ROUGH DRAFT
Referencing and citation to be factored in later. Have a look and suggest your view
Evaluate and contrast the opportunities, challenges, and ethical considerations that digital
technologies pose for business organizations in relation to the way they manage TWO of the
following: operations, work and people, innovation processes, or relations with customers.
Introduction
Digital technologies include electronic systems, devices and resources that produce and store
data. These are the main wheels of commerce and entrepreneurships today as they give
business new opportunities to utilize as well as challenges to counter either from within or
without their businesses. However as with many novel inventions, it comes replete with its
merits and demerits especially in areas such as operations, work and people as well as
innovation processes. Down historical annals, technology has disrupted human resource value
and operations as it improves efficiency and cost leaving behind it causalities in form of
human resources. (Anamarija Cijan, 219)1
This paper attempts to broach the ramifications digitisation offers to business organizations
withs its attendant benefits but also examining the bottlenecks of such innovation and the
ethical issues it poses
One such cutting age technology has been the invention of one Satoshi Nakamoto (a
pseudonym) associated with the current virtual currency rage- Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Walmart is one such renowned corporate giant that has employed this technology.2
The advantages of this technology are that it is trustworthy, efficient and traceable. A case in
point before Walmart put into place their blockchain in partnership with IBM, it took them a
whole 6 days, 18 hours, and 26 minutes to trace their source of sliced mangoes. Once
blockchain technology was put in place, it was able to do the same operation in 2.2 seconds!
This then led to the birth of the Walmart Food Safety and Collaboration Center.
This provides an opportunity to reduce considerably the possibility that an infected food
would reach a customer. A case in point involving FDA in USA concerning E-Coli infection
can now be avoided or at best prevented.
However, such digital technologies have their blindside. Sometimes what is offered on the
digital marketing platform is not exactly what the client or customer gets. Besides this kind of
technology is energy intensive with the attendant problem of cost which can be driven higher
as a result.
Another ethical issue was the introduction of the much-hyped Scan & Go where customers
were meant to use smart phones to order their purchases but was soon discontinued due to
customer apathy since it was error prone and difficult to scale.3
However, the there is room to watch how the use of blockchain will pan out as more
companies take it up and make it more accessible.
Secondly, digitisation of operations has broken new fronters in personnel recruitment.
Previously, companies small and big alike relied on the traditional recruitment procedures
where physical face to face interviews would sieve the interviewees and then opt for the
filtrate. However as has been seen from experience human beings can be prejudiced even
subconsciously. (Maran Mustafa,2014)4 (John F. Dovidio et al 2009) 5
This informed the opportune move to digital recruitment and as seen of late, it has been
necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The advantages of this techno recruitment trends are:
faster screening of applicants, removal of biases in the recruitment process and improved
performance in the Human Resource departments, among others.
Yet this system of digital recruitment has its limitations. Sometime AI backfire over it much
hyped efficacy. A report the National Bureau of Economic Research in USA 6 confirmed that
resumes with white-sounding names receive 50% more calls for interviews than identical
resumes with black-sounding names.
While AI has proved far much more superior to human recruitment, it must be noted on
ethical basis that a programme digital mor otherwise that does not provide fair level ground in
work force is unacceptable. Eyes cannot be shut to the fact that these digitised programmes
are after all programmed by human beings and their programmers’ idiosyncrasies and
prejudices can be inadvertently or advertenty encoded into the system.
It would be therefore prudent to employ a hybrid of this system as both would be more
efficient in complimenting each other.
Another way in which digital technologies can be said to have revolutionized workplaces in
organisations is through automation. This provides businesses with the opportunities not only
for efficiency. Take for instance the automation of banking teller systems ATMS. Even
though the first of such machines were invented more that 50 years ago its proliferation into a
commercially viable enterprise came in the 80’s. The initial fear was that apart for leading to
mass redundancies in the banking sector, it would require lots of resources in reskilling
manpower to manage them. Incidentally this phantom challenge had the reverse effect. - more
employment of manpower to manage the ATMs. The use of ATMs has contributed to a
cashless society. In addition, it has nurtured digital payments and purchases.
However, like any other technology, the ATM with all its glamour has come with challenges
and other ethical considerations. First, there has been the problem of ATM fraud case has
increased astronomically( Paramjit Kaur, 2018).7 Added to this s the issue of PIN access
which can create problems if forgotten and the banks may take time to sort out
1. How digitalization changes the workplace ol. 8, No. 1, 3‐12
doi:10.17708/DRMJ.2019.v08n01a01
2. .https://www.businessinsider.com
3. Retailcustome experience.com
4. The Role of Human Resources Management Practices Represented by Employee’s
5. Recruitment and Training and Motivating in Realization Competitive Advantage
6. The Nature of Contemporary Prejudice: Insights from Aversive Racism
