added to the model of Koen, et al. The go-to development gate involves a review team to determine Go/ Kill/ Hold/ Recycle decisions, approved action plans, a list of deliverables, and some criteria for product development [ 9 ].

The decision-making and awareness at the go-to development gate have a dual nature. On one hand, the technical managers are aware of weaknesses, capabilities, and limitations of technology development units as well as possible. On the other hand, the rationale of the organization is at the hands of senior executives who explain the strategy and prefer a lighthouse, to determine the direction of the organization in the turbulent sea of business and technology. For a technology-driven company, strategy determines the nature of innovative activities. Although managers know that technology planning and strategic management are inseparable, a large part of their focus is naturally on management issues. Conversely, technical people innately focus on technology.

Hence providing tools and processes to facilitate communication between these two groups can potentially enhance the connection between technology planning and strategic management. The review team exploits the company’s approval level to make a Go/ Kill/ Hold/ Recycle decision for every project, considering various internal and external conditions that may influence on company’s approval level. Kim & Wilemon [ 10 ] provided examples of these circumstances that are corporate strategy and culture, pressure for development, technology readiness, available resources, project risk, risk-taking tolerance, and the ambiguity level at the end of the FFE. Due to the compilation of the above situations, it can be concluded that the review team aims to maximize the value of innovative ideas and projects, which may generate acceptable inherent risk.

An abstraction to this decision-making orientation is maximizing innovation efficiency under uncertainty. As explained before, FFE has excessive ambiguity that leads to qualitative, informal, and rough information for decision-makers. While there are many studies on the selection of innovative projects, new product development portfolios, and R&D projects [ 11 ], they are mainly focused on rational decision-making and are somehow deficient in empirical data on the function and performance of political and intuitive decision-making. The findings reveal that we face an intuitive type of decision-making at the early phase of the innovation process followed by political approaches while the later phase of the innovation process demands rational decision-making. That is why Eling et al. [ 12 ] marked intuition as an important factor influencing the process of decision-making at the go-to development gate.

The review team is responsible for making predictions and commenting on decisions, but their intuitions may be problematic where the decision-making process is based on the power or the majority votes. Subsequently, precious intuitions could be vanished or may have to struggle with the power of the majority [ 12 ]. As a result, political and rational decision-making could hinder intuition. Also, according to Hart et al. [ 13 ], the most important criteria for the review team are technical feasibility, product performance, and customer acceptance. Essentially, the review team is facilitated by a non-voting member and involves senior people who allocate the resources for the project team.

It is suggested that the review team shall not only involve people with creativity and optimistic personas [ 2 , 7 ], but also critical members [ 14 ]. These findings convey the importance of intuitive decision-making and its vulnerability under the shadow of political and rational approaches. This is in line with the study of Riel et al. [ 15 ] where they focused on the importance of valuation indices for ideas in pursuance of generating innovation that supports idea selection and prioritization in basic decisions.

On one hand, the review team contains the appropriate combination of seniority, but it does not necessarily involve the project team members [ 14 ]. Hence, there is a gap between the development team and the DMs. The fact is that the decisions about innovative activity made by the review team play an entrepreneurial role within the firm. Therefore, just like any other entrepreneur, they need to know about the risks and rewards of that activity. The communication between the development and review team will lead to an understandable and credible position of each project that considers the innovative aspect of corporate strategy. On the other hand, the review team has to signal the innovative orientation of corporate strategy down to the organization, especially to the development team to broadcast coherency between corporate strategy and innovative activities within the firm.

The decision-makers in the review team are faced with the problem of connecting between the technical units and the decision-making body so that the organization’s innovation strategy is well implemented. They are seeking a mechanism that can create a convergence between these two groups so that the inherent uncertainty of innovation and the innovation activities of the organization could be aligned with the innovation strategy. Besides, clarifying the hidden awareness of uncertainty in the technical body of the organization is of great importance.

To address the above decision-making challenges at the go-to development gate, this study has the following research questions:

How can we harvest the intuitions of both the development and the review team at the go-to development gate?
How can we include both optimistic and pessimistic intuitions in the decision-making process?
How can we align the above decisions with corporate strategy?

To answer the above questions, this research focuses on measuring the efficiency of innovation under uncertainty so that the innovative activities can be aligned with the organization’s innovation strategy.

Researchers have already combined data envelopment analysis techniques with other concepts to provide pragmatic analyzes of the innovation-related topic [ 16 , 17 ]. Combining fuzzy theory with data envelopment analysis is proved to be an advantageous tool to deal with uncertainty [ 18 , 19 ]. The Fuzzy Front-End of product development always confronts uncertainty, so we propose an efficient model based on an adjustable fuzzy data envelopment analysis (AFDEA) for intuitive involvement and decision making within a fuzzy environment. Note that in the AFDEA model, DMs can easily set different optimistic-pessimistic attitudes merely by adjusting a parameter. As a final step, a case study from the Iranian industry will illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.

The structure of this study is as follows: An introduction to the problem is presented in section one. Section 2 explores the research background on the strategic evaluation of innovative activities under uncertainty. Section 3 provides an introduction to fuzzy measures and fuzzy data envelopment analysis. The research methodology is presented in Section 4 followed by Section 5 which presents empirical results. Summary and conclusions are presented in Section 6.

II. Research background

In 1989, Daniela presented a comprehensive review of the different ways to strategically evaluate innovative projects and found that in a highly competitive world, organizations use methods with significant strategic benefits [ 20 ]. In the same year, Sanchez explored the role of project evaluation techniques in defining a company’s technology strategy. He classified the strategies into four groups: planning, economic, market, and technical strategies. Sanchez asserts that using an economic strategy requires pre-defined selection criteria and applying selection methods is not flexible and in the case of market strategy, evaluation methods only help prioritize projects. He also concluded that decisions made by companies that use a technical strategy are solely based on the technical competence of the various projects that are intended to be implemented [ 21 ].

The first empirical research on the relationship between innovation and strategy in various articles indicates three main objectives for successful companies [ 22 ] in innovation: maximizing portfolio value, achieving a balance between innovation practices, and alignment with strategy [ 23 , 24 ]. This, as later developed for the fourth purpose: selecting the right number of innovative activities [ 25 ]. The results highlight the importance of coordinating strategic decisions and innovation. However, it was somewhat unknown to understand how this link may be realized. Various strategies for managing innovative activities are possible [ 26 ] and companies that openly express areas of strategic focus in their innovation portfolios [ 27 ] or the process of managing the portfolio of ideas by managing the innovation portfolio [ 28 ] have more fruitful results. To align the innovation portfolio with relevant strategic objectives, specific tools and methods such as strategic buckets have been proposed [ 29 ]. However, experimental results show that companies that have moved from purely financial instruments to strategic tools are more successful in innovation [ 22 ].

The above studies focused on different aspects of managing the innovation portfolio, but they lack the most required insight into the actual implementation of strategic goals in the decision-making process. This is because ambiguity is at the core of innovation and often leads to risk and uncertainty. Most researches in this area include a combination of models, methods, and techniques that support the evaluation of innovative activities, but few show the relationship between innovation and the company’s strategy of uncertainty. Cheung et al. [ 30 ] pioneered using confusing choices to fill this gap in technology-based companies, but they focused only on the ambiguity of knowledge. Wang et al. [ 31 ] proposed a framework for aligning risk management with technological innovation with organizational strategy, but they ignored the state of innovation which is at the heart of the company’s strategy.

Many studies on the evaluation of technological innovation based on the company’s strategy used this framework. For example, Herfert & Arbige [ 32 ] introduced an iterative process and showed how innovation is in line with corporate strategy. However, to evaluate innovations regarding corporate strategy they focused only on business and portfolio management tools. Once again, Rhéaume & Gardoni [ 33 ] conducted a comprehensive study on the relationship between a company’s strategy and management of innovative activities like developing new products. Although, they failed to provide any guidelines or frameworks for translating innovation strategies into resource allocation.

For incremental ideas, Ansoff et. al [ 34 ] tried to fill this gap and used "strategic situation" to manage technological innovation. They defined the "Incremental" and "Continuous" Strategic modes. Although their classification seems inherent, it does not provide a clear concept of whether or not to issue a ruling on innovation. That is why they used this classification to make decisions about innovative management styles rather than their evaluation. The go-to development gate is a bridge between the blurry world of fuzzy front end and clarifies the world of product development. The multifunctional nature of the project team results in a multifunctional review team. This fact results in a better decision-making capability for the review team.

The review team could also involve suppliers, technology partners, investors, and customers [ 14 ]. However, the seniority of the team members depends on the type and importance of the idea. For incremental ideas, the review team comprises mid-management while for radical and important ideas the senior management also is involved [ 9 ]. Rhéaume & Gardoni [ 33 ] focus was on explaining the relationship between company strategies and managing innovative activities. They paid almost no attention to other aspects. Using business management tools, Herfert & Arbige [ 32 ] came up with a good approach to select innovative activities but he did not mention how the acceptable level of innovation risk is determined by the organization’s strategy.

Wang et al. [ 31 ] provided a framework for managing risk in innovative activities with an organizational strategy that takes into account knowledge considerations and the type of innovation. However, he did not specify the status of innovative activity in the organization’s strategy. In other words, he argued that the risk management framework can balance the risk of activities according to the company’s strategy, but he did not specify which strategic approach each company is taking should take or which activities are likely to be appropriate given the company’s strategic approach.

Cheung et al. [ 30 ], like Rhéaume & Gardoni [ 33 ], considered just one indicator and ignored other indicators. He analyzed the ambiguities of knowledge and provided a way to strategically select them. Chao & Kavadias [ 29 ] only paid attention to the balance between radical and continuous innovation and did not offer a way to translate strategy into an acceptable level of ambiguity in the organization.

Table 2 represents a summary of previous research on strategic evaluation of innovative activities under uncertainty. This table, categorizes studies based on innovation aspects that they have considered. These aspects include knowledge, translating strategy to level of risk tolerance, risk management, portfolio management guideline, innovation process, innovation type, and the uncertainty approach. As seen in this table, only Ansoff and his colleagues could cover all aspects, nevertheless, they did not issue a clear go/no go verdict for a given project. There is a major gap in all previous studies, as they have examined innovative projects against corporate strategy, but none could combine the knowledge and intuition of both the review team and the development team. In other words, they could not bring the management and technical teams together to reach a better decision.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t002

To address the above gap, this study suggests using expert elicitation, as well as looking at the corporate strategy through the lens of efficiency and risk. Accordingly, the fuzzy front-end concept and adjustable fuzzy data envelopment analysis model are applied as a systematic approach to performance assessment of the innovation strategies for new product development.

III. Adjustable fuzzy dea approach

Performance evaluation is one of the most essential real-world decision-making problems. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is one of the most applicable and popular approaches for performance appraisal, benchmarking, and ranking the peer decision-making units (DMUs) in the presence of multiple inputs and outputs [ 35 – 37 ]. One of the main challenges in applying the traditional DEA approaches to real-life problems is the presence of ambiguity and uncertainty in inputs and/or outputs [ 38 – 40 ]. As a result, using new uncertain DEA models that can measure the performance of DMUs under an uncertain environment seems to be essential.

Accordingly, an adjustable fuzzy data envelopment analysis (AFDEA) model based on the general fuzzy measure will be introduced. The AFDEA can be applied for performance evaluation of peer homogeneous DMUs under fuzzy data and linguistic variables. Notably, in the AFDEA model, the attitude of the decision-maker could be determined by the optimistic-pessimistic parameter. The indices, parameters, and decision variables that will be employed in the AFDEA model are as follows:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t003

research title about technology and business

It should be noted that in the above models, Δ = 0, Δ = 1, and Δ = 0.5 show the pessimistic, optimistic, and compromise attitudes of the DM, respectively. In other words, the adjustable fuzzy DEA model is able to cover all previous fuzzy chance-constrained DEA models that presented based on necessity (pessimistic attitude), possibility (optimistic attitude), and credibility (compromise attitude) measures in fuzzy DEA field. Since the discriminatory power of the AFDEA model is more than the traditional DEA model, the AFDEA model can be used to fully rank the DMUs under a fuzzy environment. In this way, we can use AFDEA to assess system performance in the fuzzy front-end from a variety of optimistic as well as pessimistic perspectives.

IV. Methodology

To model the process of an innovative project required human resources in terms of man-hour, fixed costs such as equipment, software licenses, and laboratory costs, and current costs are considered as project inputs and the outputs are considered as created value and probability of project success. Due to the nature of research and development, the assumption is that, the output of a project is a value that results from the outcomes of innovative activities.

Items such as production-ready prototypes as well as deposition of knowledge and technology in organization boost the created-value and items such as discredit and lost opportunity are considered as counter-value. For example, if the project succeeds, the output may be a combination of a patent and a product to be successfully marketed or, in the event of project failure, the value of knowledge applicable for other activities and projects, taking into account the counter-value of failure discredit, deduced from the organization. The model is shown in Fig 1 and presumes all inputs and outputs as fuzzy variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.g001

Decision-making at the go-to development gate maximizes the innovation efficiency under uncertainty, while the information is mostly vague, verbal, approximate, and unofficial. To overcome this issue, we choose fuzzy data development analysis as a part of the proposed decision support framework.

When a decision-maker attempts to decide whether to include a project within a portfolio of projects or not, he/she certainly thinks about the risks and uncertainties that may affect the expected outcome of that project. Knowledge is known as a major contribution to research on projects and their developments. There is a major difference between innovative projects and other types of projects. According to research by Shuang and his colleagues [ 42 ], knowledge is the major perspective of product development project selection. Other perspectives include economics, technology, operation, strategy, customer, partner, and resources. Knowledge contribution of innovative projects can be categorized into three criteria [ 43 – 45 ]:

Individual learning.
Organizational level learning.
Organizational culture change.

These categories contribute to the whole organization and contrary to other project perspectives, they remain as a positive contribution even if the project fails. This influence is much higher in the case of the project’s successes. this means that innovative projects still bring value to organizations even if they fail and we should consider this “failure value” in the project selection scenario.

As already mentioned, this model assumes that a research and development project can be valuable even if it fails, as the accumulated knowledge is the last thing that the failed project brings to the organization. Generally, the value of a project in case of failure is much less than its value if the project succeeds. Hence, for the calculation of created value, the following three parameters are specified:

Projections of project success and fail
Prediction of created value If successful
The estimated value created in case of failure of the project

In this formula, V is the total created value, P s is the possibility of success and P f is the possibility of failure, V f and, is the value created in the event of success V s is the value created in the event of failure.

To collect data for analysis, we consider research and development as a widely accepted and well-established innovation process within various industries. This makes the results of data analysis easier to digest by practitioners as well as researchers.

Different factors add certain kinds of uncertainty into R&D project making, so each project is a unique experience. Hence gathering probabilistic information about R&D projects is a challenge. To generate stochastic input for our decision model, we invite experts with special knowledge to express their ideas about the likelihood of values or events in question.

V. Empirical results

The data was compiled from an R&D department at a large IT company that has a long history of developing technologies for data communication. According to Namazi [ 46 ], this R&D unit has been a role model within the country, winning international innovation awards. Consequently, this unit can be regarded as a representative at the national and international levels. It can be seen from the history of this R&D unit that it comes out every 4 years with an updated platform and a range of main and by-products. At the time of data collection, the R&D center was planning for the next 5 years, in which 33 projects were proposed for implementation. Additionally, the unit employed 40 knowledge-based employees, including 10 senior researchers and engineers who, in addition to technical knowledge, had a thorough understanding of the product market.

Hence, 33 projects were selected from a research and development department, then 10 senior experts with research and development, marketing, and product management history were selected to elaborate on their opinions about those projects.

Experts were asked to give their opinions based on their experience and understanding of the level of complexity, technology, required knowledge, future risks, and market needs regarding each project. They also were asked to discuss the possibility of combined technical and marketing success or failure of projects, the expected value in the event of success or failure of the project in addition to estimates of required resources such as man-hours, fixed costs, and research and development costs.

After data collection, we will feed the data into the FDEA model and then map the analysis results into the proposed strategy map. The above-mentioned process is summarized in Fig 2 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.g002

We insist that we have asked out an expert about the possibility of success and failure in the realm of fuzzy theory. As they were fully aware of fuzzy theory concepts, they simply gave their opinions about possibilities on a fuzzy natural language expression as illustrated in Table 3 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t004

Experts were asked to retrieve their responses in a fuzzy way to collect the fuzzy data. According to Table 3 triangular verbal fuzzy variables were used to reflect the probability of project success. In addition, regarding the value of success and failure value, the mean of opinions was considered as a fuzzy norm (triangular fuzzy midpoint), and minimum and maximum values were given as upper bound and lower bound of a fuzzy number, respectively. The Project Planning Unit was also asked to provide triangular fuzzy numbers for the project’s required resources. The results are shown in Tables 4 and 5 . It is imperative to note that according to Eq ( 3 ), the outputs will eventually be merged to produce a single output to calculate performance.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t006

Now, using adjustable fuzzy data envelopment analysis, we calculate the efficiency of projects in two ways:

Pessimistic: By selecting the required measure and setting the parameter to a 100% confidence level where the model constraints are maximally met.
Optimistic: Selecting a measure of probability and set the confidence level parameter to 0% which means that the model constraints are kept at a minimum level.

