Small and medium enterprises' (SMEs) digital footprints and their ethical implications during the COVID-19 outbreak and beyond
Lead Research Organisation:
Brunel University London
Department Name: Brunel Business School
Abstract
The aim of this project is to help SMEs deal with the management of digital footprints that increased usage of digital tools is creating, especially after the Covid-19 outbreak. It answers the questions: What are the main ethical concerns regarding Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) digital footprints, in terms of transparency strategies of organisations and equal opportunities for individuals? What are the processes that can help organisations understand their organisational digital footprints better? What would a transparency strategy look like both at an organisational (employer) and individual (employee) level?
Digitisation of the business environment creates digital footprints such as electronic information each employee or organisation creates, transfers or receives in the form of emails, document-sharing, calls or chats. Digital footprints blur the boundaries between the individuals and organisations, which creates various risks in transparency, equality and inclusion. SMEs are not equipped to handle such an avalanche of digital footprints, particularly due to the COVID-19 crisis), which blur the boundaries between organisational and personal information. With an increasing portion of organisational and individual activities leave digital footprints in electronic-databases, many SMEs take advantage of such easily available online data to help shape their management, recruitment, and communication strategies. The more personal information included in the equation, the more it interferes with the privacy of the individuals concerned. Striving to carve out in the digital world, many SMEs are taking minimal and vague steps. Thus, these questions emerge; to whom does this digital footprint belong and who, ultimately, has the control of it, are the critical questions for organisations to consider.
Our project aims to develop an analytical framework that helps SMEs to better understand their digital footprints and their ethical implication both at the organisational and individual level. Through our innovative approach of netnography, the project will be undertaken through a review of case studies and a collection of new information via digital ethnography.
Two SMEs' digital footprints will be tracked and observed through participation in some online activities, mainly through social media, company websites, and other digital platforms. The team will undertake a total of 25 interviews with representatives of 10 SMEs, including leaders and employees. We will analyse data using a mixed-method approach. We will organise a number of virtual workshops with industry partners and other stakeholders.
This work will result in academic publications, blogs and infographics for SMEs and employees. We will also provide briefings for business support entities and policymakers. We will disseminate the result via media channels. The outcome of the project will transpire a strong perspective in the future of work scenarios. It advances the understanding of how digital footprints are reshaping work, by addressing transparency strategies to help better understand SMEs digital footprints and its ethical implications.
Digitisation of the business environment creates digital footprints such as electronic information each employee or organisation creates, transfers or receives in the form of emails, document-sharing, calls or chats. Digital footprints blur the boundaries between the individuals and organisations, which creates various risks in transparency, equality and inclusion. SMEs are not equipped to handle such an avalanche of digital footprints, particularly due to the COVID-19 crisis), which blur the boundaries between organisational and personal information. With an increasing portion of organisational and individual activities leave digital footprints in electronic-databases, many SMEs take advantage of such easily available online data to help shape their management, recruitment, and communication strategies. The more personal information included in the equation, the more it interferes with the privacy of the individuals concerned. Striving to carve out in the digital world, many SMEs are taking minimal and vague steps. Thus, these questions emerge; to whom does this digital footprint belong and who, ultimately, has the control of it, are the critical questions for organisations to consider.
Our project aims to develop an analytical framework that helps SMEs to better understand their digital footprints and their ethical implication both at the organisational and individual level. Through our innovative approach of netnography, the project will be undertaken through a review of case studies and a collection of new information via digital ethnography.
Two SMEs' digital footprints will be tracked and observed through participation in some online activities, mainly through social media, company websites, and other digital platforms. The team will undertake a total of 25 interviews with representatives of 10 SMEs, including leaders and employees. We will analyse data using a mixed-method approach. We will organise a number of virtual workshops with industry partners and other stakeholders.
