An ethical look at the CSR approach to the fever of the digital transformation of companies: a critique of the social issue and the role of human resources in the process of digitization of the world of work.
Nowadays, the main variables of diagnosis and analysis of the business world are the digital transformation, the digital mobility of employment and the ecological transition. This observation poses the problem of the socio-cultural, digital and ecological mutations that the social corpus and the business world are confronted with, as well as the interest and the stakes of digitalization. Also, these rapid evolutions are constantly under the pressure of the tyranny of artificial intelligence which, although driven by human intelligence, risks to escape its control and create its own universe of command. As if man were fighting to catch up with and surpass the perfection of his own invention, companies are launching themselves into the race to digitally transform their activities; either to protect themselves against the perverse effects of the advance of artificial intelligence, or to protect themselves against possible digital fraud; or to adapt to the demands of production and the market. According to a reading of the sociology of organizations and the CSR approach, several factors and roles are to be considered, regarding the perception and levels of accountability in the advancement of the digital thing.
To go further, it is important to briefly understand the conceptual characteristics of digitalization, its pillars and some examples of completed practices in this area.
Conceptual characteristics of the digitalization of a company
Digital transformation, considered as one of the aspects of digitization, is one of the practices[1] that have shaken up the business world in recent years. But how can we define it and what does this expression imply?
At first glance, digital transformation refers to the changes associated with the integration of digital technology into all aspects of the functioning of human society. Even if all aspects of human society are concerned, this expression is frequently used in the case of the digital development of companies.
Indeed, these new technologies upset the economic models and allow new actors to emerge and worry some traditional companies which must evolve and for others, reinvent themselves at the risk of gradually disappearing with time. In order to get to the heart of our article, we will not dwell on the details of its definition approaches, otherwise we could have appealed to the theoretical origins of digitalization.
As an organizational practice, digitalization, for companies, is based on a number of essential pillars:
- Perpetual mobility in connection;
- The abolition of spatial and temporal barriers in real time;
- The application of Internet objects to the digitization of physical objects of everyday life, such as cars, household appliances (…);
- The construction of “big data”, related to the exploitation of data;
- The universalization and democratization of the Internet and its uses.
In France, for example, there are some successful examples of digitalization, but sprinkled with bits of consequence. The best known example of digitalization is the disruption of the cab and VTC market with the advent of the American company Uber, which even gave rise to the expression “uberisation”, considered one of the “buzzwords” of the year 2016.
The most successful digitalization models are the cases, of SOCIETE GENERALE, which, as early as 2013, understood the importance of digital transformation and defined its priorities in three main areas:
- Imagining the bank of tomorrow with a co-creation approach involving employees via their corporate social network;
- Implementing office automation tools for employees (Digital for All program);
- Creating attractiveness, through human resources, for recruitment, work environment, employee training, in a word, creating the conditions for well-being at work.
There is also the digital transformation of STARBUCKS, which has been done in three areas:
- Engaging users;
- Offer a physical and digital experience;
- Putting digital at the heart of its system.
And finally, the case of AIR FRANCE, which based its digital transformation on three approaches: centralization, corporate culture and innovation.
Interests and stakes of the digitalization of a company.
When we stay in the digital perspective of these mutations and, in order to counterbalance the undisciplined nature of artificial intelligence, the anxiety of companies, which want to be modern and connected, crystallizes on the search for solutions of acculturation and professional and even social adaptation of workers to this world that is becoming digital. Basically, the socio-cultural migrations of the current market and consumer context impose certain innovations.
The analysis of one of the variables of the law of the market shows that the well-being of the company is conditioned by the constraints of the demand and thus, the requirements of the consumer. Today, 60% of the production, packaging and distribution of consumable goods is digital. For example, electronic consumables are generated by digital applications. Efficient logistics and transportation of the majority of consumable and non-consumable goods are driven by digital applications. Product quality control and the certification process, which guarantee transparency, are partly provided by digital technology. Needless to say, the production process itself has become almost dependent on it. Communication, marketing and advertising activities also owe their structure and relevance to digital content.
Around these changes, based on the primacy of the virtual, are also developing types of consumer goods, communication, and consequently, other trades as, Community management, Social media management, Branding, Digital Marketing …). Today, almost all production and support activities of a modern company are digitized: software or applications already govern the entire chain of design, production, packaging, distribution and even market return.