The model output is shown in Table 6 . It is natural to calculate the lowest performance in the skeptical state and the highest performance in the optimistic one for the projects. The full results of calculations are presented in Appendixes A to C in S1 Appendix .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.t007

It may be argued here that credit rating can be used to make decisions. Credit rating, the average of the two measures, seems not to be appropriate for our decision-making because it ignores the gap between the possibility and the requirement of much awareness of the two perspectives. On the contrary, the validity view assumes the importance of the two possibilities for the same decision-maker if this assumption is not necessarily true. As a result, the credit perspective may lead us astray in decision-making. For this reason, we combined performance-based performance diagrams with the requirement of validity. As shown in Fig 3 , the blue lines are the average efficient rank of 17, which creates four regions or quadrants:

Comfort Zone (Bottom-Left): These projects perform fairly well in both pessimistic and optimistic approaches.
Good Wills Zone (Bottom-Right): These projects only work well in an optimistic approach.
Caution Zone (Top-Left): These projects only work well in a pessimistic sense.
Hazard Zone (Top-Right): These projects perform relatively low in both optimistic and pessimistic approaches.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.g003

In addition, projects under the red dotted line will perform better in pessimistic conditions, while projects over the red line will perform better under optimistic conditions. Projects 1 and 2 are in the "hazard zone" and Project 9 is in the "good faith zone" which means no matter how hard or easy it is, the performance of Projects 1 and 2 is not good, and Project 9 works well only in optimistic conditions. Individual Projects 5 and 19 are located at the border of "comfort zone", "caution zone" and "comfort zone", respectively. We can hope Project 5 has a moderate efficiency in an optimistic approach. The status of Project 19 is only slightly better because it will have average performance in both cases. Projects 3 and 17 are good choices, while optimism is needed for Project 7. Projects 8, 27, and 21 need optimism to be added to the portfolio. Project 4 can also be a good option if optimism is concerned, while Project 12 is clearly at the center of the chart and no definitive judgment can be made. Project 31 can be a good option as it is efficient and performs well in both approaches. Project 13 is in the “hazard zone” near the center and Project 6 is also in that area, so we don’t have much hope for the decision-maker to put them in the portfolio unless there is a specific reason. Likewise, decisions about other projects can be easily made.

VI. Summary and conclusions

Technology managers are always struggling to select projects and ideas for their team and they are faced with a high level of uncertainty while evaluating projects. This paper presents a method to evaluate uncertain innovative activities using expert elicitation on resources and outcomes of projects. The hierarchical structure that governs large corporations makes the senior executives’ perception of technology influenced by intra-organizational political behavior [ 47 ], and this affects the technology decision-making process. When technological innovation is at the forefront of a company’s growth, the company’s survival depends heavily on the quality of decisions about technology.

However, as stated before, decision-making in the early stages of innovation should not be based on political or individual power, but on the intuition and consensus of decision-makers. This paper showed that these innovative activities mainly have low efficiency and high uncertainty, and the decision to implement or abandon them requires reviewing and balancing the goals and strategic approach of the organization with technological and business features. According to the above introduction, the following practical recommendations are given for the attention of respected managers:

The strategic position of innovative activities can be determined by focusing on efficiency and uncertainty at the same time.
The decision-making team should consider multi-purposes as much as possible and take advantage of the participation of different experts and stakeholders.
Use both optimistic and pessimistic views to balance the decisions.
The use of the intuition of those who are going to develop the product/technology would greatly improve the decision-making process. These people are usually buried under the organizational hierarchy. Developing a strategic discourse at all levels of the organization will enhance the quality of this partnership.
Providing a clear definition of the acceptable risk would ensure that all decision-makers have a common understanding of this definition.

This research has practically introduced technical knowledge and market awareness into decision-making by surveying experts and gaining their opinions about the value and probability of success of projects. Moreover, it could provide a solution for risk management of innovative activities in the form of a portfolio of projects with differentiated risks and efficiency. Hence, as seen in Table 2 , the results of this study are only comparable to the research by Ansoff et. al. [ 34 ] as it has covered all aspects previously focused on by researchers. In contrast to previous work, this study provides a solution for strategic project selection as well as considering the technology development team’s intuition from both optimistic and pessimistic perspectives. The research focuses only on the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process, which is a limitation. Similarly, this research did not examine the relationship between projects and their dynamic status.

For future research directions, the Z-number theory can be applied to deal with data ambiguity and increase the reliability of expert opinions. Additionally, other fuzzy concepts such as fuzzy type-2 and random fuzzy variables can be utilized to present the new version of the fuzzy DEA approach. Furthermore, the scenario-based robust optimization approach can be applied for considering different possible scenarios for new product development.

Supporting information

S1 appendix..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266843.s002

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor-in-chief for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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Research Roundup: How Technology Is Transforming Work

Dagny Dukach

New studies explore its impact on hiring, employee experience, and more.

Digital technologies promise to bring new levels of productivity and efficiency in a wide variety of applications and organizations. But how are they transforming the experience of the employees who actually interact with them every day? In this research roundup, we share highlights from several recent studies that explore the nuanced ways in which technology is influencing today’s workplace and workforce — including both its undeniable benefits and substantial risks.

From AI recruiting tools to industrial automation and robotic assistants, new digital technologies are transforming the modern workplace. Many of these systems promise to improve efficiency, productivity, and well-being — but how are they actually affecting the people who interact with them every day?

Dagny Dukach is a former associate editor at Harvard Business Review.

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Tech at the edge: Trends reshaping the future of IT and business

It is easy to become numb to the onslaught of new technologies hitting the market, each with its own promise of changing (more often “revolutionizing”) the business world. But our analysis of some of the more meaningful tech trends lays out a convincing case that something significant is happening. 1 Michael Chui, Roger Roberts, and Lareina Yee, “ McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2022 ,” McKinsey, August 24, 2022.

These tech trends are generally accelerating the primary characteristics that have defined the digital era: granularity, speed, and scale. But it’s the magnitude of these changes—in computing power, bandwidth, and analytical sophistication—that is opening the door to new innovations, businesses, and business models.

The emergence of cloud and 5G , for example, exponentially increases compute power and network speeds that can enable greater innovation. Developments in the metaverse of augmented and virtual reality open the doors to virtual R&D via digital twins , for example, and immersive learning. Advances in AI, machine learning, and software 2.0 (machine-written code) bring a range of new services and products, from autonomous vehicles to connected homes, well within reach.

Much ink has been spilled on identifying tech trends, but less attention has been paid to the implications of those changes. To help understand how management will need to adapt in the face of these technology trends in the next three to five years, we spoke to business leaders and leading thinkers on the topic. We weren’t looking for prognostications; we wanted to explore realistic scenarios, their implications, and what senior executives might do to get ready.

The discussions pinpointed some broad, interrelated shifts, such as how technology’s radically increasing power is exerting a centrifugal force on the organization, pushing innovation to expert networks at the edges of the company; how the pace and proliferation of these innovations calls for radical new approaches to continuous learning built around skills deployed at points of need; how these democratizing forces mean that IT can no longer act as a centralized controller of technology deployment and operations but instead needs to become a master enabler and influencer; and how these new technologies are creating more data about, and touchpoints with, customers, which is reshaping the boundaries of trust and requiring a much broader understanding of a company’s security responsibilities.

1. Innovation at the edge

Key tech trends.

We estimate that 70 percent of companies will employ hybrid or multicloud management technologies, tools, and processes . 2 “ The top trends in tech ,” McKinsey, June 15, 2021. At the same time, 5G will deliver network speeds that are about ten times faster than current speeds on 4G LTE networks, 3 Irina Ivanova, “What consumers need to know about this week’s AT&T–Verizon 5G rollout,” CBS News, January 20, 2022. with expectations of speeds that are up to 100 times faster with 40 times faster latency. 4 “5G speed: 5G vs. 4G performance compared,” Tom’s Guide, June 1, 2021. By 2024, more than 50 percent of user touches will be augmented by AI-driven speech, written word, or computer-vision algorithms , 5 “ The top trends in tech ,” June 15, 2021. while global data creation is projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025, up from 64.2 zettabytes in 2020. 6 “Amount of data created, consumed, and stored 2010–2025,” Statista Research Department, May 23, 2022. The low-code development platform market‘s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is projected at about 30 percent through 2030. 7 “Global $187 billion low-code development platform market to 2030,” GlobeNewswire, November 10, 2020.

Shift: Innovation develops around personal networks of experts at the porous edge of the organization and is supported by capabilities that scale the benefits across the business.

These technologies promise access to virtually unlimited compute power and massive data sets, as well as a huge leap in bandwidth at low cost, making it cheaper and easier to test, launch, and scale innovations quickly. The resulting acceleration in innovation will mean that companies can expect more disruptions from more sources. Centralized strategic and innovation functions cannot hope to keep pace on their own. Companies will need to be much more involved in networks outside their organizations to spot, invest in, and even acquire promising opportunities.

Corporate venture-capital (VC) funds with centralized teams have looked to find and fund innovation, but their track record has been spotty, often because the teams lack the requisite skills and are simply too far removed from the constantly evolving needs of individual business units. Instead, companies will need to figure out how to tap their front lines, particularly business domain experts and technologists, to enable them to act, in effect, as the business’s VC arm. That’s because the people who are writing code and building solutions are often well plugged into strong external networks in their fields and have the expertise to evaluate new developments. One pharma company, for example, taps its own expert researchers in various fields, such as gene expression, who know well the people outside the company who are leaders in the field.

While companies will need to create incentives and opportunities for engineers to build up and engage with their networks, the key focus must be on empowering teams so they can spend their allocated budget as they see fit—for example, experimenting and failing without penalty (within boundaries) and deciding on technologies to meet their goals (within prescribed guidelines).

The IT organization of the future can play an important role in building up a scaling capability to make that innovation work for the business, something that has traditionally been a challenge. Individual developers or small teams working fast don’t tend to naturally think about how to scale an application. That issue is likely to be exacerbated as nontechnical users working in pockets across organizations use low-code/no-code (LC/NC) applications to design and build programs with point-and-click or pull-down-menu interfaces.

One pharma company has taken this idea to heart by giving local business units the flexibility to run with a nonstandard idea when it has proven to be better than what the company is already doing. In return for that flexibility, the business unit must commit to helping the rest of the organization use the new idea, and IT builds it into the company’s standards.

In considering how this scaling capability might work, companies could, for example, assign advanced developers to “productize” applications by refactoring code so they can scale. IT leadership can provide tools and platforms, reusable-code libraries that are easily accessible, and flexible, standards-based architecture so that innovations can be scaled across the business more easily.

Questions for leadership

What incentives will best encourage engineers and domain experts to develop, maintain, and tap into their networks?
What processes are in place for tracking and managing VC activity at the edge?
What capabilities do you need to identify innovation opportunities and “industrialize” the best ones so they can be shared across the organization?

For more on how to empower workers at the edge, see “ Tech companies innovate at the edge. Legacy companies can too ,” in Harvard Business Review.

Would you like to learn more about McKinsey Digital ?

2. a perpetual-learning culture.

Advances in AI, machine learning, robotics, and other technologies have increased the pace of change tenfold . By 2025, we estimate that 50 billion devices will be connected to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), while 70 percent of manufacturers are expected to be using digital twins regularly (by 2022). 8 “ The top trends in tech ,” June 15, 2021. Some 70 percent of new applications will use LC/NC technologies by 2025, up from less than 25 percent in 2020. 9 “Gartner says cloud will be the centerpiece of new digital experiences,” Gartner, November 10, 2021. The global metaverse revenue opportunity could approach $800 billion in 2024, up from about $500 billion in 2020. 10 Bloomberg Intelligence, “Metaverse may be $800 billion market, next tech platform,” Bloomberg, December 1, 2021. This proliferation of technological innovations means we can expect to experience more progress in the next decade than in the past 100 years combined, according to entrepreneur and futurist Peter Diamandis. 11 Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, The Future Is Faster than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives , New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

Shift: Tech literacy becomes core to every role, requiring learning to be continuous and built at the level of individual skills that are deployed at the point of need.

With the pace and proliferation of technologies pushing innovation to the edge of the organization, businesses need to be ready to incorporate the most promising options from across the front lines. This will create huge opportunities, but only for those companies that develop true tech intelligence through a perpetual-learning culture. The cornerstone of this effort includes training all levels of personnel, from “citizen developers” working with easy-to-use LC/NC tools or in entirely new environments such as the metaverse, to full-stack developers and engineers, who will need to continually evolve their skills to keep up with changing technologies. We’re already seeing situations where poorly trained employees use LC/NC to churn out suboptimal products.

While there will always be a need for more formalized paths for foundational learning, we anticipate an acceleration in the shift from teaching curricula periodically to continuous learning that can deliver varying technical skills across the entire organization. In practice, that will mean orienting employee development around delivering skills. This requires breaking down a capability into its smallest sets of composite skills. One large tech company, for example, created 146,000 skills data points for the 1,200 technical skills it was assessing.

The key point is that these skills “snippets”—such as a block of code or a video of a specific negotiating tactic—need to be integrated into the workflow so that they’re delivered when needed. This might be called a “LearnOps” approach, where learning is built into the operations. This integration mentality is established at Netflix, where data scientists partner directly with product managers, engineering teams, and other business units to design, execute, and learn from experiments. 12 Netflix Technology Blog , “Experimentation is a major focus of data science across Netflix,” blog entry by Martin Tingley et al., January 11, 2022.

As important as being able to deploy learning is building a learning culture by making continuous learning expected and easy to do. The way top engineers learn can be instructive. This is a community that is highly aware of the need to keep their skills up to date. They have ingrained habits of sharing code, and they gravitate to projects where they can learn. One advantage of using open source, for example, is the built-in community that constantly updates and reviews code. In the same spirit, we’re seeing companies budget extra time to allow people to try new tools or technologies when they’re building a product. Other companies are budgeting for “learning buffers” to allow for setbacks in product development that teams can learn from. 13 “ The big boost: How incumbents successfully scale their new businesses ,” McKinsey, August 27, 2020.

Netflix, which makes broad, open, and deliberate information sharing a core value, built the Netflix experimentation platform as an internal product that acts as a repository of solutions for future teams to reuse. It has a product manager and innovation road map, with the goal of making experimentation a simple and integrated part of the product life cycle. 14 Netflix Technology Blog , “Netflix: A culture of learning,” blog entry by Martin Tingley et al., January 25, 2022.

To support this kind of continuous learning and experimentation, companies will need to accept mistakes. The art will be in limiting the impact of potentially costly mistakes, such as the loss or misuse of customer data. IT will need to architect protocols, incentives, and systems to encourage good behaviors and reduce bad ones. Many companies are beginning to adopt practices such as automated testing to keep mistakes from happening in the first place ; creating spaces where mistakes won’t affect other applications or systems, such as isolation zones in cloud environments ; and building in resiliency protocols.

Do you have a list of the most important skills your business needs?
What is the minimum level of learning needed for advanced users of analytics and manipulators of data?
How do you track what people are learning and whether that learning is effective and translating into better performance?

3. IT as a service

It is estimated that the global cloud microservices platform market will generate $4.2 billion in revenue by 2028, up from $952 million in 2020. 15 Cloud microservice platform market report , Research Dive, November 2021. GitHub has more than 200 million code repositories and expects 100 million software developers by 2025. 16 Paul Krill, “GitHub expects more than 100 million software developers by 2025,” InfoWorld, December 3, 2020. Nearly 90 percent of developers already use APIs. 17 Christina Voskoglou, “APIs have taken over software development,” Nordic APIs, October 27, 2020. Software 2.0 creates new ways of writing software and reduces complexity. Software sourced by companies from cloud-service platforms, open repositories, and software as a service (SaaS) is growing at a CAGR of 27.5 percent from 2021 to 2028. 18 Software as a service (SaaS) market, 2021–2028 , Fortune Business Insights, January 2022.

Shift: IT becomes the enabler of product innovation by serving small, interoperable blocks of code.

When innovation is pushed to the edge and a perpetual-learning culture permeates an organization, the role of IT shifts dramatically. IT can’t support this dynamic environment by sticking to its traditional role as a controlling entity managing technology at the center. The premium will now be on IT’s ability to enable innovation, requiring a shift in its traditional role as protector of big tech assets to a purveyor of small blocks of code. The gold standard of IT effectiveness will be its ability to help people stitch together snippets of code into a useful product.

We are already seeing what that might look like. Employees at G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers with little to no experience at software development created an app that examines images of a store shelf to identify the number and type of bottles on it, then automatically restocks it based on historic trends. 19 Adam Burden, “Low code/no code could reshape business innovation,” VentureBeat, February 5, 2022. One pharmaceutical company grew its low-code platform base from eight users to 1,400 in just one year . Business users outside of IT are now building applications with thousands of monthly sessions. 20 Shivam Srivastava, Kartik Trehan, Dilip Wagle, and Jane Wang, “ Developer Velocity: How software excellence fuels business performance ,” McKinsey, April 20, 2020. Companies that empower “citizen developers” score 33 percent higher on innovation compared with bottom-quartile companies that don’t provide that level of support, according to a McKinsey survey. 21 Shivam Srivastava, Kartik Trehan, Dilip Wagle, and Jane Wang, “ Developer Velocity: How software excellence fuels business performance ,” McKinsey, April 20, 2020.

These developments point toward much more of a “buffet” approach to technology, where IT builds useful blocks of reusable code, sometimes assembles them into specific products, and makes them available through a user-friendly cataloging system for the business to use to create the products it needs. IT provides guiderails, such as API standards and directives on the environments in which the code might be most useful; protects the most sensitive information, such as customer data and financial records; and tracks their adoption. This tracking capability will become particularly crucial as bots, AI, algorithms, and APIs proliferate. Transparency isn’t sufficient. IT will need to make sense of all the activity through advanced tech performance and management capabilities and the development of new roles, such as data diagnosticians and bot managers.

