Ethical matrix card
The ethical matrix is a tool designed to help decision-makers with the assessment of the ethical principles in relation to different stakeholders. The tool tries to account for the moral complexity of the real world and aims to help understand the overall impact on the stakeholders and society of disruptive technology adoption.
- Stage of adoption: Ante-adoption, Post-adoption
- Roles: Overseeing roles, Technical Roles, Engaging roles
- Methodology
- Team: 8-10 members (with multi-disciplinary backgrounds)
- Duration: 30 minutes
- Materials: Template matrix for assessment, A step-by-step example, Other resources
Template matrix for the assessment
The assessment aim is to understand, from the stakeholders’ perspective, how significant the different principles are for an ethical adoption of disruptive technologies. . To facilitate the assessment a scale of values from 1-to-5 was considered for this process:
1 = Not relevant: the DT adoption will not significantly affect the ethical aspects in the area of applicability
2 = Low: the DT adoption will have a low/negligible impact on the ethical aspects in the area of applicability
3 = Moderate: the DT adoption might have some impact on the ethical aspects in the area of applicability
4 = High: the DT adoption will certainly affect the ethical aspects in the area of applicability
5 = Critical: the DT adoption will have a significant effect on the ethical aspects in the area of applicability which need immediate attention
| Stakeholder impacted | Citizen | Business | Developer | Use case owner | Civil servant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1. Environmental sustainability | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| P2. Justice, equality, and the rule of law | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| P3. Transparency and explainability | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| P4. Responsibility and accountability | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| P5. Safety and security | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| P6. Privacy | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| P7. Building an ethical culture involving employees | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| P8. Retaining human contacts | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| P9. Ethical public-private cooperation | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| P10. Continuous evaluation and improvement | 2 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 3 |
Step-by-step assessment
1. The team is assembled and a team coordinator is appointed (e.g., the project manager is the team coordinator).
2. The team identifies the main stakeholders affected by the adoption of the DT.
3. The team establishes the evaluation scale for the assessment of potential impacts of the DT adoption process (e.g., Likert scale from one (not relevant) to five (critical)).
4. Each member of the team fills in the matrix template, aiming to assess the potential impact of the DT for each stakeholder category identified (from their own perspective), based on the evaluation scale decided.
5. Submit the evaluations to the team coordinator. There are two possible cases to consider:
a. There are no substantial differences between the evaluations; therefore, the coordinator will calculate the average scores. The average scores for each principle and type of stakeholder are geometric averages of the evaluation scores from the members participating in the assessment process. The geometric average indicates the central tendency of the scores assigned during the process. The overall average score for each ethical principle is the arithmetic average of the scores by type of stakeholders.
b. There are significant variations among the team members' evaluations; thus, the coordinator will address and reconcile them together with the team to determine the final scores.
6. Prioritise the ethical principles based on the scores obtained.
The prioritisation of the ethical principles could help the use case owner during the risk assessment phase. It will help focus on particular risks relevant to the ethical principles with the highest priority during the evaluation process. However, the risks associated with the lower-ranked ethical principles should not be completely discarded as their status might change during the process due to factors not included during the initial assessment phase.