This work will result in academic publications, blogs and infographics for SMEs and employees. We will also provide briefings for business support entities and policymakers. We will disseminate the result via media channels. The outcome of the project will transpire a strong perspective in the future of work scenarios. It advances the understanding of how digital footprints are reshaping work, by addressing transparency strategies to help better understand SMEs digital footprints and its ethical implications.
| Description | Results from Interviews and Podcast: We arranged six episodes of podcasts and conducted 21 individual interviews during phase 1 and phase 2 of the data collection stages. We approached industry experts and academics to understand their perspectives on the issues surrounding electronically stored data. During Covid-19, digital transformation was a big challenge for small and medium enterprises. They rushed to the digital platforms to run their business operations. One of the industry experts in our podcasts series defined digital transformation as: Digital transformation means fundamentally, your ability to engage with customers right from their first interest to post-sales support, or with your supplier right from putting the 1st order to receiving and paying them all in terms of creating products that people can consume. The online business operations, remote working, and communication with colleagues and customers via different digital tools raised various concerns about data protection, data security and ethics. Another industry expert engaged, and design and fashion expressed digital business transformation in the following words: For the digital platforms, like receiving the purchase orders or sending submits or making the bookings for the shipments where you are receiving everything from different parts of digital platforms like SharePoint transfer. So, everything is much quicker right now. In the podcast series, the academics and industry experts were of the view that whenever went online we left digital footprints behind. They clarified that by digital footprint they meant the shadows and impressions people left behind whenever they went online. They could be active or passive. When knowingly we perform activities online, we create active digital footprints. Sometimes, we leave our digital footprints passively in form of cookies, location, browsing history and so on. Regardless of whether active or passive, digital footprints are traceable activities which have implications for individuals as well as organisations. One of the academics said: The passive footprint is the data which you leave behind without knowing this data, would be used by the other party. The active digital footprint is where the user has deliberately shared information about themselves or either about their view, visions, their opinion, using social media, or any other website. They further argued that the person who produced a passive digital footprint should be given a chance to review and eliminate it to prevent any commercialization or any other further use of their own digital data. This argument assumed that common people did not have access, knowledge, or awareness of the usage of such data by a third party. One of the academics in the podcasts believed the core issue for policy implication was how digital footprints could be used and managed ethically because people are not well-informed about it. Nevertheless, we cannot generalise the assumption that customers and employees are not informed about the use of their digital footprints. They simply do not bother about it until something negative happens. As individuals, we are concerned about protecting our privacy and personal data online but practically we do less for it. For example, recent research suggests that consumers are less likely to protect it or leave social media altogether even when they do not trust that their data is safe (Premuzic & Nahai, 2017). This is because online presence has dominated our daily routines. One of our respondents from academia expressed similar feelings and said: I think there's not enough consideration if we think about it more broadly about where our data is being used and hosted on what platforms. I think there's not enough consideration of equity and inclusion on digital platforms. We don't think about who is owning and hosting our data and what they're doing with the analysis of data. We are living in an era where we spend most of our time online and produce enormous personal data through our activities on the internet (Nahai & Premuzic, 2017). According to the Digital 2021: Global Overview report, out of the 7.83 billion population on this earth, 5.22 billion are mobile, 4.66 billion are internet and 4.20 billion are active social media users. The amount of data created, consumed, and stored has dramatically increased due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as more worked from home, shopped online, and used online entertainment options more often (Statista Research Department, 2022). The research from Statista shows that in 2019 this amount of data was 41 zettabytes whereas it reached 79 zettabytes in 2022 and it is further estimated to reach at 181 by zettabytes. Thus, academics, industry experts, and policymakers should accept the realities of unrestrained digital data being produced every day by internet users. Individuals as well the businesses particularly SMEs have limited options to offer for handling and controlling digital footprints. This is because the data they hold for individuals is largely available - totally or partially - on other platforms. Therefore, harassing only the businesses to show responsibility in data protection, privacy and transparency does not fit for the purpose until the individual themselves and other public and private organisations have the same data response in a similar fashion. The accountability of electronically stored data is a collective liability. Nonetheless, data protection, security and privacy were the other main themes that emerged from our collected data. Data protection, security, and privacy In response to our questions, the respondents immensely talked about the issues of data protection, security and privacy. They argued that it was crucial for organisations, either small or big, to implement a robust process of safeguarding the digital data they collect through