Conceptualizing Corporate Digital Responsibility: A Digital Technology Development Perspective

Managers and scholars require an appropriate conceptualization, as well as reliable and valid measures of corporate digital responsibility (CDR), to better understand and tackle issues involving CDR. Therefore, by combining insights from extant research on corporate responsibility in the digital realm, this article proposes to distinguish CDR into corporate digitized responsibility and corporate digitalized responsibility. Specifically, corporate digitized responsibility includes unbiased data acquisition, data protection, and data maintenance; corporate digitalized responsibility involves appropriate data interpretation, objective predicted results and tackling value conflicts in data-driven decision-making. Moreover, we also provide a valid measurement for CDR, and the findings demonstrate that a positive relationship exists between CDR and corporate digital performance. Finally, this article offers some suggestions for managers on how to tackle CDR issues and utilize digital technologies in appropriate ways.

Automated summary

By combining insights from previous studies on corporate responsibility in the digital realm, this article proposes a distinction for corporate digital responsibility (CDR), and provides a valid measurement for it. The findings demonstrate a positive relationship between CDR and corporate digital performance. Finally, some suggestions are offered for managers to tackle CDR issues and utilize digital technologies appropriately.