It is therefore obvious to note that the only thing that, for the moment, is not yet operational in all organizations, to complete the virtualization of the business world, is the functional integration of digitalization in the corpus of the company, in terms of corporate culture. Otherwise, there is already an application for designing, for manufacturing, for storing, for transporting, for selling, for buying, for consuming, and even for destroying, there is an application for that. In fact, the most important thing for which there is not yet a digital application is the negative impact of digitalization on the daily life of man. The constraints of digitalization are hardly weighed. What is the value, for example, of a banking policy that draws its relevance from digital technology, in areas with low literacy rates in certain regions of the world? If everything becomes digital, everything is connected, won’t digitalization ultimately de-socialize the socializing function of work? Or will it not de-socialize or even de-humanize social relations, which are already in crisis because of the push of capitalist faith?
The stakes of the current race to digitalization are comparable to those of the arms race during the cold war between the world’s geostrategic governance blocs. Strategic intelligence, productivity control, competitiveness, quantitative and qualitative customer satisfaction, for the quest and consolidation of market shares, are all parameters that condition these issues. It is also important not to lose sight of the desire of companies to protect themselves against industrial piracy and the abuses of artificial intelligence. Another no less important issue is that digitalization allows to reduce to a minimum the negative impacts of the company’s activities on the environment. In reality, in form, the world is already digitalized; but we are trying to find an ethical legitimacy to the digitalization of companies. This is why many of the concerns that we observe in management debates consist in knowing to whom to entrust this task in companies and with what methods?
To try to answer this question, some informed minds think that human resources could play a leading role, given that all communication functions regarding innovation and change are already attributed to them in companies. However, digital transformation involves the skills and responsibility of all areas of the company.
Primacy of the role of human resources in the digital transformation of a company.
The classic managerial view is that human resources have undeniable capacities to manage and develop all sectors of a company’s activities, because they are considered the linchpin of the company’s smooth running. Thus, we tend to entrust them with the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all processes that can have a lasting impact on the company. Even the era of digitalization, which is increasingly in vogue in the current context of strategic management of organizations, does not escape this perception. So, in practice, what role could they play in this process?
Firstly, it is believed that the responsibility of implementing a digital dynamic within the company must fall to human resources:
- Re-adapt and develop a corporate culture by integrating digital into all stages of production;
- Admit that digital technology is a necessary approach for the company’s productivity and sustainability objectives;
- Develop tools and means of internal communication, specific to the company, which will generate a change in the habits and sclerotic practices in the work and the blossoming of talents;
- Plan a training and internal capacity building program, since digital technology cannot be invented but must be innovated.
Secondly, they can also encourage workers to adapt to digital technology.
This phase of socio-cultural and technological mutation consists, for employees, in understanding and integrating new Knowledge, Skills and Practices (KSP); new objects and work tools, which generate changes in behavior. Human resources can use the techniques of the Behavior Change Communication (BCC) method at this level, based on the KAP surveys;
Then, human resources can develop a motivation and capacity building program to encourage interest in digital, through different practices (digital marketing, UX design). They could use certain theories used in social sciences, in particular, the sociology of organizations, to boost the digitalization process. These include Pavlov’s theory, which can help stimulate the appetite for digital and the theory of resilience, which can facilitate and accelerate the adaptation of workers to this new situation.
Thirdly, it is believed that human resources are able to take into account the work environment and the particularities of the company, before starting the digitalization process.
Develop methods and tools for digitalization adapted to the realities of the company (culture, employee mindset, production and communication techniques and technologies);
- Establish, beforehand, a logic of adequacy between the functionalities of each of the features with the obligations of the company;
- Analyze these functional needs in order to select the software that is likely to best meet them. Generally, the choice is made according to the needs of the users, the size and the working methods of the company.
Fourth, and finally, other Experts believe that human resources can anticipate future challenges and needs, to better succeed in digitalization.
Make people aware that the digital transition is in perpetual evolution, with a constant emergence of efficient tools (Agile methods – Lean, Design Thinking, Design Sprint …).
Understand and see further, to anticipate the needs of teams in terms of digital;
Detecting new skills to be developed to improve work, project management, organization and consequently, the competitiveness of the company, in collaboration with other teams or departments.
From the above, we can see that in many ways, human resources can provide a methodological approach to certain innovations within a company. But can this be beneficial and extrapolable to all kinds of innovations and in all contexts?