various means for their businesses; keeping them secured from accidental damage; protecting them from internal, and external threats; respecting the privacy of individuals; determining the authorised access; and design an effective accountability mechanism of handling and controlling the data. This process will help them to protect the information from corruption, compromise, or loss; prevent data breaches and damage to reputation. By implementing processes, organisations can also better meet regulatory requirements. However, some other respondents were of the view that the issues of privacy, personal data use, and transparency are not always sufficiently clarified, nor are the downstream implications and repercussions (potentially, adverse) on the user. This implies that organisations lack providing any training for employees to improve their understanding of the consequences of going online. It is pertinent that customers and employees should be kept informed and have the option to remove or delete data or aspects of their digital footprint. They might also wish to know or have control over how their data is being used, shared, and /or managed. Among our respondents, one of the industry experts commented: "everything is shared through emails or WhatsApp or different sharing platforms. So, it is the way it has changed everything a lot, but eventually, you are never sure that the information that you sent is guaranteed this is going to be safe because we have seen some issues where some people are just copying your email and changing the details of it and they are just using your name as they are you". Speaking on the same issue, another respondent commented: Well, to be honest about the security, it is a question mark for me all the time because there might be a loophole and if the information might be getting out, we always have NDA's or let's say contracts with the people that we are working with. But I'm working from home. The increasing reliance on digital technologies and growing focus on online data collection have raised privacy concerns among internet users (Flyverbom, Matten & Deibert, 2019). According to Martin (2020), "privacy violations are valued akin to security violations in creating distrust in firms and in consumer (un)willingness to engage with firms". He further argues, this is mandatory for the firms to find reasonable expectations of privacy of consumers. The respondents argued that it was difficult for small organisations to fully implement data protection, security, and privacy because of their limited financial resources. Another academic argued that if we were not seeing the implementation of data protection, security and privacy at the highest level in the companies that had enormous capacity in terms of talent and resources to get this done, the SMEs were far down on the chain and so were putting together this from a patchwork of vendors and suppliers. One of the challenges for SME's is that they do not have the resources in terms of financial resources or staff to be able to get the kinds of solutions that fit their purposes and so they end up with solutions that are too heavy on data capture, or they are not focused enough, and so no wonder they are feeling like it's a minefield of having to navigate. Because they don't have the capacity to design the systems, design the questions, and design the data capture to fit exactly what they need. They are just taking sledgehammers to push pins, as argued by one of the academics among our respondents. However, this does not mean that there is no hope for SMEs. They can adopt the robust process of digital data handling like any other big company within their given resources. The size, talent and resources become out of the question if organisations have an efficient policy in place and trained staff for safeguarding digital information. The extant literature presents little or no evidence of what arrangements small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have in place or what processes they adopt to train their employees about the consequences of their online activities. Also, whether they have the financial capacity to implement such training programmes. Digital ethics On one hand, widespread use of technology is driving the economy, politics, and everyday life and on the other hand, the risks are also great, as our online interactions always generate data that is collected, stored, sold, bought, and acquired by third parties. Adopting digital ethics such as transparency, accountability and explainability, is crucial for building trust and confidence in digital technology. Open surveillance and a growing concern about issues of privacy are some of the major challenges of this digital age. Therefore, the ethical issues in handling, managing, and processing digital footprints created by different stakeholders online have become the centre of attention in the existing literature. Among our respondents, one of the academics defined trust in sociological terms as "what happens in scenarios where trust is needed, good or bad things could happen. We assume that employers are not misusing employee data for illegal purposes because we trust them, but it could go the other way around. Therefore, employers should be regulated to do the right thing around employee data rather than just trusting them without any other option. Thus, transparency, accountability and explainability are integral parts of digital ethics. An industry expert among our respondents differentiated between personal data and open data. An individual's personal data is protected by law, as it strips off someone's sensitive information. It can be directly traced back to the individual without the need for additional information. The open data can be traded freely without someone's permission, such as gender, email address, postcode, date of birth, and list of friends on social media etc. The confusion and ambiguity between personal data and open data have deep implications for digital ethics. Therefore, digital literacy is necessary for customers and employees to develop an understanding of personal and open data. This was also emphasised by one of our respondents from academia in the following words, "Educate them to encourage individual responsibility. That the population acquires enough knowledge so that they can choose for themselves what to do in each case". However, the existing literature