This IT-as-a-service approach puts the product at the center of the operating model, requiring a commitment to organizing IT around product management . Some companies have been moving in this direction. But reaching the scale needed to support fast-paced and more diffuse innovation will require a deeper commitment to product owners, working with leaders in the business side of the house, to run teams with real P&L responsibility. Many organizations, from traditional enterprises to digital natives, have found that putting in place product leaders who set overall product and portfolio strategy, drive execution, and empower product owners to drive innovation aligned with business outcomes and P&L metrics can increase the return on the funding that flows to technology delivery and quicken the pace of innovation.

Do you have a vision for how the role of the IT organization will change to enable democratization of technology?
How will you elevate the role of the technology product manager, and do you have a road map for developing that role?
What systems will you need to put in place to manage and track the use, reuse, and performance of code?

McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2022

4. expanded trust boundaries.

It was estimated that almost 100 percent of biometrics-capable devices (such as smartphones) will be using biometrics for transactions by 2022. 22 “Usage of biometric technology in transactions with mobile devices worldwide 2016–2022”, Statista Research Department, June 13, 2022. The effectiveness of these technologies has advanced dramatically, with the best facial-identification algorithms having improved 50 times since 2014. 23 William Crumpler, “How accurate are facial recognition systems—and why does it matter?” Center for Strategies and International Studies (CSIS), April 14, 2020. These developments are contributing to profound unease in the relationship between technology and consumers of technology. The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that “about two-thirds of Americans are very or extremely concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies, or certain utilities.” 24 Chuck Brooks, “More alarming cybersecurity stats for 2021!” Forbes , October 24, 2021.

Shift: Trust expands to cover a broader array of stakeholder concerns and become an enterprise-wide responsibility.

These enormous shifts in technology power and capacity will create many more touchpoints with customers and an exponential wave of new data about customers. Even as IT’s role within the organization becomes more that of an enabler, the expanding digital landscape means that IT must broaden its trust capabilities around security, privacy, and cyber . To date, consumers have largely embraced the convenience that technology provides, from ordering a product online to adjusting the temperature in their homes remotely to monitoring their health through personal devices. In exchange for these conveniences, consumers have traditionally been willing to provide some personal information. But a steady undercurrent of privacy and trust concerns around these ever-more-sophisticated conveniences is raising the stakes on the broad topic of trust. Consumers are becoming more aware of their identity rights, making decisions based on values, and demanding the ethical use of data and responsible AI .

The most obvious concern is around cybersecurity , an ongoing issue that is already on the board-level agenda. But tech-driven trust issues are much broader and are driven by three characteristics. One is the sheer quantity of personal data, such as biometrics, that companies and governments collect, creating concerns about privacy and data misuse. The second is that personal security issues are becoming more pervasive in the physical world. Wired homes, connected cars, and the Internet of Medical Things, for example, are all vectors for attack that can affect people’s well-being. Third is the issue that advanced analytics seem too complex to be understood and controlled, leading to deep unease about people’s relationship with technology. This issue is driving the development of “ explainable AI ” and the movement to debias AI.

Adding to the complexity is the frequent need to manage and secure trust across an entire ecosystem of technologies. Take the wired home, for example. The proliferation of devices—think virtual assistants, security, communications, power management, and entertainment systems—means that a large group of providers will need to agree on standards for managing, in effect, an interconnected security net in the home.

These developments require a complex extension of the boundaries of trust. The significant advantages that many incumbents enjoy—existing relationships with customers and proprietary data—are at risk unless businesses rethink how they manage and nurture that trust. Companies need to consider putting identity and trust management at the core of their customer experience and business processes. That can happen effectively only when companies assign a dedicated leader with real power and board-level prioritization with enterprise-wide responsibility across the entire trust and security landscape. Given the tech underpinnings of this trust environment, IT will need to play a key role in monitoring and remediating, such as assessing the impact of new legislation on AI algorithms, tracking incidents, identifying the number and nature of high-risk data-processing activities and automated decisions, and—perhaps most important—monitoring consumer trust levels and the issues that affect them.

Who is responsible for the enterprise-wide trust and risk landscape?
How have you integrated your efforts around customer trust with overall cybersecurity processes?
What privacy, trust, and security processes are in place to manage the entire life cycle of your data?

It is inevitable that the pace of technological change will continue to accelerate. The successful technology leader of the future will not simply need to adopt new technologies but to build capabilities to absorb continuous change and make it a source of competitive advantage.

Steve Van Kuiken is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office.

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Technology, Megatrends and Work: Thoughts on the Future of Business Ethics

Premilla d’cruz.

1 Organizational Behaviour Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad, Gujarat India

2 Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA

Ernesto Noronha

K. Praveen Parboteeah

3 College of Business and Economics, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, Whitewater, USA

Hannah Trittin-Ulbrich

4 Institute for Management and Organisation, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

Glen Whelan

5 Department of Organization and Human Resources, University of Quebec in Montreal, Montreal, Canada

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Technology, Megatrends and Work . Of all the profound changes in business, technology is perhaps the most ubiquitous. There is not a facet of our lives unaffected by internet technologies and artificial intelligence. The Journal of Business Ethics established a dedicated section that focuses on Technology and Business Ethics, yet issues related to this phenomenon run right through all the sections. Kirsten Martin, editor of the Technology and Business Ethics section, joins our interim social media editor, Hannah Trittin-UIbrich, to advance a human-centric approach to the development and application of digital technologies that places Business Ethics at centre of the analysis. For Shuili Du, technology is the defining condition for a new era of Corporate Social Responsibility—CSR 3.0—which she defines as “a company’s socially responsible strategies and practices that deal with key ethical and socio-technical issues associated with AI and related technologies on the one hand and leverage the power of AI and related technologies to tackle social and environmental problems on the other hand.” It is not just technologies that are a determining feature of our lives but technology companies, an argument made by Glen Whelan as he examines Big Business and the need for a Big Business Ethics as we try to understand the impact of Big Tech on our post-work world. Indeed, as noted by Ernesto Noronha and Premilla D’Cruz, megatrends in addition to advancement in technologies, namely globalization, the greening of economies, and changes in demographics and migration, are shaping the future for workers in ways previously unimaginable. Contributing to this important debate, Praveen Parboteeah considers the influence of another longstanding but oft overlooked megatrend, the role of religion in the workplace. Given the enormity of the influence of technology and other megatrends in our world, it is not surprising that this essay introduces ground-breaking ideas that speak to the future of business ethics research.

Towards a Human-Centred View on Digital Technologies

Hannah Trittin-Ulbrich and Kirsten Martin

Introduction

The ethical concerns emerging from the proliferation of digital technologies have attracted attention from not only the popular press, but also a growing number of scholars across disciplines. This is not surprising, given that technology has always been met with ethical and critical examination. Arguably, the printing press and pony express were both viewed as disruptive innovations with value-laden design decisions and ethical implications. The steam engine was seen as an abomination against the gods by combining water and fire. And, the critical scholarly examination of technologies has included bicycles, plastics, seatbelts, bridges, among many other technologies (e.g. Winner, 1980 ). Even within our more current innovations, the ethical examination of digital technologies has advanced within engineering and philosophy for decades (e.g. Johnson, 1985 ).

However, we, that is, business ethicists, should not leave the interrogation of ethical concerns of digital technologies to ethicists of other disciplines (i.e. AI/artificial intelligence ethics scholars). In this essay, we argue that our discipline is uniquely equipped to interrogate the ethical implications of digital technologies for business and society. We use the term digital technologies to mean information and communications technologies that rely on the latest data analytics techniques to include a range of technologies, e.g. artificial intelligence (AI), social media, platforms, facial recognition or blockchain. Digital ethics, defined here as current efforts to discern the ethics of, and corporate responsibilities for, digital technologies, provide important counter-perspectives to the tech-hype that is fueled by the “Internet-industrial” complex (Flyverbom et al., 2019 ), that is, those private, public and other actors involved in the development and governance of the Internet and digital technologies.

With this essay, we hope to inspire future business ethics research to further interrogate what constitutes a human-centred approach to the development and application of digital technologies in the business context. We propose that a critical, human-centred approach implies that digital technologies should be developed and adopted in the interest, and to the benefit, of those individuals who are affected by them. To that end, importantly, we must avoid falling into the trap of (unintentionally) subscribing to imperative arguments regarding the inscrutability, efficiency and profitability of digital technologies. Let us explain.

What Business Ethicists Should Avoid When Dealing with Digital Technologies

First, digital technologies are often sold with the false claim of inscrutability . Artificial intelligence, in particular, has often been debated as working in a “mysterious”, autonomous way. In view of such autonomous decision making of artificial intelligence, firms and their representatives claim that they can no longer be held accountable for the impact that such technology produces. Automated decision making is also suggested as creating fairer, more objective outcomes than human beings. And yet, if an algorithm is found to create wrongful or even harmful outcomes, firms tend to displace responsibility towards the autonomous artificial agent: “It's not us, it's them”. However, digital technologies designed to be inscrutable are more about corporate power than any design requirement (Kroll, 2018 ; Pasquale, 2015 ). Engineers have developed ways to test and report ethical issues of AI and even machine learning—that is, the design decision to make a programme inscrutable is a decision and should not be taken as a given (Martin, 2019 ).

This brings us to the second fallacy of digital technologies: digital technologies also (falsely) promise efficiency and the hyper-rationalization of firm activities. Goodbye slow, flawed human decision making, welcome rational and efficient automated decision making! Brave new digital world. Arguably, such narration relies on two flawed assumptions: (1) a limited, economic theory of the firm that conceives of the business firm as a purely economic actor, whose only goal must be the enlargement of the shareholder value through continuous enhancement of the firm’s efficiency; and (2) a view of technology development as neutral and objective, and devoid of value-laden decisions made throughout the design and development process (Martin, 2022 ).

Finally, digital technologies are also falsely hailed as suitable means to increase corporate profitability . We are told that digital technologies allow businesses to “move fast and break things” (as famously proclaimed as the key to success of the social networking platform Facebook by CEO [Chief Executive Officer] Mark Zuckerberg), that is, to disrupt existing markets and industries, allowing them to quickly enlarge their value and attractiveness for venture capital. In this sense, the efficiency of digital technologies is promised to directly result in a firm’s increase in profitability.

Questioning these three common assumptions of inscrutability, efficiency and profitability is not enough in pursuing a more critical, human-centred approach to digital technologies. We therefore now turn to identifying three unique avenues of scholarship on the ethics of digital technologies where business ethics research has a unique grounding and perspective that allow for a human-centred view on digital technologies.

Where Business Ethics Should Engage

Who should be held accountable for the impact of digital technologies.

First, in order to move business ethics research forward, we must avoid falling into the trap of thinking that businesses cannot be held accountable for the moral implications of the digital technologies they use or produce. Arguably, decision making augmented with AI often takes place behind closed (corporate) doors, hiding from public scrutiny and oversight. However, business ethics research is essentially the study of accountability: that is, the field questions who is responsible for an action or outcome under which premises, as well as providing reason as to why firms are responsible for their decisions and their impact on society.

Mistakenly assuming that digital technologies provide more efficient, accurate decisions, and are outside the realm of any critical examination or moral evaluation leads scholars to incorrectly see the development of digital technologies as being deterministic and outside their scope. Judging technologies on efficiency and treating digital technologies as inscrutable products also shields corporations from being held accountable for the value-laden decisions made in the design, development and deployment of algorithms. At the other end of the spectrum, pretending that digital technologies are only as ethical as how society uses them—as if the design decisions have no bearing on the moral implications of their use—allows firms who design and develop digital technologies to avoid the sharp gaze of critical theorists who wish to hold them responsible for their decisions.

To lift the “veil of the technological imperative” (Martin, 2022 ) and critically examine the moral implications of the design, development and use decisions around digital technologies, business ethicists should raise questions in regard to who can be held accountable for how digital technologies impact business and society, as well as to why this is so. In particular, we must further interrogate the design and development process of digital technologies, and must ask how we can hold those actors, including information technology experts or software developers, accountable for their decisions in this process. Business ethics scholars should follow others who acknowledge that digital technologies have biases that are value-laden (Friedman & Nissenbaum, 1996 ; Johnson, 2004 ) or have political dimensions (Winner, 1980 ), while also identifying how individuals, corporations and society can control that same technology.

Digital technologies have value-laden biases along several dimensions which can serve as avenues for future normative work within business ethics (Martin, 2022 ). In particular, digital technologies are biased towards and designed for a preferred set of actions that create (or destroy) value for stakeholders, uphold (or violate) ethical principles and reinforce (or undermine) stakeholder rights and dignity. In this way, digital technologies can be seen as embodying corporate policy or the norms and rules of the organization which are then enacted into decisions. As such, business ethics should expand the ethical evaluation of digital technologies to include the value-laden decisions made around the outcome of digital technologies, the criteria for whether a technology works , the choice of data used as well as the assumptions made in the development of these technologies.

How do we Theorize the Goal of the Firm in Relation to Digital Technologies?

Business ethics research is also uniquely equipped to counter the imperative arguments regarding the efficiency and profitability of digital technologies. Our field has a longstanding tradition of questioning one-sided and purely functionalist constructions of the goal of the business firm and, therefore, should naturally respond with caution to idealizations of the automated firm.

In business ethics, we argue (regularly) that the focus on shareholder value is mistakenly socially constructed as the only goal a firm should pursue. Similarly, the idea of efficiency as the only goal of digital technologies is socially constructed and inherently value based. Indeed, efficiency is usually constructed to serve only specific sets of actors—the firm and its shareholders—without consideration of other actors that have a stake in the firm’s activities and involvement with digital technologies. For example, for whom is the hiring AI programme efficient? How are the goals of the firm served if an AI programme to read resumes or assess interviews consistently makes mistakes, but does so “efficiently”? Business ethicists aiming to advance our field in the study of the ethics of digital technologies should carefully interrogate and expose the connection between the development and use of digital technologies that can and should be aligned with a thicker conception of the goal of the firm. Much of the current work on the ethics of digital technologies relies on a thin, shareholder wealth maximizing view of the firm.

The case of social media content moderation algorithms—designed to quickly promote lawful but awful material in order to increase user engagement—exemplifies how digital technologies may serve a specific goal while being destructive to firm value from the perspective of society at large. Within the field of AI ethics, Thomas & Uminsky ( 2020 ) call for multifaceted outcomes for measuring the effectiveness of data analytics programmes and even the danger of allowing an analytics programme’s outcome variable, which is being optimized, to dominate the decision making of the firm. Social media’s fixation on user engagement, to the detriment of all other measures, exemplifies this danger.

Broadening notions of the goal of the firm also requires broadening conceptions of the value of digital technologies. Many proponents of the digital economy try hard to promote a dichotomous concept of digital technologies as only productive if unconstrained by governmental regulation around fairness. To contribute to a more humane approach to digital technologies, business ethics scholars should not approach fairness and efficiency as opposing, but rather as complementary, goals in the application of digital technologies. We must critically interrogate when, and under which conditions, businesses can achieve both a fair and productive application of digital technologies, and thus, also contribute to fairer and productive businesses. We must ask, how can a corporation live up to its corporate digital responsibility? Moreover, how do societal demands shift and change in regard to corporate digital responsibilities, and what implications emerge from changing and evolving societal expectations regarding fair and responsible business conduct for the application of digital technologies? Who are the stakeholders of digital technologies, and how should technologies be designed and developed with these stakeholders in mind?

Finally, to contribute to a humanistic approach to digital technologies, business ethicists should further interrogate the question who the stakeholders of digital technologies are and how technologies should be designed and developed with these stakeholders in mind. In the past, business ethics research has provided much insight into how and why businesses should respect the interests and rights of various stakeholders. Following this line of reasoning, business ethics scholars should interrogate how the business application of digital technologies enhances both the firm's performance and contributes to serving the interests of all stakeholders.

In business ethics, stakeholders are generally considered those individuals that are affected by or can be influenced by a business decision or action. The general assumption here is that stakeholders engage knowingly and often voluntarily with businesses and have some sort of formal relationship with the firm, for example, by being their customers, employees, suppliers (Freeman, 1984 ). Normally, to categorize stakeholders and prioritize their interests, we distinguish primary and secondary stakeholders, and group them into a “manageable” stakeholder community that a business regularly engages with. Stakeholders are voluntary, we assume, and in a relationship with the firm.

However, with digital technologies, our current approach as to who constitutes a stakeholder is challenged. Not only are decisions augmented with AI hidden from market governance or public oversight, but digital technologies impact actors that have no formal relationship with the firm and are not voluntary. Social media content moderation algorithms impact not only the advertisers, which are customers and serve as revenue sources, but also users and even individuals and groups not on social media. The recommendation of hate groups by algorithms or violence against dissidents impacts not only the users of social media, but the targets of these violent groups who are not on social media. The original definition of a firm’s stakeholder—those who are influenced by or influence the firm (Freeman, 1984 )—is a closer approximation to the issues faced today with digital technologies. Such a definition does not require stakeholders to be voluntary, nor in an immediate relationship with the firm. It is therefore crucial that ethicists begin by reviewing who the stakeholders of digital technologies are and whose voices should be considered when developing them.

