Purpose Digital transformation leverages digital technologies to change current processes and introduce new processes in any organisation’s business model, customer/user experience and operational processes. Artificial intelligence plays a significant role in achieving DT. As DT is touching each sphere of humanity, AI led DT is raising many fundamental questions. These questions raise concerns for the systems deployed, how they should behave, what risks they carry, the monitoring and evaluation control we have in hand, etc. These issues call for the need (...) to integrate ethics in AI led DT. The purpose of this study is to develop an “AI led ethical digital transformation framework”. Design/methodology/approach Based on the literature survey, various existing business ethics decision-making models were synthesised. The authors mapped essential characteristics such as intensity and the individual, organisational and opportunity factors of ethics models with the proposed AI led ethical DT. The DT framework is evaluated using a thematic analysis of 23 expert interviews with relevant AI ethics personas from industry and society. The qualitative data of the interviews and opinion data has been analysed using MAXQDA software. Findings The authors have explored how AI can drive the ethical DT framework and have identified the core constituents of developing an AI led ethical DT framework. Backed by established ethical theories, the paper presents how DT pillars are related and sequenced to ethical factors. This research provides the potential to examine theoretically sequenced ethical factors with practical DT pillars. Originality/value The study establishes deduced and induced ethical value codes based on thematic analysis to develop guidelines for the pursuit of ethical DT. The authors identify four unique induced themes, namely, corporate social responsibility, perceived value, standard benchmarking and learning willingness. The comprehensive findings of this research, supported by a robust theoretical background, have substantial implications for academic research and corporate applicability. The proposed AI led ethical DT framework is unique and can be used for integrated social, technological and economic ethical research. (shrink)

Social theories of giving have often been shaped by anthropological accounts that present it as a form of pre-market reciprocal exchange, yet this exchangist discourse obscures important contemporary giving practices. This article discusses two types of giving that confound the exchangist model: (1) sharing practices within the family; and (2) free gifts to strangers. Once we reject understandings of giving derived from analyses of non-modern economies, it is possible to see that the gift economy is not a rare survival but (...) rather is a central element of contemporary society and indeed the contemporary economy. The task for social theory is not to anachronize giving but to make sense of the variety and complexity of actual contemporary giving practices. This article offers the categories of free and positional gifts as a contribution to this analysis. (shrink)

How should critical realists do social theory? This paper considers several issues raised by this question, in response to Jamie Morgan’s recent article in this journal, and comments on his discussion of norm circles.