Management Structures and Functions

This chapter discusses the organizational challenges that businesses face when they pursue data ethics management and the development, in response to these challenges, of new organizational roles and structures to manage data ethics. The nature of data ethics management requires organizations to move away from traditional compliance or quality control check modes and towards prevention of ethically problematic actions. Some organizations have proactively begun to develop new organizational roles and structures that can help standardize data ethics management practices. New roles, such as the Data Ethics Officer, have emerged, as have new entities such as the Data or AI Ethics Committee. These new positions and committees make difficult data ethics decisions and translate new knowledge about data ethics into organizational practices. After introducing these new structures and functions, we discuss the importance of role clarity (i.e., who is responsible for data ethics) within organizations and its relationship with developing organizational structure to support data ethics management.