Based on the original definition of stakeholder (Freeman, 1984 ), we see three types of unaware and often overlooked stakeholders, where business ethics research could leverage our theories to understand how firms should manage these stakeholder relationships. First, stakeholder groups of digital technologies may include, for example, “unaware” stakeholders who are being impacted by a digital technology but are not aware of the digital technology being used. Unaware stakeholders include individuals whose job application, social networking or dating site pictures on the Internet are used to train face recognition technology. Similarly, this type of stakeholders includes those confronted with the results of automated decision making without realizing that such technology is applied. Since some technologies may crawl and detect data points in the global Internet, this makes any Internet user potentially a part of this stakeholder group—reducing the very idea of a more or less stable and controllable “stakeholder community” to absurdum.

Second, while arguably, many relations businesses traditionally hold with their stakeholders are slanted in terms of distribution of power or information, digital technologies create new “unequal” stakeholders that interact with businesses in the form of unequal relations. These include “gig” or platform economy workers that often work at the whim of an algorithm, gaining work assignments and being evaluated through opaque forms of algorithmic management and control. Similarly, platform users, including social media users, have limited insights into what algorithmic decision has led to certain content being shown to them, while other remains hidden. Even businesses may find it hard to gain insights into why e-commerce platforms decide to show their products only to certain customers, reducing even large business conglomerates to an “unequal” business partner to these platform titans.

Third and finally, digital technologies also create new “invisible” stakeholders, that is stakeholders that are invisible to the digital economy business models. Invisible from the public eye, and often hidden in plain sight from scholarly inquiry, masses of poorly paid independent contractors from the global south “curate” the content that is published on social media platforms by reviewing and deleting masses of disturbing and often downright illegal data. Other stakeholder groups of this category also include those factory workers working in the delivery centrs of large e-commerce retailers.

These stakeholders are, within our current parlance, legitimate but marginalized. Future business ethics research concerned with digital technologies should interrogate how businesses should have an obligation for the impact their technologies have on these and other stakeholders. How should digital technologies be designed to give unaware and/or silent stakeholders a voice? Which role can artificial intelligence play in creating new forms of automated accountability? How can the rights of those being unaware of their status as being a stakeholder be upheld? How can more transparent and fair working conditions be ensured in platforms, and how can workers’ dignity and rights be secured in fully automated work arrangements that lack governmental regulation and public oversight? Providing answers to these questions will contribute to a more critical, human-centred approach to digital technologies.

With this essay, we hope to inspire future business ethics research to further interrogate what constitutes a human-centred development and application of digital technologies in the business context. The proliferation of digital technologies promises great human advancement, while also raising questions regarding the ethical and responsible development and application of these technologies by businesses. We welcome the growing number of business ethicists paying attention to the critical, problematic and “dark” implications of these technologies for business and society (e.g. Trittin-Ulbrich et al., 2021 ). We have outlined imperative arguments regarding the inscrutability, efficiency and profitability of these technologies and we have outlined three areas of growth for future research through which business ethics scholars can contribute to a more critical and human-centred approach to digital technologies. We are looking forward to seeing their efforts!

Reimagine Corporate Social Responsibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence and its double-edged effects.

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly permeates the business world and modern society, companies need to rethink and broaden the scope of their corporate social responsibility strategies and initiatives to deal with key ethical and socio-technical issues triggered by AI and related technologies. Defined as “the ability of machines to carry out tasks by displaying intelligent, human-like behavior” (e.g. machine learning, computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing: Russell & Norvig, 2016 ), AI is transforming our economy. The global AI market size is forecast to grow from $58.3 billion in 2021 to $309.6 billion by 2026, at a compound annual growth rate of 39.7% (Markets & Markets, 2021 ). AI technologies are being deployed in diverse sectors, ranging from finance, health care and transportation, to national security, criminal justice and smart cities, augmenting human capabilities in significant ways and making a profound impact on the world. However, AI is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it promises scientific breakthroughs and advancement of humanity with its superior processing speed, limitless recall and self-improving learning ability. On the other hand, it is fraught with a host of unprecedented ethical and socio-technical challenges, such as AI algorithmic biases, machine ethics, data privacy, job replacement by AI and exacerbated digital inequity.

AI follows the trajectory of exponential growth, and it seems that our society is marching inexorably towards artificial superintelligence—the point of singularity—when AI systems will be self-aware and outperform humans in nearly all areas (Bostrom, 2014 ). Super-intelligent AI will be capable of complex goal setting and can engage in scientific discovery and artistic creativity (Tegmark, 2017 ). Such systems hold enormous promise in transforming every aspect of our society for the better by, for example, repairing damage done to the natural world and eradicating poverty and diseases. At the same time, when machine intelligence eclipses human intelligence, technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. AI is humanity’s biggest existential threat, as Elon Musk famously stated.

The future as increasingly mediated by AI is both fascinating and terrifying. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholars can play a big role in shaping the short-term and long-term future of ethical and socially responsible AI. To embrace the power of AI while minimizing its downsides, companies should reimagine their CSR strategies and practices to turn the unique social challenges of AI into business opportunities. In the short term, businesses need to tackle an array of ethical and socio-technical issues surrounding AI nowadays, including AI biases, machine ethics, data privacy, cybersecurity, individual autonomy, job replacement by AI, digital inequity and so on. In the long term, businesses and society face the ultimate challenge of ensuring that super-intelligent AI will act in the best interests of humanity, which is no easy feat since superintelligence could far surpass human intelligence and be unstoppably powerful. Accordingly, the dialogue on how to make super-intelligent AI human-friendly needs to take place now and be much more inclusive, engaging not just computer programmers, mathematicians and AI scientists, but also business scholars, philosophers, sociologists and ethicists. With its powerful, unprecedented capabilities and its unique ethical and socio-technical challenges, AI raises many new and important research questions for CSR scholars, recasting and expanding the substantive domain of CSR research. Conversely, the field of CSR, with its unique focus on the intersection of business and society and its rich, accumulated insights from a large body of literature, has much to offer to the vital dialogue of how to develop ethical and socially responsible AI.

Evolution of CSR: Looking Back and Looking Forward

The field of CSR has undergone several evolutions in reaction to the big trends in the macro-environment, and currently the exponential growth of AI and its related technologies (e.g. big data, machine learning, Internet-of-Things) are prompting another round of CSR evolution (see Table Table1). 1 ). From Milton Friedman’s famous 1970 article “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profit” to the 2019 Business Roundtable’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, affirming businesses’ fundamental commitment to all stakeholders, the field of CSR has come a long way. Under CSR 1.0, shareholder primacy was the norm. Corporate scandals like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and the Nike sweatshop controversy in the 1990s evoked public outcry and pushed companies to think about the moral imperative of their businesses. Companies started to engage in CSR initiatives. Yet the underlying premise of CSR 1.0 is that business and social interests are contradictory, and the prevailing approach to CSR is reactive, ad hoc, short-term oriented and disconnected from business strategy. CSR was considered a cost of doing business and merely functioned as a public relations tactic to garner community goodwill.

Evolution of CSR

Starting in the early 2000s, the confluence of several trends—the launch of the UN (United Nations) Global Compact, the Enron scandal, public awareness of climate change and increasing stakeholder expectations for businesses—ushered in CSR 2.0. In this era, companies engage in CSR not only because of the moral imperative, but also the business imperative: business and social interests are no longer considered a zero-sum game but interdependent and complementary. The prevailing approach to CSR is increasingly proactive, systematic, long-term oriented and aligned with business strategy. CSR has moved from the periphery to the core of business and becomes an integral part of business strategy and a source of competitive advantage (Porter & Kramer, 2006 ). More and more companies release annual CSR reports, communicating their CSR strategies and key performance indicators in various social and environmental domains. Academic research on CSR flourishes, with numerous studies documenting the business benefits of CSR as well as contingent factors that could accentuate or diminish these benefits.

From 2020 onwards, the exponential growth of AI and its plethora of ethical and socio-technical issues have prompted the need for business managers and academic scholars to revamp the notion of socially responsible business strategies and practices, ushering in CSR 3.0. The infamous Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal serves as a wake-up call to both companies and consumers about protecting their digital data privacy; documentaries on AI such as The Social Dilemma and Code Bias reveal many harmful effects of AI on individual and societal well-being. As companies navigate the uncharted waters of AI-mediated business landscape, they urgently need to update their model of CSR to proactively address the complexities and challenges associated with the increasing deployment of AI in their businesses. We define CSR 3.0 as “a company’s socially responsible strategies and practices that deal with key ethical and socio-technical issues associated with AI and related technologies, on the one hand, and leverage the power of AI and related technologies to tackle social and environmental problems, on the other”. The fundamental premise of CSR 3.0 is that AI technologies, businesses and society are intricately interdependent, with CSR being a necessary and essential means to shape the future of socially responsible AI. CSR 3.0 encompasses a technological component—technological social responsibility—in its conceptualization, and emphasizes a systematic, long-term-oriented approach in companies’ development and utilization of AI and related technologies. In other words, ethical and social considerations of technologies should be embedded in companies’ core business strategy, not as an add-on or a public relations tactic.

We call for ground-breaking and boundary-spanning CSR research to examine (1) how AI technologies can incorporate ethical and socially beneficial features and the consequent effects of such features on AI’s social legitimacy and marketplace performance, (2) how companies can develop a strategic approach to AI-related CSR to cultivate their competitive advantage and create shared social and business value in an AI-mediated economy, and (3) how an ecosystem of businesses, government institutions, non-profits, stakeholder advocacy groups and others could collectively promote the long-term symbiotic coexistence of machine and human intelligence.

CSR 3.0 Research Directions: Enhancing the Ethical and Social Aspects of AI

The double-edged nature of AI brings unprecedented opportunities and challenges for companies in their efforts to be good corporate citizens. Below we provide an overview of CSR 3.0 research directions at the AI technology level, the company level and the society level (Fig. 1 ). This section is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather to kickstart dialogues on future-oriented CSR research that addresses the complexities and opportunities of AI and promotes human flourishing in a technology-mediated future.

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Three Levels of CSR Research in the Age of AI

AI Technology Level: An Ethical Approach

One promising avenue of future CSR research is to examine how AI technologies could be more ethical and socially beneficial. Due to the numerous ethical challenges and negative social ramifications associated with AI, society and stakeholders often view AI technologies as untrustworthy, scary and even malicious (Cave et al., 2019 ), which hinders AI’s social legitimacy and stakeholders’ adoption of such technologies. Undoing such scepticism and mistrust will require companies to demonstrate that AI technologies provide real social benefits and have embedded ethical values.

In the consumer domain, AI algorithmic biases and machine ethics are two noteworthy issues. Research has shown that AI algorithms show bias related to gender, race, ethnicity, geography and other socio-economic variables (e.g. education, income, zip codes), and in particular, disadvantaged consumers are likely to be negatively affected when companies incorporate AI in their products and services (Zou & Schiebinger, 2018 ). Machine ethics is another pressing issue as more and more products (e.g. self-driving cars, robo-advisors, virtual nurse assistants) make autonomous or semi-autonomous decisions with real-world consequences. It is critical to properly integrate ethical principles in AI products as well as to ensure the requisite alignment of ethical values between the product and the user. In addition, other AI issues in the consumer domain include digital data privacy, cybersecurity and profit-maximizing algorithms that have detrimental effects on consumer mental health and well-being. Research could examine and promulgate best practices for embedding ethical and socially beneficial features in AI that promote consumer and societal well-being.

In the employee domain, AI will have a profound impact on the future of work. On the one hand, AI can liberate humans from undesirable tasks (e.g. strenuous and dangerous physical work, tedious and repetitive tasks), enhance workplace safety and make our jobs more fulfilling. On the other hand, automation will eliminate many jobs, resulting in large-scale unemployment or underemployment. Jobs not only are a means for earning an income, but also fulfil important psychosocial needs of individuals, such as self-worth, achievement, social status, respect, social belonging and so on. Hence the impact of AI on employment will have far-reaching societal and political implications. It is important to examine employee-oriented CSR initiatives that provide reskilling and upskilling solutions and help employees acquire relevant skills to work in an increasingly AI-mediated workplace.

In the community domain, exacerbated digital inequity—disparities in access to and use of AI and related technologies (e.g. the Internet, mobile apps, social media, smart devices)—is a pressing issue. Research has shown that AI and related digital technologies tend to increase existing social inequities in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age, geographic location and socio-economic status (Lutz, 2019 ). Digital inequities manifest in three levels: inequities in access to digital devices and technologies, in skills and uses of digital technologies, and in offline benefits and harms from digital technologies (Lutz, 2019 ). With the centrality of AI and related technologies in the modern world, digital inequities profoundly impact life outcomes, ranging from relationship quality and academic performance to career opportunities and entrepreneurship. Further, disadvantaged populations are also more vulnerable to the harms of digital technologies, such as fraud, identity theft and digital surveillance. Thus, an important research direction is to examine community-oriented CSR initiatives that help disadvantaged population groups not only gain access to digital technologies, but also build digital competence and digital engagement.

In the diversity and inclusion domain, the field of AI has a diversity crisis, with women and minorities severely underrepresented (Howard & Isbell, 2020 ). A diverse workforce in the AI field could produce a broader, more heterogeneous knowledge base and a better decision-making process by exploring a wider range of perspectives. In turn, this would help firms develop more inclusive and socially responsible AI products by, for example, mitigating AI algorithmic bias and catering to the diverse needs of consumer segments. Companies can adopt various initiatives to promote diversity, such as mentoring talented women and minorities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, implementing more inclusive hiring and promotion practices and building cross-disciplinary taskforces with expertise in not only computer science and engineering, but also literature, arts, philosophy and social sciences. Future research can shed light on the effectiveness of these different approaches to addressing the diversity crisis in the field of AI.

Company Level: A Strategic Approach

A company’s strategic approach to CSR 3.0 should not be one size fits all. Given limited resources and differential corporate capabilities, companies should identify and prioritize relevant AI issues and design CSR initiatives aligned with their core capabilities to create more social and business value. In terms of issue selection, managers should identify AI issues that matter the most to their key stakeholders and that have a good fit with their corporate capabilities and brand positioning. To illustrate, a fintech company or a medical AI company is well advised to tackle AI algorithmic bias. because it directly affects the quality of AI products and consumer well-being, whereas an automobile manufacturer using AI and robots in its factories should focus on employee-oriented training and career counselling to help its employees expand their knowledge and skills, enabling them to work alongside AI or tap into newly created job categories.

Moreover, in addition to addressing the downsides of AI and making it more virtuous, forward-looking companies should also harness the power of AI to turbo-charge their current CSR initiatives. AI can make companies’ CSR initiatives far more effective due to its unparalleled ability to process massive unstructured data and uncover novel solutions to pressing social and environmental issues. AI and related technologies hold great promise in reducing overproduction, inventing climate-friendly materials, supporting causes in environment, health, education and disaster relief. For example, Microsoft has a series of initiatives leveraging AI to create social change and drive innovation, including AI for the Earth, AI for health, AI for accessibility and AI for humanitarian action. Stonyfield Farm establishes an AI-based software platform to help farmers improve soil health and sequester more carbon.

After issue selection, managers need to decide on the executional elements of their CSR initiative. For example, to tackle AI algorithmic bias, a company could take a technical approach by improving the training dataset and modifying the algorithm; alternatively, it could focus on the consumer experience side by providing more transparency and consumer education regarding its AI algorithm. Other executional elements of a CSR 3.0 initiative include whether to adopt a top-down or bottom-up approach, whether to establish a cross-sector partnership to leverage the expertise of a third-party organization and how to communicate the initiative to the public and engage stakeholders to co-create value.

Future research should examine how companies can design effective CSR strategies in the age of AI. It would be worthwhile to establish a typology of different types of CSR 3.0 initiatives and propose frameworks and metrics to comprehensively assess a company’s technological responsibility performance. We call for more research on the decision process of AI-related CSR strategies and characteristics of effective vs. ineffective initiatives. It is also important to understand the organizational drivers and processes and the business and social outcomes associated with these initiatives, and to identify the unique characteristics of CSR 3.0.

Society Level: An Ecosystem Approach

The evolution of AI technology takes place within the broader social and institutional system, consisting of government regulations, institutional norms, non-profits, advocacy groups and the competitive dynamics in the marketplace. These social, cultural and economic forces interact with technological capabilities in the business sector to influence the future trajectory of AI. Thus, CSR research should also incorporate a macro-level perspective.

The future marketplace is likely to have a constellation of AI products and services (e.g. digital virtual assistants, domestic robots, self-driving cars, medical robots, to name but a few), each with varying configurations of cognitive/computational intelligence and moral and social intelligence. There is a need for third-party certification organizations to provide ratings for AI products on cognitive, ethical and social dimensions and/or to certify AI products as ethically or socially beneficial if they meet certain standards. Such a certification process will reduce information asymmetry, enabling consumers to make informed decisions when purchasing AI products and allowing technologically responsible companies to reap coveted benefits such as enhanced brand image and price premium for their AI products. Future research can examine key dimensions of technological responsibility performance and relevant metrics (e.g. algorithmic biases, explainability, inclusive design, privacy protection and cybersecurity), as well as the signalling effect of technological responsibility certification and the benefits of such certification to consumers and companies.

Future society is likely to have a constellation of organizations, each playing a unique role in addressing the ethical and social challenges related to AI and promoting the long-term symbiotic relationship between machine and human intelligence. There is a need for future research to inform government and public policy makers, industry associations, non-profits and various stakeholders on how to tackle the challenges facing us. Countries differ in essential aspects such as governmental approach to AI regulation, institutional norms and cultural values, levels of stakeholder activism and developmental stages of AI technologies, all of which affect businesses’ approach to AI and their overall CSR performance. We call for future research to shed light on the impact of these macro-level dynamics on companies’ technological responsibility performance and the associated social and business outcomes.