Criticisms of the omnipotence of human resources in the digital transition of an organization.
Human resources, because of their transversal view of how a company operates, have the skills to take responsibility for certain changes. However, it is not excluded that the CSR approach formulates certain criticisms on the implications of digitalization, the omnipotence and the omnipresence of their role. For some organizations, such as HR PATH, digital transformation is undoubtedly the most important revolution in companies, and one in which human resources play a key role, ignoring the fact that a revolution in a company that does not take into account the psycho-social dimension of consumers may be relevant, but it will eventually come up against the sensitivity, the ethical and moral susceptibility of stakeholders. People think that digital transformation is only urgent for employees; on the contrary, without any risk of being mistaken, it is much more urgent for stakeholders than for the company and its employees. From a CSR perspective, one of the difficulties is to initiate an innovation without understanding the opportunity, without defining a coherent mechanism for engaging all stakeholders. So, if we accept digitalization as the pinnacle of quality in production, propaganda or branding strategies, the moral question is to know if the final consumer is as “digitalized” as the production and marketing processes of the product, in order to accept it easily? It is all very well to say that digitalization makes life easier for the consumer, but on what condition, at what price?
It is precisely because the answer to these questions is not obvious, as far as the ethical, moral and even human consequences of digitalization are concerned, that some people believe that it is enough to highlight the role of human resources for the pill to pass. Sorry, the pill of unilateral digitalization can only have an impact on the employees that the company will have recycled, conditioned and not on consumers and other stakeholders. Digitization without humanization, without social inclusion, is like an innovation that brings an invention but does not serve the collective cause. Because, to put it like Mahatma Gandhi, “what you do for me, without me, you do against me”. Hence the question, digital transformation for what and for whom?
On the other hand, if we believe that digitalization is an innovation, then it fully integrates the fields of application of the formalization of a CSR approach in a company. Digitization is therefore an object of work for CSR, which is the focus of its intervention, in the same way that human resources are a support service and an internal stakeholder in the implementation of the CSR approach within the company. We cannot therefore use one part of the “whole” to influence and modify the organizational and functional structure of the entire system. One of the goals of the CSR approach being the search for innovation and competitiveness, it also integrates this dynamic and also all the changes that are not only digital.
The CSR approach acts qualitatively on all the company’s operating units: production unit (factory), support units (administration, human resources, environment, communication, marketing, and many others). The effectiveness of human resources in the digitization process can only be demonstrated if they are used as part of a steering team for the implementation of the CSR approach. Indeed, it may happen that, for example, the steering committee, in the execution of its specifications, needs a profile in the field of digitization, environment, quality, communication, accounting (…), at this time, it defines the job and entrusts the recruitment to human resources. The same is true for the role of any other department of the company, represented in the steering committee. To implement a more exhaustive and strategically relevant digitalization, it is necessary to rely on the expertise of the CSR approach.
This is to say that an efficient digitization must take into account the interests of all stakeholders and their anchorage point with that of the company, but also and above all the inclusive analysis of the value chain in which this company evolves; something that goes beyond the simple communicational and transformational perception of human resources.
Conclusion
All in all, three essential things should be retained from this critique. First, digital transformation, although subject to the tyranny of artificial intelligence evolution, can only have an impact if it integrates the different interests of the stakeholders. Secondly, it facilitates efficient time management, competitiveness, strategic market visibility and minimizing the undesirable impact of the organization on the environment and ecosystem. And thirdly, the implementation of an innovation, whether digital or not, cannot be the prerogative of human resources alone.
For an innovation to be relevant and effective, it must be based on the competitive characteristics of each department of the company. Moreover, human resources services themselves need to be digitized. Therefore, as much as human resources can play an important methodological role in the process of digital transformation of the company, so can departments such as environment, safety, health, quality, finance, public relations and even general management. The deduction from this analysis is that entrusting the digital transformation actions of a company to the sole function and competence of human resources is like entrusting the security of a garrison to the sole competence and vigilance of a soldier.
However, the only managerial approach that offers a broad federating vision and a methodology to everything that concerns innovations in an organization is the CSR approach. In our opinion, digital transformation, as a dynamic and complete process, can only be effective and efficient if it is conceived and implemented under the dome of the CSR methodology, which has strategies for the sustainable implementation of the precepts and foundations of sustainable development, traceability criteria, adapted communication supports, and the perpetuation of innovations, and therefore of the company itself.
