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Journal of Business Ethics

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04-01-2021 | Original Paper

Business Ethics and Quantification: Towards an Ethics of Numbers

Author: Gazi Islam

Published in: Journal of Business Ethics | Issue 2/2022

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Abstract

Social practices of quantification, or the production and communication of numbers, have been recognized as important foundations of organizational knowledge, as well as sources of power. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated digital tools to capture and extract numerical data from social life, however, there is a pressing need to understand the ethical stakes of quantification. The current study examines quantification from an ethical lens, to frame and promote a research agenda around the ethics of quantification. After a brief overview of quantification research and its uses in state and market organization, I discuss quantification in terms of three core subprocesses—capture, specification, and appropriation, illustrating and identifying ethical concerns around each process. Linking these processes to the performative effects of measures, I present a working model of quantification from which the discussion builds ideas for developing a research agenda around quantification.

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Title: Business Ethics and Quantification: Towards an Ethics of Numbers
Author: Gazi Islam
Publication date: 04-01-2021
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Business Ethics / Issue 2/2022
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04694-z

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