To shape the future of ethical and socially responsible AI and promote human flourishing in a future mediated by AI and related technologies, companies need to reimagine their CSR strategies and practices. There is fertile ground for novel, ground-breaking and impactful research on CSR in the age of AI.

Big Business Ethics and a Post-Work World

This commentary proposes that, given the continued growth of the world’s largest corporations, and of Big Tech in particular, there is a clear need to develop a “Big Business Ethics” literature. Among other things, this literature would focus on analysing the ways in which market-dominating firms are not just system-takers that are influenced by extant moral and social norms, but system-makers that can transform them. To illustrate, the commentary suggests that, given their clear interest in developing labour displacing technologies, and the key role they play in enabling remote work practices, Big Tech firms may be contributing to the gradual emergence of a post-work world in which business in general, and hence, business ethics too, will cease to be of importance.

The Need for Big Business Ethics

Evidence suggests that market concentration is growing in many industries worldwide. A major factor is that leading corporations have proven adept at using technology to reduce labour costs and increase margins (e.g. Andrews et al., 2016 ). While this trend towards “winner takes all/most” markets is found in many sectors, it is perhaps most clearly evidenced by the emergence of Big Tech: i.e. Alphabet (which includes Android, Google and YouTube), Apple, Amazon, Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram) and Microsoft. These five corporations control technologies that many people consistently use in their daily lives. Consequently, the market valuation of these corporations—which in February 2020 was equal to 19% of all firms listed on the S&P500 (Standard and Poor's 500) index (Tambe et al., 2020 : 2)—has grown massively over recent years.

This growth of Big Tech is fuelled by numerous factors, including behaviours that many would consider anti-competitive. Nevertheless, Big Tech’s successes have been informed by more innocent considerations, too, such as network effects, their digitally enabled scaling capacities and their provision of web hosting and machine learning services to smaller entities. As Big Tech has become ever-more prominent, many have sought to curtail their collective influence. There are various liberal and democratic reasons for wanting to do this: most of which boil down to the belief that centralized and unelected corporate elites should not be allowed to dominate markets, manipulate populations, or exert excessive control over (elected) politicians. Such negative sentiment may be growing, but there is little reason to believe that a widespread popular revolt will overthrow Big Tech in the immediate future. Moreover, concrete efforts to cut Big Tech “down to size” have hitherto inflicted flesh wounds at best. The European Union (EU), for example, has a long track record of imposing impressive individual fines, numbering in the billions of Euros, on Big Tech. But such massive fines are yet to stop Big Tech from earning ever-larger profits.

If prior decades are anything to go by, then, Big Tech and other big corporations (e.g. those in the top 5% of an industry) will continue to capture an increasing share of markets in the decades to come (e.g. Andrews et al., 2016 ). No doubt, predictions are difficult to make (especially about the future). But the fact that these corporations can reinvest their profits to further increase their profits—sometimes in industries that lie far afield from that in which they initially created their wealth (Whelan, 2021 : 43–67)—suggests that the already big could continue to increase in size, or that, if they are superseded, it will be by even bigger corporate foes.

The time thus seems right to develop a literature on what can be termed, with no imagination whatsoever, Big Business Ethics. Indeed—when it is noted that the “small business ethics” literature has been growing for some time (Moore & Spence, 2006 ), and that the international relations field (which has a comparable mix of descriptive, normative and organizational concerns to business ethics) has long studied the world’s most powerful states (e.g. Mearsheimer, 2001 ), the need to develop a literature that is specifically focused on phenomena that are (uniquely) related to the world’s largest corporations appears long overdue.

To suggest that business ethics needs to develop a literature that is specifically focused on the world’s biggest corporations is not to suggest that there are no prior works of relevance. There very clearly are. Extant conceptual works on the form and responsibilities of corporations, for example, which are themselves built upon longstanding traditions in moral and political philosophy, help to identify, and to make sense of, moral considerations of relevance to the world’s corporate giants (e.g. Donaldson, 1982 ).

But what is arguably unique about the likes of Big Tech is that they have the potential to be system-makers and not just system-takers. In terms of ethics and morality, this means that the world’s biggest corporations are not simply subject to extant moral concepts and norms, but agents that can transform or redirect them. In this fashion, Big Business Ethics can be conceived as focusing on how the world’s largest corporations contribute to morally important and interesting transformations of broad, societal-level relevance. Moreover, Big Business Ethics can be understood as relating to transformations that risk going unseen because they are ubiquitous. Thus—and while Big Business Ethics obviously focuses on corporations that are unique in terms of their size and power—it does not focus on social transformations that are unique, or some sort of outlier. Rather, it focuses on transformations that are widespread and commonplace, and that are, in some sense at least, era defining. In other words, Big Business Ethics can be understood as focusing on the wood (or the forest) more than it does the trees.

The sorts of general phenomena that Big Business Ethics directs attention to include Big Tech’s transformative impact upon how individuals understand and respect their own, and other people’s, personal privacy; how people and organizations understand, and can be held to (moral) account for, their historical acts; and how people understand, and can participate in, the governance of organizational, governmental and social affairs. But Big Business Ethics directs attention to other less acknowledged developments too. One such development is the role that the world’s largest corporations are currently playing in the possible emergence of a post-work world. Thus, it is in using the remainder of this commentary to briefly discuss this possibility, that I hope to illustrate—or, somewhat more modestly, to begin to suggest—how the lens of Big Business Ethics can help to shine a light on, and begin to theorize, changes in the ethical (and/or moral) fabric of daily life.

The Possibility of a Post-Work World

As previously noted, the Western world’s most productive firms have, since the turn of the century, captured an increasing share of markets across industries (e.g. Andrews et al., 2016 ). The reason why relates to leading corporations enjoying relatively high productivity rates and margins, and to their out-muscling or out-thinking smaller, less capable firms. In possessing the capacity to satisfy the preferences of huge audiences with very low marginal production costs, Big Tech can once again be understood as exemplary of such developments. More specifically, Big Tech can be used to show that very large profits can be won by corporations that (1) (massively) reduce the labour (and overall) costs associated with their own activities, and that (2) create products and services that (massively) reduce the labour (and overall) costs of their user populations. When these two points are noted, the possibility that (3) Big Tech could also play a catalytic role in the development of a post-work world comes to the fore.

To get a better sense of all this, it helps to refer to Amazon, and to note that their (in)famous founder, Jeff Bezos, “has sought to supplant humans with software since he was a mere bookseller. In one famous episode editors working on book reviews and recommendations were replaced by code that did the same work by mining shopping patterns” (Day, 2021 ). It also helps to note that, in their warehouses, Amazon currently supplements their use of robots and algorithms with a “plug-and-play [human] workforce that can be adjusted almost instantly”, and that Amazon’s long-term goal is to build fully automated systems that would enable them to better satisfy customer demands (Ibid). As suggested in the preceding paragraph, these developments aim to reduce both (1) Amazon’s labour (and total production) costs, and (2) the costs of its customers—who can spend less time working or shopping. Moreover, when noted alongside the two-century-long trend towards diminished work hours in high-income countries (Greenwood et al., 2021 ), such developments suggest that, in regard to productive capacities in general, humans may not be as essential as many believe.

The widespread presumption that humans are essential to certain activities is, by and large, underpinned by a belief in human exceptionalism: i.e. the idea that important human capacities are the result of non-routine processes that will never be fully explicable, and thus, never fully replicable by (human-designed) machines (e.g. Autor, 2015 ). As this belief rules out the possibility that the likes of Amazon could ever (3) help bring about a post-work world, it is important to note that there are at least two reasons for thinking that human exceptionalism is mistaken. First, as machines have proven capable of making routines out of more and more human activities (e.g. self-driving autos, translation technologies), it may well prove that we are more explicable, and more computationally replicable, than human exceptionalists presume (Susskind, 2018 : 9). Second, it is not clear that machines need to replicate humans when completing tasks that people anthropocentrically consider humans as being uniquely capable of. Rather, machines could do things, and arguably already do a great many things, in their own machine-like ways that exceed our own human-like ways in terms of quality and/or quantity (e.g. Danaher, 2019 : 43–47).

As Keynes ( 1930 ), Gorz ( 1985 ) and a long list of less-famous others have suggested, then, the emergence of a fully post-work world at some point in the future is a real possibility. But the fact that no one can confirm with 100% certainty that such a world will emerge, let alone provide exact dates as to when, should not obscure the recognition that technology has long enabled fewer people to do more with less, in different, and generally more intensified, ways. Moreover, the fact that such changes and potentialities are commonly highlighted by Big Tech luminaries who have clear motive to speed up the very changes and potentialities they are commenting on does not mean that such phenomena immediately become less real or important either.

The triumphalist tone, for example, that the incredibly rich former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google, Eric Schmidt, adopted, when he suggested that “the coronavirus pandemic should teach Americans to be ‘a little bit grateful’ for powerful tech companies” (Schleifer, 2020 ), was clearly too much for many. Nevertheless, and galling as it may be, it is difficult to deny that at least some people’s lives have been made easier not just because of Amazon—which was singled out for praise by Schmidt (Ibid)—but because of Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft, too: whose computing hardware, online platforms and software, provide a key part of the remote (home) work infrastructure for many.

Despite remote work raising the spectre of never being able to leave “the office”, the rapid and widescale implementation of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic—when it jumped from 5% to approximately 50% of full paid workdays in the United States (US)—appears to have been a broadly positive experience, with “average workers” hoping to keep working from home 46.5% of the time post-pandemic (Barrero et al., 2021 ). Potential explanations for this preference relate to workers being able to devote part of the time they save from less commuting to leisure and household activities, and to people appreciating the flexibility that remote work entails. And while the productivity of remote working is much contested—even by Big Tech companies who have historically spent huge amounts developing “campuses” that are presumed to provide “water cooler” fuelled innovation—current signs suggest that many tech companies will increasingly adopt, at a minimum, hybrid home/office work policies: for, like workers across the board, many who work for Big Tech do not want to go back to the office, or the “campus” in their case, full time (Axion, 2021 ).

Through their investments in technological advances that can displace human labour, and through their helping build the digital infrastructure that enables (at least some) people to work (and complete other chores) from home, Big Tech may be contributing to the proliferation of a less-work ethic (if not a full-blown anti-work one). In the first instance, this sort of less-work ethic relates to there being little to be gained (outside of cultural capital within hipster communities) from humans working to producing something “by hand” when it can be produced better and more cheaply by a machine. Second, it relates to remote work potentially resulting in people feeling at an increasing (emotional) distance from their co-workers, bosses and organizational employers. As many derive identity and social benefits from their work, this could prove a major source of discomfort, and could result in some experiencing what amounts to a complete “loss of self”. But it could ultimately prove of huge benefit as well, for it would likely open space within which people can form new identities and social relations that are separate from their externally motivated, and thus, alienating, work activities.

In such material and ideational ways, the world’s biggest and most powerful corporations could be helping to build “a capitalist road to communism” (van der Veen & van Parijs, 1986 ) where work and basic needs satisfaction are de-coupled. Nevertheless, in the short to medium term, any possibility of experiencing a less-work, let alone a post-work, world, are likely to be limited to populations or countries that are already relatively well-off: e.g. people in Finland, Japan, Spain, New Zealand, the United States, etc. Moreover, it is undeniable that at least some humans will be needed to perform vital tasks for the foreseeable future. As a result, any transition from a work world to a post-work world seems likely to exacerbate existing concerns regarding such matters as distributional justice and technocratic elites, and will likely be characterized by a stark divide between those workers who are “essential” to the provision of social goods and services, and those who are not, and all that such a divide would entail.

In summary, the contributions that Big Tech companies are making to the potential emergence of a post-work world could significantly disrupt existing distributions of income, wealth, work, leisure time and so on. But over a longer time, these transformations would also seemingly result, if they are fully realized, in business and business ethics (which are very difficult to think of without the need to engage in [paid] work) being of little more than historical interest. While some are likely to celebrate such a possibility, others will find it a major cause for concern. Whatever the case, the perspective of Big Business Ethics helps bring such possibilities, and the role that the world’s largest corporations play therein, to the fore. If for no other reason, then, Big Business Ethics seems worthy of consideration because it points to developments that could result in business (ethics) as we currently know it, coming to an end.

Ethical Concerns in Labour Relations Amidst Escalating Megatrends

Ernesto Noronha and Premilla D’Cruz

The International Labour Organization (ILO), in its recent report on the future of work, outlined four major megatrends: globalization; “greening” of the economy; changes in demographics; and technological advances, including artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics (ILO, 2019 ). These major ongoing transformations have implications for ethical issues that confront labour. This editorial commentary speaks to ethical issues that mark the labour-business interface vis-à-vis global production networks (GPNs), the environment, demography and, finally, technology. The underlying theme across these megatrends seems to be that, while labour is confronted with the issue of precarity in one form or the other, we provide a more nuanced understanding of the implications for business ethics.

Global Production Networks

As is well known, the emergence of global production networks (GPNs) has been made possible by rapid advances in transport, data communications and information technology (IT), fragmenting production and enabling its relocation across international borders. Further, it was assumed that, if suppliers can increase profits through economic upgrading, social upgrading outcomes in terms of measurable standards (wages, benefits, etc.) and enabling rights (freedom of association, collective bargaining, etc.) would follow (Barrientos et al., 2011 ). While it is well established that GPNs have brought employment and economic growth to many developing economies, particularly in Asia, they are also associated with exploitative employment relations, environmental irresponsibility and recurrent ethical dilemmas (Clarke & Boersma, 2017 ). As shareholders, institutional investors and consumers comprehend and critique the social and ethical performance of corporate entities, businesses, to achieve more socially responsible decision-making and mitigate losses emanating from their social reputation (Wright, 2016 ), have subscribed to codes of conduct, multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) and international framework agreements (IFAs) that improve working conditions and provide a living wage, promote freedom of association and collective bargaining, entail equality and non-discrimination, particularly with regard to gender, monitor health, safety and child labour, and abolish forced labour (Giaconi et al., 2021 ).

Notwithstanding efforts towards responsible business policies and practices, evidence suggests that ethical issues persist and these efforts have not generated sustainable improvements in the working conditions of workers (Kuruvilla et al., 2020 ), and this is particularly true for tier 2 and 3 firms (Islam & Stinger, 2018 ) and even for tier 1 suppliers operating in lead firm countries in the West (Noronha et al., 2020 ). The deliberate blurring of accountability to meet labour standards while proposing to remedy the same seems to be a major challenge. Further, these ethical dilemmas may have been exacerbated during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in countries of the Global South where informal labour had to endure harsh lockdowns without any support from employers or the state. In some cases, employers have tried to address these ethical challenges by designing programmes like the Social Compact. However, these experiments should not merely help businesses to inexpensively “bluewash” their reputation (see Noronha, 2022 ). Therefore, further research is required on how diverse sets of regulations coalesce together and are shared by all private and institutional actors (Dahan et al., 2021 ) to promote ethical labour practices. More importantly, a search for ways to be ethical should include the independent voice of labour in the workplace, thus far neglected, to make the different modes of regulations effective.

The Environment

The ethical obligations of GPNs are further complicated by environmental governance issues (Singer & van der Ven, 2019 ). While the environmental case for switching to non-fossil energy seems irrefutable (Elliott, 2015 ), this will lead to a loss of jobs as economic activity and value added in high-emitting sectors is reduced (van der Ree, 2019 ). For instance, Neimark et al., ( 2020 ) argue that, as certain subsistence-level economic activities might become outlawed through increasingly stringent carbon control, a new eco-precariat may emerge. To illustrate, municipal authorities in New Delhi, India, have embraced waste-to-energy incinerators, while wastepickers fear that these changes threaten their access to waste (Demaria & Schindler, 2015 ), despite these workers already being poorly compensated, regularly stigmatized and frequently invisible in policy decisions (Gidwani, 2015 ). In fact, the ethics question becomes increasingly complicated as proponents of the green economy justify low or no pay, flexible working patterns and uninspiring work, while framing environmental work as morally rewarding (Castellini, 2019 ).

Notably, the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference negotiated some of the business ethics dilemmas posed by environmental issues by recognizing the importance of placing the interests of workers and communities at the forefront of decarbonization efforts so that “decent work” and “quality jobs” can be pursued simultaneously with climate action (While & Eadson, 2021 ), a development often referred to as the “just transition” (Kenfack, 2019 ). It is widely believed that the just transition purports to smoothen the shift towards a more sustainable society that respects the human and labour rights of those who lose jobs due to the abandonment of fossil-fuel-based work (Elliott, 2015 ; Kenfack, 2019 ). For instance, in the 1990s, when Germany dramatically reduced the burning of coal to generate electricity, it used widespread programmes to retrain coal industry workers to find new jobs, sometimes in renewable energy (Miller et al., 2013 ). At the same time, organizations will be ethically challenged to ensure that the new jobs created are “good jobs” and not only have decent working conditions, pay a living wage and provide clear career progression opportunities (Healy & Barry, 2017 ), but also hold room for social dialogue with workers and economy-wide skills development and retraining, buttressed by social protection and safety nets (While & Eadson, 2021 ). Besides this, the just transition agenda should challenge organizations to implement practices that are not only ethical in terms of the quality of jobs but also inclusive since all minorities and women are likely to be adversely impacted.