highlights that no online data is personal or private anymore. For example, Nahai and Premuzic (2017) argue that the concept of "personal" once meant "private" does not exist anymore because our online data is widely available on public domains, and we have no direct control over it. However, making personal data more secure can restrict our ability to enjoy free and personalised services online. Therefore, informed consent plays a major role in establishing what to share and what not to share online. Yet, employee anonymous online dissent (EAOD) is controversial in modern digital environments, and it arouses issues of accountability and ethics because someone has access to the anonymised data anyway (Ravazzani & Mazzei, 2018). Ravazzani and Mazzei (2018) further argue that the internalisation of dissent usually causes actor-related tensions in the presence of a lack of accountability and equal participation opportunities. In addition, as argued by Martin (2020), "the mistaken framing of disclosure as proof of anti-privacy behaviour, gives license to firms to act contrary to the interests of consumers". In the digital era, the inescapable nature of advanced artificial intelligence systems has made informed consent a dead commodity because the businesses increasingly rely on algorithms that are data-trained sets of decision rules (Kim & Routledge, 2020). This implies that the firms use the digital data created passively or actively online for the benefit of their businesses regardless of the nature of informed consent. Largely, the respondents were of the view that many existing regulations around the usage of personal data (such as EU's general data protection regulation (GDPR)) where companies had to adhere to stay legally compliant; however there were still grey areas where companies needed to go the extra mile to be as well "ethically compliant" based on individual's privacy preferences - as there might as well be people that did not want to contribute to even an anonymized data set. There was a common opinion among the respondents that low digital literacy, skills, and limited resources - both financial and human - have put SMEs in a difficult position to ensure data protection and data security. Moreover, their reliance on intermediaries such as digital procurement platforms to digitalise their business means that data on customers is largely tracked and monetised by the platforms themselves. These platforms, therefore, need to shoulder the responsibility of ensuring data protection and security of end users such as customers, as well as of business users such as these collective enterprises, given the data they concurrently collect on businesses. They suggested that targeted government support would help SMEs to increase access to digital infrastructure, and procurement of technologies appropriate for effectively managing digital data. Transparency and trust are the other issues associated with digital ethics. They are equally important for customers, employees, and employers. Transparency wins the trust of the stakeholders in organisations (Schnackenberg & Tomlinson, 2016). The respondents argued that providing security of both data and the infrastructure was a challenging activity for many businesses specially for non-tech companies and this was one of the reasons why many companies were preferring to move their systems to the cloud and outsource security as a service rather than keeping this data at on-prem systems and keeping their own resources to undertake all the security related activities. The respondents further suggested that SMEs should always inform their customers/employees of the intended purpose of the use of their data. Abiding with minimal compliance can keep the companies out of trouble however if companies identify and adopt data privacy policies and empower their stakeholders to control the use of their data, they will be trusted in return and can earn even expanded access to data and competitive advantage. They also suggested that SMEs needed to set up their customer data platforms to manage permissions and consent across the entire customer lifecycle and transform data into unified customer profiles that were governed, orchestrated and analysed from a central and secure environment. In response to the ownership of data, the respondents largely agreed that ownership of the data should always remain with the consumers, who should retain the right to modify or delete their data (all or part of it). They further suggested that consumers' awareness is necessary for it. Businesses should provide them with simple and appropriate tools to make it easy for them to do so. Podcast: Series 4 of the Brunel Business School podcast explores digital footprint. It welcomes Brunel University professors, as well as representatives from Tech Mahindra, Cormico, KM London, and Tata Industries, to address 'Digital Transformation in Business.' The series focuses on the issues of digital security ownership and protection, as well as the new digital era catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Academic Perspective One of the academics, Dr. Tabaghedi, who participated in the podcast series explained the two types of digital footprints: passive and active, emphasising that society has a knowledge gap concerning digital footprint awareness, which includes data ownership and management in the digital world. She further mentions the troubling and potentially devastating societal repercussions of personal data breaches on individuals and their influence on their professional performance. Such a threat is amplified since most SMEs are undergoing digital transformation with insufficient digital education. As a result, Dr. Tabaghedi advocates for regulators to take a macro-level position on digital data management. Regulators must develop a stringent digital policy framework to safeguard consumers and communities including the establishment of awareness regarding the commercialisation of data. Dr. Ozlem Aya, lecturer in Strategic Management at Brunel University London echoes similar thoughts concerning individual privacy and the questionable status of seemingly deleted data on the internet such as photos and messages. Noting that despite active individual management of cookies it is virtually impossible to eliminate tracking and data collection- all of which can be useful to create personalisation for user