Ebrahimi, S.; Matt, C. (2023). Not seeing the (moral) forest for the trees? How task complexity and employees’ expertise affect moral disengagement with discriminatory data analytics recommendations. Journal of information technology Sage 10.1177/02683962231181148
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Data analytics provides versatile decision support to help employees tackle the rising complexity of today’s business decisions. Notwithstanding the benefits of these systems, research has shown their potential for provoking discriminatory decisions. While technical causes have been studied, the human side has been mostly neglected, albeit employees mostly still need to decide to turn analytics recommendations into actions. Drawing upon theories of technology dominance and of moral disengagement, we investigate how task complexity and employees’ expertise affect the approval of discriminatory data analytics recommendations. Through two online experiments, we confirm the important role of advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, and dehumanization, as the cognitive moral disengagement mechanisms that facilitate such approvals. While task complexity generally enhances these mechanisms, expertise retains a critical role in analytics-supported decision-making processes. Importantly, we find that task complexity’s effects on users’ dehumanization vary: more data subjects increase dehumanization, whereas richer information on subjects has the opposite effect. By identifying the cognitive mechanisms that facilitate approvals of discriminatory data analytics recommendations, this study contributes toward designing tools, methods, and practices that combat unethical consequences of using these systems.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems > Information Management 03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems |
UniBE Contributor: |
Matt, Christian |
Subjects: |
000 Computer science, knowledge & systems 600 Technology > 650 Management & public relations 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology |
ISSN: |
0268-3962 |
Publisher: |
Sage |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Yves Roulin |
Date Deposited: |
22 Jun 2023 07:59 |
Last Modified: |
06 Feb 2024 14:59 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1177/02683962231181148 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/183587 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/183587 |
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