Changes in demographics are no less significant in affecting the labour relations-business ethics link. On the one hand, the youth population is increasing in some parts of the world, while, on the other hand, the ageing population is increasing in other parts of the world. These developments put pressure on labour markets and social security systems. The ethical challenge is to balance the interests of youth populations with those of ageing populations. Regarding the latter, declining returns on pension investments and a reduced revenue base raise concerns about the sustainability of social protection systems (ILO, 2019 ). Workplace policies that were designed when life expectancy was lower than average retirement ages are no longer relevant in today’s workplace (Berger, 2021 ). As restrictions have been placed on the ability of employers to use a mandatory retirement age (Lain, 2017 ), providing support for a lifelong-active society would be an ethical way to alleviate the pressure on social protection systems (ILO, 2019 ). The issue of how to retain older workers in productive employment will be one of the most significant policy issues facing governments and organizations; this means devising humane policy alignments that assist older workers displaced by industry restructuring, enabling late-career transitions and providing flexible working arrangements (Gahan et al., 2017 ). Further, organizations will be ethically challenged to work around negative views about age and capacity in the workplace that have been unaffected by anti-discrimination laws or the right to request for flexibility (MacDermott, 2016 ). Ageism can have consequences such as traumatic or disturbing effects on the self-esteem and physical health of older workers, exposing them to an increased risk of depression (Berger, 2021 ). Responsible and sustainable policies on older workers should be designed with equal attention to their consequences for young workers (Gahan et al., 2017 ), who also deserve commensurate ethical treatment.

Young workers across the world experience several challenges, which entail business ethics implications, as they interface with the world of work. Despite high levels of education and technological skills, millennials across the developed world are plagued by high levels of unemployment and underemployment and have had to accept less-than-ideal employment, lower pay and fewer benefits (Ng et al., 2017 ). In the case of countries like India, the situation gets exacerbated as employers complain about the shortage of workers with requisite skills. The country is thus in a paradoxical situation where the number of educated unemployed seems to keep increasing, while employers across various sectors lament the lack of skilled human resources (Noronha & D’Cruz, 2021 ). Young people will also need help in transitioning from education to work (ILO, 2019 ). The ethical way out of this demographic challenge is to balance the needs of older workers with the aspirations of young workers without discriminating against either.

Technological advances, particularly automation and digitalization undergirded by increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) systems, hold enormous implications for work, employment and labour (Rogovsky & Cooke, 2021 ) and raise numerous ethical issues.

Modern ubiquitous IT technologies have been increasingly relied upon by workplaces since the last decade and, more recently, have facilitated the continuity of business through work-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic (Mukherjee & Narang, 2022 ). These technologies entail new forms of control that are increasingly mobile, flexible, atomized, distant and informal, disguised within a rhetoric of emancipation and autonomy, which renders them subtle, insidious and misleading. Reflecting Lyon and Bauman’s “liquid surveillance” (Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2017 : 143), which extends beyond organizations’ spatio-temporal boundaries and promises unprecedented organizational success, involves employees’ nearly continuous availability and responsiveness, information and cognitive overload as well as digital traceability, all of which imply heightened controls, cultures of permanent urgency and speed, a breakdown of personal and professional boundaries, reduced opportunities for respite and recovery and ill-health. The resultant loss of autonomy, invasion of privacy as well as stress and anxiety, which reduce human dignity within a context marked by systemic dilution of accountability and morality (Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2017 ), hold inevitable implications for business ethics. Questions which emerge include: What does the use of modern ubiquitous IT technologies imply for socially responsible and sustainable employee relations practices? What are the ethical implications for worker autonomy and privacy, meaning of work and physical and mental health, including time for detachment, repair and recovery?

Further, the platform economy, operating as pseudo-sharing, is known to exploit workers due to undesirable social conditions, including precarious jobs, insufficient incomes, powerful and unregulated corporations, and worsening inequality, accompanied by stringent technological controls (Chai & Scully, 2019 ), discrimination and abuse (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2018 ). Ethical concerns clearly define platforms. Not only are workers termed “independent contractors”, absolving platforms of employer responsibilities, but platforms largely operate beyond the purview of regulation and democratic oversight (D’Cruz & Noronha, forthcoming ). While workers interact with a technological application such that there is no appearance of power, the invisibility and obscuring of capital and its modus operandi and gains, the global spatial dispersion and competitive entrepreneurial individualism of and transfer of costs and risks to labour, and the limits to workers’ collective negotiation strength and contestation opportunities evidence how precarity undergirds exchange (Chai & Scully, 2019 ; D’Cruz & Noronha, forthcoming ). The fundamental ethical question which arises is how can platforms develop into accountable and responsible entities which provide “good jobs” and guarantee “decent work”, such that worker rights are sustainably safeguarded? Relatedly, how can socially responsible regulatory mechanisms commensurate with platforms’ geographical reach be designed and executed? Further, how can platform capitalism’s ethical practices encompass sustainable employee relations practices, including worker collectivization and negotiation along known and re-imagined lines?

The rise of AI and robots have sparked new ethical challenges for business and society (Morse et al., 2021 ). Shrinking labour markets due to increasing reliance on AI and robotization, which replace humans, displace the latter from work, reducing job opportunities (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2021 ). Though some highly skilled workers are slated to succeed in this new environment, far more are expected to be displaced into lower-paying jobs at best or permanent unemployment at worst, fuelling job insecurity, precarity and ill-being (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2021 ). Kim & Wolf ( 2019 ) invoke Keynes’s “technological unemployment” to describe the situation. Yet how does technological unemployment interface with ethical business practices and what is the role of governments, business and civil society here? Importantly, technological unemployment, even if accompanied by guaranteed basic income, raises ethical issues because it precipitates axiological challenges which, in turn, could lead to teleological challenges. The former implies that technological unemployment will leave many humans without the opportunity to add meaning to their lives through work, depriving them of a sense of fulfilment linked to contributing to the larger social good, and thereby resulting in a crisis where human dignity is at stake. The latter implies that, while automation maximizes firm efficiency, effectiveness and profits, the question remains as to whether it is ethically desirable for corporate purpose and governance to endorse such an approach, given the axiological challenges involved (Kim & Wolf, 2019 ). What does state guarantee of basic income in instances of technological unemployment imply for sustainable business, responsible management and worker rights? Crucially, the overarching question arising is how are ethical employment relations practices impacted by technological innovation and its implications for employment?

As workplaces rely increasingly on robotization, “workplace trans-entity bullying” where robots mistreat humans is reported (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2021 : 295). AI and robots may be programmed for accuracy, with fairness and inclusion being overlooked (Morse et al., 2021 ). Indeed, AI and robots are known to display preferences for particular social identities (e.g. race, gender and age), giving rise to discrimination which can evolve into category-based harassment and bullying (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2021 ). Then again, whereas AI and robots facilitate efficiency, making task execution quicker (Wilson & Daugherty, 2018 ), this leads to work intensification (Gostautaite et al., 2019 ), such that when the pace is stepped up, humans can feel the effects of stronger controls and even exploitation. Indeed, some humans speak of “running” all the time to keep up with their robot co-workers (Gostautaite et al., 2019 ). If humanoids controlling humans at work (Frick, 2015 ) go on to behave abusively in the pursuit of the organizational agenda, depersonalized bullying could well result (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2021 ). Moreover, social-assistive robots deployed in healthcare settings can bully their human care recipients through exclusion, name-calling, insults, threats and manipulation (Coffee-Johnson & Perouli, 2019 ). The abuse of human care recipients by robot caregivers is unfortunate, given that social-assistive robots, increasingly relied on for caregiving assistance, have been seen as alternatives to human caregivers in the healthcare system, based on reports that the latter abuse their human care recipients (Frennert & Ostlund, 2014 ). As technological progress in AI and robots unfolds, how can ethical considerations define the business agenda? That is, AI and robots designed for workplaces should be programmed for sustainable employment relations with human workers. In other words, how can relational dignity and social responsibility mark AI and robots at work such that exploitation, discrimination, emotional and physical violence, destruction and other wrong-doing towards human workers are eliminated? As advanced general intelligence evolves and robots increasingly acquire growing physical and social agency, autonomy and skills, (a) how can they be armed with a sense of discernment that facilitates their morally appropriate and socially responsible behaviour at work, and (b) what sense of legal and moral entitlement should they be accorded at work?

The transformative potential of the four megatrends highlighted in this editorial commentary should be harnessed to create decent and sustainable work for all. It should address issues such as how workplaces can reconcile their quest for competitive advantage alongside safeguarding worker rights; what workplaces must do to enact responsible goals, policies and practices which endorse and perpetuate sustainable employment relations focused on protecting human capital; and how workplaces can ensure that their goals, policies and practices reflect and strengthen the UN SDGs (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals), with a particular view to safeguarding worker interests. In this regard, the ILO’s ( 2019 ) human-centred agenda seeks to steer the ongoing transformations towards work that affords dignity, security and equal opportunity, expanding human freedoms in the future. “It means guaranteeing fundamental rights at work, ensuring that all workers are afforded adequate labour protection, and actively managing technology to ensure decent work.” (ILO, 2019 : 28).

Religion, Spirituality and the Workplace: Anticipating the Next 40 Years

Although various scholars have argued that religions' influences on societies will decline because of the weakening effects of modernization and secularization on religion, current scholarship shows that religion remains influential in the workplace (Van Buren et al., 2020 ). Religion, the set of shared beliefs and institutions based on faith in supernatural forces (Parboteeah et al., 2009 ), will likely continue to play an important societal role. Furthermore, despite some differences, scholarship in the related concept of spirituality (Chan-Serafin et al., 2013 ) also stays strong.

As the Journal of Business Ethics celebrates its 40th year of existence, it becomes critical to assess some of the significant workplace changes and how religion will impact or mitigate them over the next 40 years. Experts project growth in informal and precarious jobs, and an ageing working population in high-income countries and a much younger population in middle- to low-income countries (Abeliansky et al., 2020 ), rising inequality because of wage gaps and concentration of corporate power (Grimshaw, 2020 ), and increased use of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) (Jain et al., 2021 ). These changes should all make workers feel more disengaged from their workplace. However, the rising inequality and increased use of AI likely make workers less connected with each other, thereby resulting in anomie or a sense of loneliness.

Religion can play a positive role in helping employees face these challenges, as religious “practices that unite people irrespective of colour, race or nationality may lead to organizational practices that draw out the positive nature laden in individual employees and managers” (Van Buren et al., 2020 : 805). An examination of the trends in religion also suggests the growth of Islam and Hinduism over the next few decades (Pew Research Center, 2015 ), thereby suggesting future research questions in those affiliations. However, the future also implies that religions may also play negative roles, as seen through their role in furthering discrimination in the workplace (Prasad et al., 2020 ), and other adverse psychological effects (Chan-Serafin et al., 2013 ).

This commentary will offer a balanced view of religion, emphasizing religion’s future role related to business ethics. Such roles will be examined in the light of current research to provide research suggestions for the next 40 years. The commentary is structured as follows. I first discuss these trends and present preliminary observations of how these changes should impact scholarly research on religion. I argue that religion will continue to remain strong in the workplace, but will continue to positively and negatively affect the workplace. In the light of such trends, I argue that religion scholars will also need to start acknowledging the conflicting impact of religions in the workplace. I discuss some of the critical themes these aspects represent. I also discuss the implications of such themes and avenues for future research.

Major Trends and Implications

Abeliansky et al. ( 2020 ) argue that workplaces worldwide will see important changes, including a significant increase in younger workers entering middle- and low-income countries and more workers involved in informal jobs and the underground economy. Experts also suggest that workers will continue to be hounded by rising inequality because of wage gaps and the concentration of corporate power (Grimshaw, 2020 ). Such trends have important implications for scholarship on religion in the workplace. First, there is no doubt that religions will continue to influence the workplace in the next 40 years. Workplace changes such as the sustained growth of informal jobs and income inequality will mean that workplaces will continue to experience poor working conditions that make workers feel even more disengaged from their jobs. Furthermore, it is clear that automation may replace many of the lower-skilled jobs that lower-income countries' workforce depends on. Given that such countries provide many manufactured products such as clothing that higher-income countries rely on, and that workforce growth will occur in these countries, it is very likely that workforces will face even more dehumanized workplaces. Religion will continue to play important roles, because it is recognized that religions can benefit workers. As we discuss later, religions can provide solace in the workplace.

A second significant trend is the growth in artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace (Jain et al., 2021 ). Although AI can make life better by integrating human and computer intelligence to solve societal problems, the focus on performance rather than intelligence suggests important roles that religions can play. Consider, for instance, the use of AI to select job candidates, predict fraud, approve loans and protect privacy. In such cases, the design of such systems depends on the algorithmic principles based on the quality of the data used and human authority. As such, religions can provide important principles as companies design new AI systems. Consider, too, that the development of AI systems and other automated system design is dependent on human authority, or the entities that provide the communication to develop such systems (Cheong, 2021 ). However, while some experts have advocated a more techno-centric approach to AI design devoid of human values, given the importance of religion at the workplace it may be fruitful to companies to incorporate religious views and values as AI systems are being developed. For example, consider the development of the robot monk at the Longquan Monastery in Beijing (Cheong, 2021 ). The monastery worked with a technology company to develop a robot that “can explain Buddhist tenets, chant mantras, sense its environment…” (Cheong, 2021 : 13). The process involved religious officials working closely with the system’s designers to ensure that the human element and values were present in the robot monk. Development of the robot involved close cooperation where religious leaders saw science as inevitable rather than a schism with religion. Similarly, as companies develop algorithms for decision making, they can consult with religious leaders to ensure that they know the inherent design principles and whether such principles violate ethical codes or other human rights. Religion can thus provide the guiding principles to make AI systems that incorporate human values.

A third important trend is that higher-income countries will see a growth of older workers, while it is also recognized that companies may have difficulties in retaining such workers (Abeliansky et al., 2020 ). Hence, given the potential of religion to provide some solace to workers, religion will continue to offer buffering effects to help older workers in these countries to cope with work demands. Given the high percentage of religious individuals at work in high-income countries, research can examine whether those companies that allow stronger integration of religion at the workplace can attract and retain more skilled older workers. Additionally, recent developments in the Faith and Work Integration Scale (Miller et al., 2019 ) provide interesting research avenues, because researchers can examine the impact of the integration of religion on business ethics issues.

However, this trend may pose a potential for conflict arising, since middle- to high-level income countries will also likely see a growth of employees who do not affiliate with any religion (Pew Research Center, 2015 ). This growth suggests that companies may have to contend with managing the conflicting effects of religion. Such changes indicate that higher-income countries may see conflicting influences of religions. On the one hand, companies may need to work harder to retain older workers, and integrating religion in the workplace may become a factor. At the same time, those employees who do not identify with any religion may resent the more robust integration of religion in the workplace. Such trends also suggest that more companies may have to balance integration with increasing the number of agnostic or unaffiliated workers. Future research will also need to understand how Faith and Work Integration may also result in some dissatisfied or less engaged workers. Furthermore, as we discuss later, the interaction of minority and majority religions within companies also suggests interesting research avenues.

In addition to understanding the implications of the above workplace changes, it is important to know how the religious landscape is changing. The most recent report by the Pew Research Center ( 2015 ) suggests several important trends. Although Christianity will remain the largest religious group globally, Islam will see the highest growth of all religions worldwide. Current trends suggest that the number of Muslims will likely be equal to the number of Christians in 2050. Furthermore, except for Buddhism, all other religions such as Hinduism, Judaism and folk religions, will grow significantly. However, most of Europe and North America will see a growth of individuals who identify as atheists, agnostics or do not affiliate with any religions.

The growth of specific religions such as Islam and Hinduism also has important implications for future religious scholarship. Given that religion research has overwhelmingly taken a Christian perspective, such growth suggests that domestic companies and multinationals will contend increasingly with employees who follow the Islamic or Hindu faiths. Religion scholars will need to provide more insights into such faiths. As we discuss below, such trends have important implications for the workplace and business ethics.

Research Directions for the Next 40 Years

Given the above trends, what shape should religion scholarship take over the next 40 years? It is firstly important to understand the progress that has been made. Although there was once hesitation in conducting research on religion in the social sciences, the last two decades have seen significant progress. The Journal of Business Ethics has published numerous articles on religion: a review of articles since the creation of the Journal shows that more than 100 articles have been published examining the interface of religion and the workplace. The Journal has also published more than 50 articles in related spirituality research. A review of articles also shows that the Journal has published articles on specific religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Surprisingly, there are fewer articles on Hinduism. Additionally, recent research has provided theoretical frameworks and empirical conceptualizations to understand religion and ethics (Parboteeah et al., 2008 ) and how religions relate to the workplace (Parboteeah et al., 2009 ), thereby also proposing operationalization of religions that go beyond belief in God. Religion’s important influences on business ethics issues has also been recognized by Van Buren et al. ( 2020 ) in a special issue in Business & Society.

In the light of the above progress, several important future research themes emerge. First, the workplace will see increasing diversity. Domestic and international companies will see more individuals of different religions interacting. Such changes suggest that future scholarship will need to start examining the effects of religion on aspects of diversity in the workplace. While this seems a cliché, given the push towards more understanding of diversity in the workplace, it is surprising to see that extant studies have mostly ignored this link. However, the push towards diversity and inclusion is relatively new and will likely continue. Future scholarship is encouraged to examine how religions can contribute to diversity efforts in companies. Most religions advocate respect for others, and such an assumption suggests that religion should potentially have positive effects on the diversity climate in the organization. Consider Braunstein et al. ( 2014 ) ethnographic study and their findings that the practice of daily prayers helped bridge differences in groups within faith-based community organizations. Such research showed that joint prayer practices associated with religion helped manage the organizational challenges associated with racial and socio-economic diversity. Religion can play a positive role in assisting employees in face these challenges, because religious “practices that unite people irrespective of colour, race or nationality may lead to organizational practices that draw out the positive nature laden in individual employees and managers” (Van Buren et al., 2020 : 805). It is hoped that future scholarship will identify the aspects of religion such as prayers, meditation and reflection that can potentially enhance diversity management within the organization.