experience. Additionally, Dr. Ayaz discussed the generational differences regarding digitalisation where Generation X are digitally divided and thus, may be at a disadvantage, especially in job applications where employers are increasingly adopting the internet and virtual recruitment post-COVID-19. Industry Perspective Mr Bhushan Patil, Chief Growth Officer - EMEA of Tech Mahindra shared the complexities of Digital Transformation which is the ability for businesses to successfully transact and execute with customers, suppliers or any other ecosystems digitally. He further adds that the front end, of which he refers to as the online stores, middle end (stocks and warehouses) and the back end (supply chain) of a business should be connected and integrated for successful digital transformation process. Mr Patil discussed the adaptation differences between SME's and larger corporations. SMEs were more agile in undertaking digitalisation as it became a matter of survival for most SME business. Alternatively, larger corporations were slower in pace due to guarded measures, often requiring change management in phases. He noted the impact of COVID-19 to work structures as companies adopt work-from-home arrangements, stating that employers must be conscious of employee engagement and organisations are needing to put extra effort to identify drivers of performance. Webinar Report: We found individual understanding of digital footprints and their implications is limited. For example, during our webinar, we used the zoom poll option to engage with the participants and to understand their awareness of digital footprints. We asked them if they had ownership and control of their digital footprints and 46% responded yes, 35% said no, whereas 19% were not sure about it. In this way, 54% of respondents were not certain about the ownership and control of their digital footprints. When we asked them if digital footprint differed between big and small businesses, 89.5% responded positively. Given the COVID-19 limits, technology has grown at a breakneck pace, resulting in fast technological changes in the workplace. However, the management process has been hampered by various factors, including budgetary limits and the need for literacy to adapt to constant technological advances. This implies that SMEs need extra support for data protection and data security, and information transparency to become more digitally ethical. During our Zoom poll on the webinar, 61.5% of the participants also said that SMEs needed more support for this purpose. When we asked the webinar participants who were impacted most by the unethical use of digital footprint and the options were employees, customers, and organisations. Out of these three options, 42% said 'customers', 50% 'organisations' and 8% said employees. Among surveillance, transparency or privacy, the most highlighted issues in relation to digital footprint are privacy. When we asked this question to webinar participants 69% also said privacy was the main issue in managing their digital footprint. |
| Exploitation Route | Our contributions provide a new perspective to the existing research that has highlighted the lack of contextual understanding of the digital footprint for SMEs, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid digital transformation of SMEs. The insights from the SME digital experts showcase that SMEs require some knowledge and skills to take adequate ethical actions to manage their digital footprints. These ethical organisational actions include digital footprint awareness, data protection management, data privacy management and information transparency management. Our project highlights how organisations such as SMEs can understand digital footprint better by identifying digital footprint as: (i) a traceable activity which is generated independently or collaboratively both within the organisation (digitally) and outside on the web; (ii) an entity that has its own identity and role to assist individuals (employees and consumers) in their decision making process by providing transparent information to all stakeholders. The findings coming from the first stages of interviews and netnography contribute to digital footprint awareness by highlighting the SMEs ethical organisational actions in the era of Covid-19. This has not been sufficiently explored both in academia and in the business world, how the big data generated in digital platforms and digital footprint requires SMEs to act ethically. Our findings stress the need for SMEs to encourage digital footprint awareness among businesses and employees which includes awareness of the jeopardy of data usability, the threat of blurry boundaries, data leakage hazard and the challenges of stakeholders' engagement. Moreover, awareness of digital footprint is found to be important to enhance the employees' experience and organisations' performance and value creation. Hence, SMEs need to manage their digital footprint challenges by handling their information transparency, data protection and privacy management. These findings offer important suggestions to SMEs on how to make their employees aware of the importance of digital footprints and their implications. Also, this highlights the need for policymakers/funders to support SMEs to develop relevant skills and capabilities to manage digital footprints at the individual and organisational levels. As individuals, we are concerned about protecting our privacy and personal data online but practically we do less for it. For example, recent research suggests that consumers are less likely to protect it or leave social media altogether even when they do not trust that their data is safe (Premuzic & Nahai, 2017). This implies that education and training programmes should be introduced to the common consumers to make them aware of the consequences of their online activities. Nahai and Premuzic (2017) further argue that the concept of "personal" once meant "private" does not exist anymore because our online data is widely available on public domains, and we have no direct control over it. However, making personal data more secure can restrict our ability to enjoy free and personalised services online. Therefore, informed consent plays a major role in establishing what to share and what not to share online. Yet, employee anonymous online dissent (EAOD) is controversial in modern digital environments, and it arouses issues