The virtuous smart city : Bridging the gap between ethical principles and practices of data-driven innovation
Loading...
Access rights
openAccess
publishedVersion
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
This publication is imported from Aalto University research portal.
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
Authors
Date
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
11
Series
Data & Policy, Volume 5, pp. 1-11
Abstract
For smart cities, data-driven innovation promises societal benefits and increased well-being for residents and visitors. At the same time, the deployment of data-driven innovation poses significant ethical challenges. Although cities and other public-sector actors have increasingly adopted ethical principles, employing them in practice remains challenging. In this commentary, we use a virtue-based approach that bridges the gap between abstract principles and the daily work of practitioners who engage in and with data-driven innovation processes. Inspired by Aristotle, we describe practices of data-driven innovation in a smart city applying the concepts of virtue and phronêsis, meaning good judgment of and sensitivity to ethical issues. We use a dialogic case-study approach to study two cases of data-driven innovation in the city of Helsinki. We then describe as an illustration of how our approach can help bridge the gap between concrete practices of data-driven innovation and high-level principles. Overall, we advance a theoretically grounded, virtue-based approach, which is practice oriented and linked to the daily work of data scientists and other practitioners of data-driven innovation. Further, this approach helps understand the need for and importance of individual application of phronêsis, which is particularly important in public-sector organizations that can experience gaps between principle and practice. This importance is further intensified in cases of data-driven innovation in which, by definition, novel and unknown contexts are explored.Description
Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Other note
Citation
Lähteenoja, V & Karhu, K 2023, 'The virtuous smart city : Bridging the gap between ethical principles and practices of data-driven innovation', Data & Policy, vol. 5, e15, pp. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1017/dap.2023.9