Despite the above, it is undeniable that religions can also be very divisive and hurt diversity efforts. Consider the current rise of Indian nationalism and the consequent impact on Muslim minorities. Researchers are therefore encouraged also to understand the divisive potential of religion. One possibility in this area is the consideration of religious plurality or the degree to which people from different religious affiliations must co-exist in a social system. Religious plurality has received attention at the country level (Parboteeah et al., 2009 ) but has been mostly ignored within organizational contexts. Future scholarship should be open to examining religious plurality within organizations and the potential of such plurality to negatively impact organizational outcomes. However, if managed well, it is also possible that religious plurality can have potential advantages such as more creative and innovative companies. The diversity of religious beliefs inherent in religious plurality also suggests the potential for religion to provide diversity of thoughts. It is hoped that this commentary will encourage scholarship in that direction.

In addition to the above, the increased diversity of religious affiliations should spur other interesting avenues within the international business realm. Consider the possibility that multinationals with Christian headquarters may increasingly contend with employees in emerging markets where the latter are affiliated with other religions. Furthermore, it is possible for emerging market multinationals’ supervisors to have to manage employees with other religious affiliations. Diversity research will need to understand the implications of such interactions. For example, the future may see more expatriates causing friction as they manage employees of different religious backgrounds. The expatriate literature has also seen a dearth of studies related to religion, and future scholarship needs to understand how such international assignments may create friction. Furthermore, extant research suggests that the faith of expatriates has been mostly ignored. It is hoped that research questions related to religious expatriates and the many other research questions related to the international business literature as it manages diversity, can be examined.

Another potential research area related to the above trends is the potential interaction of majority and minority religions within multinationals and the potential impact on employees. It is feasible to see how majority religions may create conflicts with the minority affiliated employees. As such, it is hoped that future scholarship will also investigate such potential for conflict. According to Syed & Ali ( 2021 ), minority religions often face a “pyramid” of hate based on bias, discrimination and violence. Such issues are deserving of scholarly attention, as researchers need to understand the impact of majority religions on minority workers. In terms of methodological approaches, it is essential to acknowledge that religion research has favoured more quantitative research approaches. However, the potential interaction of employees from minority and majority religions and the evolution of such interactions lend themselves to qualitative approaches. Therefore, it is hoped that this commentary will inspire more research using such qualitative approaches. Consider, for instance, Pandey & Varkkey’s ( 2020 ) interviews with trade union members to see how caste membership impacts trade union workers in state-owned companies in India. Qualitative approaches such as those will likely provide important insights into the complexity and subtleties of the religious phenomenon under study.

Although the interaction of majority and minority religions may result in conflict, it is also important for future researchers to address the potential for positive outcomes because of such interactions. Minority religions can sometimes be a source of positive changes. Consider Vaidyanathan’s ( 2020 ) examination of Roman Catholicism in Bangalore and Dubai. The study shows how macro-level manifestations of the minority religion impact its members and wider society. As mentioned earlier, the minority religion allowed its adherents to better cope with work demands while also providing important social capital for adherents to flourish. However, most importantly, the qualitative study also showed how the minority religion had an impact on capitalism in both cities through its impact on how its adherents approached many issues, including those with moral implications. In this case, the minority religion positively impacted the social institutional environment. There is no doubt that there is a possibility that the majority religion can also positively influence the minority religion, and it is hoped that future scholarship will consider such potential.

Second, an important trend that is now affecting most companies is the use of AI and other automated systems. As argued by Jain et al. ( 2021 : 677), repetitive tasks such as “in warehouse, assembly lines, and fast-food restaurants, have been early targets for automation because it is relatively easier to capture quality data in such task scenarios”. Such systems do not necessarily pose moral implications. However, identifying fraudulent transactions, selecting job applicants, etc., and other aspects pose more challenges, since they depend on algorithmic processes that can introduce biases and other elements of injustice. While there has been some philosophical discussion of the relationship between religion and AI (Singler, 2020 ), future scholarship needs to start considering more practical empirical considerations of the role of religion. Most religions provide essential prescriptions about morality, and such aspects need to be considered by companies as they continue relying on AI. As AI moves into the realms of what are deemed high-stake applications, such as self-driving cars, and are used in military applications, the development of algorithms would benefit from consideration of religious principles. As such, religions can play critical roles in this realm. AI faces many challenges, such as which aspects of decision making to automate and how to avoid biases in the algorithms. Religion can become the source of moral guidance to tackle these challenges. Similarly, the related discipline of spirituality can also become a source of moral guidance. At the same time, religions can also be used to justify algorithms that discriminate against other minorities. Researchers must also tackle such possibilities.

Third, it is also possible that many other recent changes, such as working from home, use of virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom, and automation, may also encourage more worker disengagement. Such processes may likely result in anomie within the workplace, where workers feel disconnected from each other and do not find meaning in their work. Religions can be useful to counteract such negative influences. Consider the earlier-mentioned research by Vaidyanathan ( 2020 : 898), who found that members of the Roman Catholic Church looked forward to weekly prayers since “religion can enable corporate life by serving as a refuge providing worn-out professionals a means of rejuvenation and release”. Furthermore, the related spirituality research stream may also provide the potential for future research questions. As argued by recent research, workplace spirituality “nourishes employees’ spiritual needs and provides them with an opportunity to grow” (Lata & Chaudhary, 2021 ). Therefore, it can provide good buffering forces to help employees deal with such changes. Future research should investigate such possibilities.

Fourth, future research should start focusing more on understanding the religions of Islam and Hinduism. A review of research published in the Journal of Business Ethics shows about 40 articles examining the link between Islam and key outcomes such as corporate social responsibility, job outcomes and other key organizational outcomes. Not surprisingly, such research has focused on financial aspects, given the prohibition of payment of interest in Islam. Additionally, most research has focused on neutral or positive aspects of Islam. Such scholarship should continue to be encouraged, given the many positive prescriptions emanating from Islam. Consider Gumusay’s ( 2019 ) discussion of the role of religion with a focus on Islam and other Abrahamic religions in leadership theories. Islam has many important facets that can be integrated to enhance ethics in an organization. For example, the concept of akhlaq presents significant potential for understanding how tenets of Islam can affect the workplace and ethics.

Although Islam has received significant scholarship, in contrast, a review of Hinduism research published in the Journal of Business Ethics reveals a significant void. As the world sees an increasing Hindu population worldwide, it will become more important to understand Hinduism and its implications for employees within a Hindu environment. While the field is aware of many Islamic principles, such as the prohibition of payment of interest and even the existence of the Islamic work ethic, Indian scholars have been more likely to devote scholarship to understanding spirituality. However, Hinduism has many interesting aspects that are deserving of inquiry. Hindus believe in the four stages of life, ranging from being a student to being a householder on to being in a liberated phase. Multinationals are well advised to appreciate such stages in the lives of their employees, as these stages have important implications for business ethics. Furthermore, with the growth of Indian populism, it is expected that Indian workplaces may see more integration of Hinduism in the workplace. Research to understand the impact of Hinduism on the workplace and the potential marginalization of Muslim workers and other minorities is sorely needed.

As the popularity of both Islam and Hinduism grows, it is also important for future scholars to adopt a balanced research agenda. Most research on Islam has tended to adopt a more neutral position on such research. However, it is recognized that Islam accepts that “a man is responsible for economically supporting his family members, including his wife and children while placing a high value on a woman’s role as mother” (Syed & Van Buren, 2014 : 252). As Western-based multinationals continue to operate in societies with a high Islamic population, such teachings’ impact needs to be assessed. For example, we do not know how such multinationals balance the need to be culturally sensitive while also respecting headquarters’ norms for gender equality. Scholarship is sorely needed to understand these more detrimental aspects, while also understanding how multinationals can better manage these duelling pressures. However, it should also be noted that there are many interpretations of the Islamic faith, and not all view the role of women as subordinate to men. Consider Tlaiss’s ( 2015 : 859) research, which showed how women entrepreneurs used their Islamic faith to “construct and navigate their entrepreneurial careers away from the traditional, doctrinaire interpretations of Islam”. Future research should be cognizant of such subtleties.

Similarly, Hinduism includes some principles that are often seen as lacking fairness and justice. Consider some interpretations of Hinduism that view women’s position in society as playing a more subordinate role in society. Recent research also acknowledges the role of Hinduism in perpetuating casteism in Indian organizations (Pandey & Varkkey, 2020 ) and is also seen in furthering discrimination in the workplace (Prasad et al., 2020 ). Noronha ( 2021 ) shows that such casteism is also prevalent in countries with a significant South Asian diaspora. Such research shows how even when members of the lowest caste ( Dalits ) move to other countries such as the US (United States) and the UK (United Kingdom), and achieve economic and political mobility, they are still stigmatized by non-Dalits . This shows that, despite globalization and other forces to integrate Dalits into the contemporary business environment, the effects of caste remain powerful and pervasive.

The next few decades should see more research examining the detrimental effects of Hinduism within companies. Furthermore, as the number of Hindus grows in US society and elsewhere, it is essential to assess how caste-based principles are being addressed. As Noronha ( 2021 ) states, more research is also needed in countries with a South Asian diaspora to understand the pervasiveness of casteism. Such research should be helpful to facilitate a more equitable view of individuals from different castes. As pressures continue for multinationals to treat all genders and occupations equally, such research can provide important insights. However, such research should also be aware of diverse interpretations of the Hindu faith.

A stronger focus on both Islam and Hinduism to cater to the growth of these religions also underscores the need for more multilevel research examining religion and organizational outcomes. Most research in the Journal of Business Ethics has been conducted at single levels of analysis. However, as the above discussions imply, an adequate investigation of religion’s effects requires consideration at different levels. Consider, for instance, the possibility of a Western-based or emerging-market multinational addressing equality through espoused principles. Such a scenario involves understanding the pressures coming from the international community (country level) on the corporate culture (firm level) and its impact on changing religious views (individual level). Such multilevel research will incorporate more complex models while providing further insights into these critical aspects.

It is undeniable that religion will continue to play essential roles in the workplace. It is hoped that this commentary will inspire some future exciting research avenues. Additionally, while the commentary discussed the role of religion in general, the Journal of Business Ethics focuses on understanding business ethics issues. Many of the phenomena discussed pertain to ethical aspects of the organization. As co-editor of the Religion, Spirituality and Business Ethics section, I look forward to welcoming articles that address some of the big questions that will face us in the next 40 years. It is likely that all major religions of the world, such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism, have important commonalities that can be used to further business ethics and business ethics education (Ruhe & Lee, 2008 ). However, religions can also be detrimental to organizational life (Chan-Serafin et al., 2003 ). It is hoped that this commentary will also provide for a balanced view of religions at the workplace for the next four decades.

Please note that authors are listed by alphabetical order and not based on author contribution. Each commentary in this essay was written by different authors.

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Published by Owen Ingram at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On August 15, 2023

Information technology stands out as one of the latest discoveries of the twenty-first century. According to researchers, technology is currently undergoing an era of transformation. Yet, despite all the hype, many students struggle to figure out a topic for their degree specifically in Information Technology or combined with business courses as business information technology.

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Below Are Some Business Information Technology Dissertation Topics:

A literature analysis on the information quality management framework
A comprehensive investigation of the information system hierarchy
Big data and business intelligence are essential for sustainable development in organizations: Discuss a UK-based perspective
Correlation between Information systems management and risk management infrastructure to achieve business risk resilience
Impact of the Coronavirus on the management of X country’s information systems
The function of structured versus unstructured data in managing information systems
A review of the literature on the management of business intelligence and information systems
Pre- and post-COVID analysis of the impact of information systems on organizational performance
Implementing IT governance and managing information systems
A descriptive overview of IS strategic planning and management services
A review of the literature on international information system security
Information systems management historical analysis focusing on the last three decades
The part that planning, alignment, and leadership play in information systems management
A systematic review of the post-COVID era for information systems management research
Difficulties and possible challenges in the International management of Information systems
A thorough analysis of information policy and global information systems management
How to handle data management in the era of 5G technologies
Human-computer interaction’s effect on innovations
How does machine learning introduce students to more modern career opportunities?
Consider the use of molecular information systems in biotechnology
How information technology has aided in the processing of natural language
What are the most recent advancements in software engineering and programming languages?
An examination of new potential in the robotics industry.
What factors should I take into account while buying a bandwidth monitor?
How do we develop a efficient clinic management system for intensive care?
Reasons why e-waste management solutions should be used worldwide ASAP
Motives for why cyberbullying persists in modern communication technologies
Interpersonal communication has changed as a result of the development of information technology
The effect of 3D printing on medical practice
How well do colleges and universities produce qualified computer scientists using robots in infectious disease units?
How ethical hacking has become more harmful
Why having specialized financial systems is important
What is the best security precaution: A fingerprint or a serial number?
How to strengthen patent protection for technical advances?
An overview of the many software security measures

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Few technological advances have generated as much excitement as AI. In particular, generative AI seems to have taken business discourse to a fever pitch. Many manufacturing leaders express optimism: Research conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights found ambitions for AI development to be stronger in manufacturing than in most other sectors.

Manufacturers rightly view AI as integral to the creation of the hyper-automated intelligent factory. They see AI’s utility in enhancing product and process innovation, reducing cycle time, wringing ever more efficiency from operations and assets, improving maintenance, and strengthening security, while reducing carbon emissions. Some manufacturers that have invested to develop AI capabilities are still striving to achieve their objectives.

This study from MIT Technology Review Insights seeks to understand how manufacturers are generating benefits from AI use cases—particularly in engineering and design and in factory operations. The survey included 300 manufacturers that have begun working with AI. Most of these (64%) are currently researching or experimenting with AI. Some 35% have begun to put AI use cases into production. Many executives that responded to the survey indicate they intend to boost AI spending significantly during the next two years. Those who haven’t started AI in production are moving gradually. To facilitate use-case development and scaling, these manufacturers must address challenges with talents, skills, and data. Following are the study’s key findings:

Talent, skills, and data are the main constraints on AI scaling. In both engineering and design and factory operations, manufacturers cite a deficit of talent and skills as their toughest challenge in scaling AI use cases. The closer use cases get to production, the harder this deficit bites. Many respondents say inadequate data quality and governance also hamper use-case development. Insufficient access to cloud-based compute power is another oft-cited constraint in engineering and design.
The biggest players do the most spending, and have the highest expectations. In engineering and design, 58% of executives expect their organizations to increase AI spending by more than 10% during the next two years. And 43% say the same when it comes to factory operations. The largest manufacturers are far more likely to make big increases in investment than those in smaller—but still large—size categories.
Desired AI gains are specific to manufacturing functions. The most common use cases deployed by manufacturers involve product design, conversational AI, and content creation. Knowledge management and quality control are those most frequently cited at pilot stage. In engineering and design, manufacturers chiefly seek AI gains in speed, efficiency, reduced failures, and security. In the factory, desired above all is better innovation, along with improved safety and a reduced carbon footprint.
Scaling can stall without the right data foundations. Respondents are clear that AI use-case development is hampered by inadequate data quality (57%), weak data integration (54%), and weak governance (47%). Only about one in five manufacturers surveyed have production assets with data ready for use in existing AI models. That figure dwindles as manufacturers put use cases into production. The bigger the manufacturer, the greater the problem of unsuitable data is.
Fragmentation must be addressed for AI to scale. Most manufacturers find some modernization of data architecture, infrastructure, and processes is needed to support AI, along with other technology and business priorities. A modernization strategy that improves interoperability of data systems between engineering and design and the factory, and between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT), is a sound priority.

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Nasa nurtures promising tech ideas from small businesses.

Tiernan P. Doyle

Nasa headquarters.

New space technology ideas emerge every day from innovators across the country, and NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program on Monday selected more than 100 projects for funding. This program offers small businesses in the United States early-stage funding and support to advance the agency’s goals of exploring the unknown in air and space while returning benefits to Earth.

Specifically, NASA’s SBIR program awarded $93.5 million in Phase II contracts to bring 107 new ideas to life from 95 selected small businesses. Of these businesses, nearly 80% have less than 50 employees, and 21% are receiving their first Phase II award, valued at up to $850,000 each. Each small business was also eligible to apply for up to $50,000 in Technical and Business Assistance program funding to help find new market opportunities and shape their commercialization roadmap.

“We are thrilled to support this diverse set of companies as they work diligently to bring their technologies to market,” said Jenn Gustetic, director of Early Stage Innovation and Partnerships with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “Inclusive innovation is integral to mission success at NASA, and we’re excited to see that 29% of the awardees are from underrepresented groups, including 11% women-owned businesses.”

In Phase II, awardees will build on their success from the program’s first phase to bring their technologies closer to real-world use. The companies have 24 months to execute their plans, which focus on their technologies’ path to commercialization.

For example, NASA selected women-owned and first-time NASA Phase II awardee nou Systems, Inc. in Huntsville, Alabama, for its genetic testing instrument. While portable genetic sequencing already exists, field sequencing – that would allow DNA analysis anywhere on Earth or off planet – remains unfeasible as the preparation of the DNA Library remains an intensely manual process, needing a trained wet lab technician and several pieces of laboratory equipment. The Phase II technology takes advantage of several cross-enabling technologies, creating an instrument to automate the genetic sequencing process.

“Our program works directly with small businesses to forge innovative concepts and technologies that drive impact for NASA projects as well as a myriad of commercial endeavors,” said Jason L. Kessler, program executive for NASA’s SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program at NASA Headquarters. “This collaboration results in realized opportunities not only for NASA but all of humanity.”