of accountability and ethics because someone has access to the anonymised data anyway (Ravazzani & Mazzei, 2018). Ravazzani and Mazzei (2018) further argue that the internalisation of dissent usually causes actor-related tensions in the presence of a lack of accountability and equal participation opportunities. In addition, as argued by Martin (2020), "the mistaken framing of disclosure as proof of anti-privacy behaviour, gives license to firms to act contrary to the interests of consumers''. In the digital era, the inescapable nature of advanced artificial intelligence systems has made informed consent a dead commodity because businesses increasingly rely on algorithms that are data-trained sets of decision rules (Kim & Routledge, 2020). This implies that the firms use the digital data created passively or actively online for the benefit of their businesses regardless of the nature of informed consent. Thus, it is pertinent for organisations to have a dedicated person to manage the digital data and ensure transparency and accountability in handling and processing the data of the individuals. The firms must create a responsible way to ethically manage and control the digital footprint data created online. The big organisations have the resources and capabilities to do so. But the question is whether small organisations can ensure the same level of trust, privacy, transparency, and ethics in handling and managing the digital footprints within the organisation. This is interesting to explore the processes of SMEs in managing and controlling digital data ethically, ensuring data privacy and trust, practices of sharing information, applying transparency, and implementing accountability. The purpose of this research is to understand the challenges for SMEs in the management of data and digital footprints in the wake of Covid-19 and beyond. This research has a massive contribution to designing policies and practices for SMEs in handling, managing, and processing digital data. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Government, Democracy and Justice,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
| URL | https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/projects/smes-digital-footprints-and-their-ethical-implications |
| Description | LinkedIn Posts All our LinkedIn posts have received a lot of attention from academics, researchers, business owners, and employees. Our posts have had over 12 000 views, 122 likes, and 169 comments in total. The following are some of the engagement's highlights. The Post 1 on LinkedIn asked the question, 'What does digital footprint mean to you?' The Post received considerable comments on defining the concept of digital footprint. Almost 37 comments were made on the posting including those made by the project research team. The post has more than 3785 viewers so far. The engagement level remained very high for the first post. The participants identified some good examples of active and passive digital footprint by mentioning browsing, e-mail, e-shopping, MedSoS, WhatsApp, YouTube, e-banking, waze, and facetime etc. One of the participants raised the issue of personal branding in the digital era and said that there was a thin line between personal and business digital branding. Most of the participants in our first post described digital footprints in three different ways, the first of which described digital footprints as the history of online-tracing activities. Second, digital footprints question the privacy and transparency of the digital trail created and left in the digital environment, as well as the debate over defining the boundary between personal and professional profiles of an individual. Third, digital footprints question the privacy and transparency of the digital trail created and left in the digital environment. Following the success of our first post, we published our second post on LinkedIn two months later. We didn't get nearly as much engagement on this post as we did on the first. We have gathered six people from various businesses to discuss the issues they encounter in terms of data protection and security, as well as the skills required to overcome these obstacles. Some of the challenges raised in the conversation on post two include navigating GDPR, SMEs' digital literacy, and the gap between knowledge and technical improvements. In comparison to earlier posts, interaction on post three was relatively low. 'Who owns the digital data generated via social and organisational platforms?' we couldn't find a solid answer to this question on post three. However, most of the participants mentioned that the platform's owner is indirectly responsible for securing the data created and communicated across the platform in the digital environment. Across all our postings, our fourth had the least amount of engagement. The Post 4 on LinkedIn raised the questions, 'Has digital technology improved the way you work?', 'How do you train your employees in digital skills?' and 'What ethical concerns came up during the pandemic and how did you respond?'. This Post received 1 comment only. Given the COVID-19's limits, technology has grown at a breakneck pace, resulting in fast technological changes in the workplace. However, the management process has been hampered by various factors, including budgetary limits and the need for literacy to adapt to constant technology advances. Webinar report Our first webinar was organised on 26th of May and it has attracted more than 100 participants from academics, policy makers and SMEs communities. During our webinar, we have used the zoom poll option to engage with the participants and to understand their awareness of digital footprints. Accordingly, our first question was "Do you believe that you have any ownership and control over your digital footprint?" out of 26 participants, 12 of them said 'yes' that they believe they have the ownership and control over their digital footprints, 09 of them said 'no ' and 05 of them said 'maybe' respectively. Our second question was "Do you think that the digital footprint differs between big and small businesses?", to this question, 89.5% said 'yes', 7.7% said 'no' and 3.8% said 'maybe'. Following this question, our third question was "Which of the following categories do you believe could be impacted most by unethical use of digital footprint?" the options were Employees, customers and organizations. Out of these three options 11 choose 'customers', 13 choose 'organisations' and 2 choose 'employees'. Next, we asked "Which of the following ethical implications could be most highlighted issues in relation to digital footprint?" options for these questions were; Surveillance, Transparency and Privacy. Respondents responded in the following way 18 had said it was Privacy, 7 had said it was transparency and only one had said it was surveillance. Our final question was Do you think that SMEs can handle the digital footprint ethically? 