This includes technologies aiming to reduce astronaut workload and improve robotic scientific endeavors on the Moon and Mars. PickNik Inc. based in Boulder, Colorado, will use its Phase II award to continue developing a hardware-agnostic platform for supervised autonomy that empowers humans to command a remote robot to complete complex tasks with minimal input, which could support the Artemis program. Outside of NASA, PickNik’s software product may be of interest to commercial space customers working on low Earth orbit destinations, in-space servicing, and more, as well as on Earth in areas like warehouse management, oil rig maintenance, and deep-sea exploration.

The NASA SBIR program is open to U.S. small businesses to develop an innovation or technology. The program is part of STMD and managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

To learn more about the NASA SBIR program, visit:

https://sbir.nasa.gov

Jimi Russell Headquarters, Washington [email protected] 202-358-1600

Related Terms

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Learn if your company is eligible for NIH SBIR or STTR funding, how to apply , and what to expect during each step of the application process. Multiple registrations are required to prepare your application and apply for funding.

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Early consideration of the healthcare impact and commercial viability of scientific discoveries, combined with milestone-driven product development plans, results in de-risked projects primed for startup company formation or licensing.

This trans-NIH program implements the Phase 0 Proof of Concept Partnership pilot program authorized in the 2011 SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act (P.L. 112-81) . In 2023, NIH committed $1 million per year for four years to five new REACH hubs (see the REACH Notice of Funding Opportunity ). Together, they will support academic innovators at over 75 institutions in 12 states.

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Col of Business & Finance, Building 41, Ahlia University, Manama, Bahrain

Discusses current development in the fields of business, education, social, and technology after COVID-19
Presents propositions through modern technology, business, and entrepreneurial ‎actions
Provides new developments through the lens of case studies, experiments, and empirical ‎assessments

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems (LNNS, volume 495)

Conference series link(s): ICBT: International Conference on Business and Technology

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Conference proceedings info: ICBT 2022.

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Table of contents (128 papers)

Front matter, information technology, business innovation and startup and women empowerment, industry 5.0: a panacea in the phase of covid-19 pandemic concerning health, education, and banking sector.

R. Leelavathi, Philip Bijin, N. Aiswarya Babu, K. P. Jaheer Mukthar

An Adaptive Oversampling Method for Imbalanced Datasets Based on Mean-Shift and SMOTE

Ahmed S. Ghorab, Wesam M. Ashour, Shadi I. Abudalfa

Application of Innovative Technology in Textile Retail for Enhanced Customer Service and Business Development

K. P. Jaheer Mukthar, Hernan Ramirez Asis, Juan Emilio Vilchez Carcamo, Eva Delfina Zarzosa-Marquez, Rosario Mercedes Huerta Soto

Factors Affecting the Adoption of Remote Auditing During the Times of COVID-19: An Integrated Perspective of Diffusion of Innovations Model and the Technology Acceptance Model

Mohannad Obeid Al Shbail, Hashem Alshurafat, Husam Ananzeh, Ebrahim Mansour, Allam Hamdan

Big Data Analysis and Data Visualization to Help Make a Decision - Islamic Banks Case Study

Mohammad H. Allaymoun, Saleh Qaradh, Mohammed Salman, Mustafa Hasan

Jordanian Islamic Banks Growth Credit Services in Corona Pandemic and Fitch Standard

Abdullah Ibrahim Nazal, Emad Nawayiseh, Suhad Jaradat

The Impact of Intelligent Leadership on the Effectiveness of the Outstanding Performance of Employees «Case Study Algeria Telecommunication Institution Bechar»

Karima Hadji, Ilyes Slimani, Souad Douli

Estimating Women Entrepreneurial Empowerment of Start-Up Business Through Micro Credit Model in Rural Areas

K. P. Jaheer Mukthar, Hernan Ramirez Asis, Rosa Vílchez-Vásquez, Antonio Huaman-Osorio, Joseph Alvarado-Tolentino

From Intentions to Actions: Exploring the Entrepreneurial Journey of Syrian Refugees in Istanbul

Ammar Kassab, Rosmini Omar, Hasan Ghura

Assessing Underlying Factors of Entrepreneurial Intention Among Young Saudis

Sandeep Solanki, Raj Bahadur Sharma, Sandeep Ojha

Exploring Investment Behaviour of Working Women for Economic Empowerment

Aneesha K. Shaji, V. R. Uma

Education Management, Technology, Smart Universities, and Covid-19 Impact

Education-job mismatch in the saudi labor market.

Halah Alattas, Mohamed Ahmed Saeed

Graduates’ Perception of Corporate Social Responsibility: An Empirical Evidence from Higher Educational Institutions in Sultanate of Oman

Iffat Sabir Chaudhry, Muhammad Nawaz Tunio, Rene Y. Paquibut, Abdallah Al Shwabkheh

The Effect of Financial Literacy on Personal Financial Distress from Palestinian University Employees Point of View

Bassam Al-Agha, Mohammed Salem

Factors Affecting Students’ Satisfaction with University College of Applied Sciences, Gaza

Fadi Abu Sharekh, Al Moutasem Billah El Halabi, Mohammed Salem

An Investigation of Teaching and Learning Process Efficiency in a Business School Using DEA

Mohammad Naushad, Abdul Malik Syed

The Effect of TEFL Course Moodle Activities in Developing Student-Teachers’ Pedagogical Knowledge and Teaching Practices

Sumer S. Abou Shaaban, Mahmoud Jalambo

Other Volumes

Digitalisation: opportunities and challenges for business.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Business and Technology (ICBT2021) organized by EuroMid Academy of Business and Technology (EMABT), held in Istanbul, between November 06–07, 2021.

In response to the call for papers for ICBT2021, 485 papers were submitted for presentation and ‎inclusion in the proceedings of the conference. After a careful blind refereeing process, 292 papers ‎were selected for inclusion in the conference proceedings from forty countries. Each of these ‎chapters was evaluated through an editorial board, and each chapter was passed through a double-blind peer-review process.‎

The book highlights a range of topics in the fields of technology, ‎entrepreneurship, business administration, ‎accounting, and economics that can contribute to business ‎development in countries, such as ‎learning machines, artificial intelligence, big data, ‎deep ‎‎learning, game-based learning, management ‎information system, ‎accounting information ‎system, knowledge management, entrepreneurship and ‎social enterprise, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, business policy and strategic ‎management, international management and organizations, organizational behavior and HRM, ‎operations management and logistics research, controversial issues in management and organizations, ‎turnaround, corporate entrepreneurship, and innovation, legal issues, business ethics, and firm ‎governance, managerial accounting and firm financial affairs, non-traditional research and creative ‎methodologies. ‎

These proceedings are reflecting quality research contributing theoretical and practical implications, for those who are wise to apply the technology within any business sector. It is our hope that the contribution of this book proceedings will be of the academic level which even decision-makers in the various economic and executive-level will get to appreciate.

Data Sciences
Advanced Computing
Entrepreneurship
Business Improvement

Bahaaeddin Alareeni

Col of Business & Finance, Building 41, Ahlia University, Manama, Bahrain

Allam Hamdan

Book Title : Explore Business, Technology Opportunities and Challenges ‎After the Covid-19 Pandemic

Editors : Bahaaeddin Alareeni, Allam Hamdan

Series Title : Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08954-1

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Engineering , Engineering (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-031-08953-4 Published: 13 July 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-031-08954-1 Published: 12 July 2022

Series ISSN : 2367-3370

Series E-ISSN : 2367-3389

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVII, 1494

Number of Illustrations : 69 b/w illustrations, 109 illustrations in colour

Topics : Mathematical and Computational Engineering , Business Mathematics , Data Engineering

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Exploring your options: USPTO resources and Small Business Innovation Research or Small Business Technology Transfer programs

If you're a small business owner exploring your options for research and development, including commercialization, join us virtually on May 9, from 2-3:15 p.m. ET, for an overview of the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs . Learn how the programs work and what resources are available to help you navigate the processes. You'll also hear about United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) resources and programs that can help you protect your intellectual property (IP): your ideas, products, and product names.

(Subject to change. All times ET)

2-2:05 p.m. Welcome and introduction

Carlos Gutierrez , Innovation Outreach Specialist, USPTO

2:05-2:35 p.m. SBA SBIR/STTR overview and updates

Erick Page-Littleford , Acting Director, Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer, SBA

2:35-3:05 p.m. USPTO resources and programs overview

NaThanya Ferguson , Innovation Outreach Manager, USPTO

3:05-3:15 p.m. Conclusion

Carlos Gutierrez , Innovation Outreach Specialist, USPTO

Speaker biographies

NaThanya Ferguson serves as the manager of the USPTO’s Innovation Outreach Division, which focuses on outreach to independent inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and underrepresented communities of innovators across America.

Ferguson joined the USPTO in 1989. During her 35 year tenure at the agency, she has worked as a contracting officer representative, lead patent analyst for the Patent Process Reengineering initiative, strategic planning project manager for the Office of the Commissioner for Patents, and project manager for the National Council for Expanding American Innovation.

Ferguson has received numerous awards, including a Department of Commerce Gold Medal in 2015 for her contribution to the innovative and collaborative implementation of the First Inventor to File statutory provisions of the America Invents Act, a Department of Commerce Distinguished Career Award in 2011 for continued outstanding service, and a Silver Medal Award in 1999 for her contribution to the development and implementation of the Patent Process Reengineering initiative.

Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business and management from Johns Hopkins University and a Master’s Certificate in project management from Management Concepts and Regis University.

Carlos Gutierrez started his career with service in the United States Marine Corps working in the field of logistics. He completed two tours overseas, one of which was in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, Gutierrez held roles in the private sector, including several years as an Executive Team Leader with Target retail stores and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at The University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley.

Additionally, Gutierrez holds a U.S. patent, was the founder of several companies, and has served as an advisor for several nascent-stage tech startups. He has written and managed grants that have been awarded a total of $1.73 million.

Gutierrez has served with several agencies within the federal government, including the Department of Energy, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Small Business Administration. Gutierrez also previously served as the Director of the Texas Veterans Business Outreach Center.

Gutierrez has a background in business development and program management in the private sector, state government, federal government, academia, and non-profit spaces. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in management from The University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix, and a Master of Science in technology commercialization from The University of Texas at Austin.

As the Acting Director and Program Manager for the Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer division within SBA’s Office of Investment and Innovation (OII), Erick leads the strategic planning, management, monitoring, and implementation of America’s Seed Fund, also known as the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, the nation’s largest non-dilutive federal research and development and technology commercialization program for small businesses.

This program is a collaboration between the USPTO and SBA and is part of an annual quarterly webinar series, Intellectual property and SBIR/STTR, designed to cover the basics of IP and provide updates and information about upcoming SBIR/STTR solicitations.

For more information, please contact [email protected] .

The USPTO offers inspirational and educational events, open to all, that feature successful innovators from a wide variety of backgrounds. Come learn about intellectual property, innovation, and valuable resources available to independent inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and underrepresented or underserved populations. Find out more at www.uspto.gov/innovationforall .

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Biden administration agrees to provide $6.4 billion to Samsung for making computer chips in Texas

The White House is seen as dusk falls, Sunday, April 14, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

FILE - The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen during a media tour at Samsung Electronics’ headquarters in Suwon, South Korea, June 13, 2023. The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding for Samsung Electronics to develop a computer chip manufacturing and research cluster in Texas. The funding announced Monday, April 15, 20204, by the Commerce Department is part of a total investment in the cluster that, with private money, is expected to exceed $40 billion. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

FILE - President Joe Biden speaks about an agreement to provide Intel with up to $8.5 billion in direct funding and $11 billion in loans for computer chip plants in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon, at the Intel Ocotillo Campus, March 20, 2024, in Chandler, Ariz. The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding for Samsung Electronics to develop a computer chip manufacturing and research cluster in Texas. The government has previously announced terms to support other chipmakers, including Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., in projects that are spread across the country. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding for Samsung Electronics to develop a computer chip manufacturing and research cluster in Texas.

The funding announced Monday by the Commerce Department is part of a total investment in the cluster that, with private money, is expected to exceed $40 billion. The government support comes from the CHIPS and Science Act , which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 with the goal of reviving the production of advanced computer chips domestically.

“The proposed project will propel Texas into a state of the art semiconductor ecosystem,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters. “It puts us on track to hit our goal of producing 20% of the world’s leading edge chips in the United States by the end of the decade.”

Raimondo said she expects the project will create at least 17,000 construction jobs and more than 4,500 manufacturing jobs.

Samsung’s cluster in Taylor, Texas, would include two factories that would make four- and two-nanometer chips. Also, there would be a factory dedicated to research and development, as well as a facility for the packaging that surrounds chip components.

FILE - The Supreme Court of the United States is seen in Washington, March 26, 2024. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments this week with profound legal and political consequences: whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a federal case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File)

The first factory is expected to be operational in 2026, with the second being operational in 2027, according to the government.

The funding also would expand an existing Samsung facility in Austin, Texas.

Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Samsung will be able to manufacture chips in Austin directly for the Defense Department as a result. Access to advanced technology has become a major national security concern amid competition between the U.S. and China.

In addition to the $6.4 billion, Samsung has indicated it also will claim an investment tax credit from the U.S. Treasury Department.

The government has previously announced terms to support other chipmakers including Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in projects spread across the country.

Profit momentum of Big Six tech companies to 'collapse' over 2024, UBS says

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Argentine President Javier Milei boasted on Monday that his government is successfully taming profligate public spending, touting a rare first quarter surplus that he argues is key to improving economic prospects in the Latin American nation.

Brazil's central bank governor reiterated on Monday that significant uncertainties made it difficult to provide guidance on monetary policy, indicating policymakers are no longer committed to a future 50 basis-point cut.

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New Zealand's central bank said on Tuesday it does not agree with the assessment of the country's competition watchdog that its prudential capital settings need to be reviewed.

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Atlas, a Humanoid Robot From Boston Dynamics, Is Leaping Into Retirement

It has been replaced by a new model, which will be used in automotive manufacturing. A farewell video featured the old machine running outdoors, performing back flips and awkwardly shimmying.

A humanoid robot is leaping and lifting its arms inside a warehouse facility.

By Johnny Diaz

Atlas, the humanoid robot that dazzled followers for more than a decade with its outdoor running, awkward dancing and acrobatic back flips, has powered down. In other words, it is retiring.

On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics, the company that created it, announced the arrival of the next generation of humanoid robots — a fully electric robot (also named Atlas) for real-world commercial and industrial applications.

For anyone worried about what would happen to the hydraulic bipedal machine (a robot home? the junkyard? a window display?) that was created for research purposes, the company had an answer. A spokesman, Nikolas Noel, said that retirement would mean that the Atlas would move to its “robot retirement home,” which is to say that it would be “sitting in our office lobby museum” with other decommissioned robots.

The old Atlas was used to research full-body mobility and to explore what was possible in robotics, Mr. Noel said. It was not designed for commercial use and was first developed as part of a competition to further the use of robots “in future natural and man-made disasters,” according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon.

“For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists and leapt over technical barriers in the field,” Boston Dynamics said in a farewell video posted on social media on Tuesday.

“Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax,” the company said.

The company’s farewell video captured the brawny 6-foot-2 machine in action over the years. That included taking a stroll in a grassy field, leaping on boxes (or picking up 10-pound ones), carefully walking on a rock bed and awkwardly shimmying.

But the video also featured some mishaps, including the robot’s frequent stumbles such as falling over on platforms, rolling down a hill and leaking hydraulic fluid from its leg inside a lab.

The new model has a big round head that spins completely around, is leaner and can nimbly rise from a horizontal position to a bipedal stance in seconds. Its hips appear to be reversible, so it might be better than us at some yoga poses.

The company’s commercial models include Spot, an agile four-legged robot, and Stretch, an elongated warehouse platform.

“The new Atlas builds on decades of research and furthers our commitment to delivering the most capable, useful mobile robots solving the toughest challenges in industry today: with Spot, with Stretch, and now with Atlas,” the company wrote in a video post introducing the new robot .

The new model will be used to build “the next generation of automotive manufacturing capabilities” with Hyundai Motor Company, which owns Boston Dynamics.

The original Atlas made its public debut in 2013 in Waltham, Mass., where Boston Dynamics is based, after it received initial funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The company was awarded a $10.8 million contract to work with the agency on developing Atlas for the D.A.R.P.A. Robotics Challenge.

There were seven updated Atlases, each of which was made from aircraft-grade aluminum and titanium and weighed 330 pounds. They were then used as base models by teams competing for a $2 million prize in the challenge. But the final challenge was won by a Korean team that built a robot that could kneel and roll around on wheels as it performed tasks.

During its training, researchers were tough on the Atlas, even hurling weights at it to see how well it responded and adapted to challenges inside and outside the lab.

Johnny Diaz is a general assignment reporter covering breaking news. He previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel and The Boston Globe. More about Johnny Diaz

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Artificial intelligence technology research topics. We started 2023 with M3GAN's box office success, and now we're fascinated (or horrified) with ChatGPT, voice cloning, and deepfakes. While people have discussed artificial intelligence for ages, recent advances have really pushed this topic to the front of our minds.
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Lesson #1: Technology investments are creating significant business value. In the latest survey, companies' tech-transformation activities appear to be paying off. The survey asked about ten different types of transformation initiatives (for more information on the ten plays in our " tech forward " approach, see sidebar, "A tech-forward ...
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Biden administration agrees to provide $6.4 billion to Samsung for
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