38.5% said yes and 61.5% said that they could do but they need more support. Twitter discussion Our first panel discussion was held on December 4, 2021, in Twitter Spaces, and it drew more than ten participants from the academic and SMEs communities. We have posted 8 tweets about digital footprint awareness and invited Twitter users to join our panel discussion via Twitter Space. A larger audience interacted with all our tweets about the panel discussion. Our tweets received 1513 impressions in total. Our panel discussion began with a taster question, 'What is a digital footprint?' We did not receive many responses from the audience at first, but our team members eloquently began to interact with the audience to share their thoughts on digital footprints and their ethical implications. As a result, an hour-long discussion yielded some insightful thoughts on digital footprints. The following are some of the discussion's highlights. There is a knowledge-technology gap; while technology is rapidly changing, knowledge among the public remains idle; and how can educational institutions provide adequate training and education to bridge the knowledge-technology gap? The importance of having policies regarding data privacy, surveillance, GDPR, and cyber security has also been emphasised. Although the discussion was interesting, this method of data collection was weak and ineffective when compared to other methods such as webinars, linked In posts interactions, podcasts, and interviews. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Policy & public services |
| Title | 1st LinkedIn Post for Netnography |
| Description | Netnography is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It is for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts and it is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in online participant observation. Netnography mainly concentrates on reflections and data provided by online communities and explores rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life. It is also more efficient compared to digital ethnography as it tends to be faster and cheaper compared to other ethnography study, as it leverages online archives and everyday technologies to gather and sort relevant data. Netnographic research is faster and cheaper in comparison with ethnographic research. Netnography will help us to explore the types of digital footprints SMEs generated and their ethical implications in relation to how SMEs manage their digital footprints. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Since March 2021, we have started our online data collection process via observation with a netnography approach through two social media platforms: (LinkedIn and twitter). LinkedIn Posts covers our first deliverable because the posts and participants' responses serve our purposes to create blogs. This is our first LinkedIn Post. Our LinkedIn posts have been interacted significantly by a wider audience with exceeding 5200 views in the first post; over 1900 views in the second post and; around 2300 views in the third post and around 2000 views on the fourth post. These four posts also received considerable reactions and over 200 comments fron the SMEs owners, industry practitioners and academics. |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ainurulrosli_digital-footprint-ugcPost-6788030209338720257-uMiW/ |
| Title | 1st Twitter Post for data collection - netnography |
| Description | Netnography is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It is for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts and it is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in online participant observation. Netnography mainly concentrates on reflections and data provided by online communities and explores rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life. It is also more efficient compared to digital ethnography as it tends to be faster and cheaper compared to other ethnography study, as it leverages online archives and everyday technologies to gather and sort relevant data. Netnographic research is faster and cheaper in comparison with ethnographic research. The data collection stage with netnography continued with our Twitter Posts. Twitter ranks as #1 for discovery, making it an excellent tool for researchers. |
| Type Of Material | Data handling & control |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Our post 1 on Twitter had attracted 288 impressions. These interactions have created a considerable amount of meaningful awareness about the digital footprint and its ethical implication among SMEs and scholars. From the start of the debate at the early stage of the pandemic, we understand that there is a limited amount of awareness about cloud computing and its impact with little concern about security and privacy threats. This is mainly because SMEs are not well-experienced and -knowledgeable in terms of the risk associated with disregarding the ethical concerns in digital platforms. Furthermore, they do not have staff with sufficient competencies and knowledge in relation to digital footprint and digital ethics. Nevertheless, it depends on the type of the business and how the SMEs are using technology that creates digital footprints. |
| URL | https://twitter.com/WaheedMughal/status/1456579238291705863 |
| Title | 2nd LinkedIn Post for Netnography |
| Description | Netnography is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It is for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts and it is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in online participant observation. Netnography mainly concentrates on reflections and data provided by online communities and explores rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life. It is also more efficient compared to digital ethnography as it tends to be faster and cheaper compared to other ethnography study, as it leverages online archives and everyday technologies to gather and sort relevant data. Netnographic research is faster and cheaper in comparison with ethnographic research. Netnography will help us to explore the types of digital footprints SMEs generated and their ethical implications in relation to how SMEs manage their digital footprints. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Since March 2021, We have started our online data collection process via observation with a netnography approach through two social media platforms: (LinkedIn and twitter). LinkedIn Posts covers our first deliverable because the posts and participants' responses serve our purposes to create blogs. This is our second LinkedIn Post. Our LinkedIn posts have been interacted significantly by a wider audience with exceeding 5200 views in the first post; over 1900 views in the second post and; around 2300 views in the third post and more than 2000 views in the fourth post. These four posts also received considerable reactions and over 200 comments from the SMEs owners, industry practitioners and academics. |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ainurulrosli_digital-footprint-data-protection-security-activity-6808... |
| Title | 3rd LinkedIn Post for Netnography |
| Description | Netnography is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It is for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts and it is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in online participant observation. Netnography mainly concentrates on reflections and data provided by online communities and explores rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life. It is also more efficient compared to digital ethnography as it tends to be faster and cheaper compared to other ethnography study, as it leverages online archives and everyday technologies to gather and sort relevant data. Netnographic research is faster and cheaper in comparison with ethnographic research. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Since March 2021, We have started our online data collection process via observation with a netnography approach through two social media platforms: (LinkedIn and twitter). LinkedIn Posts covers our first deliverable because the posts and participants' responses serve our purposes to create blogs. This is our third LinkedIn Post. Our LinkedIn posts have been interacted significantly by a wider audience with exceeding 5200 views in the first post; over 1900 views in the second post and; around 2300 views in the third post and around 2000 views on the fourth post. These four posts also received considerable reactions and over 200 comments from the SMEs owners, industry practitioners and academics. |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ainurulrosli_digital-data-digital-footprint-ugcPost-68461019514998128... |
| Title | 4th LinkedIn Post for Netnography |
| Description | Netnography is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It is for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts and it is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in online participant observation. Netnography mainly concentrates on reflections and data provided by online communities and explores rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life. It is also more efficient compared to digital ethnography as it tends to be faster and cheaper compared to other ethnography study, as it leverages online archives and everyday technologies to gather and sort relevant data. Netnographic research is faster and cheaper in comparison with ethnographic research. Netnography will help us to explore the types of digital footprints SMEs generated and their ethical implications in relation to how SMEs manage their digital footprints. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Since March 2021, We have started our online data collection process via observation with a netnography approach through two social media platforms: (LinkedIn and twitter). LinkedIn Posts covers our first deliverable because the posts and participants' responses serve our purposes to create blogs. This is our fourth LinkedIn Post. Our findings through the LinkedIn posts and participants' responses show that the digital footprints (DF) that individuals leave behind from various digital activities are beginning to attract considerable attention. In the current digital era, many organisations will spend significant amounts of money and time to capture employee data which may create insights about the employee lifecycle and generate organisational value. However, many managers fail to understand how they need to harness the employee data in an ethical way. Hence, to ensure ethical practice, both individuals (employees and customers) and businesses need to take some responsibilities in terms of ethical actions and practice to manage digital footprint from various ethical perspectives such as trust, privacy, transparency and accountability. Furthermore, our blog posts will be useful especially to prompt the digital footprint awareness among SMEs and assist them to manage their big digital data in an ethical manner. |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ainurulrosli_has-digital-technology-improved-the-way-you-activity-687... |
| Title | Interview Phase 1 |
| Description | We conducted eleven in-depth interviews with experts (including individuals, consultants supporting SMEs digital transformation or leading the SMEs) as the means of the data collection. A diversified group of executives with considerable experience in their digitalisation process were selected to ensure some level of representation. Respondents were selected from both UK-based and global companies across various industries. The first two respondents have considerable experience in both SME and large multinational organisations. Moreover, all the respondents were selected among professionals who have more than fifteen years of experience. |
| Type Of Material | Data handling & control |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The insights from the SME digital experts' consultants showcase that SMEs that exhibited certain ethical actions were able to overcome such obstacles as they sought to manage their digital footprints. These ethical organisational actions include digital footprint awareness, data protection management, data privacy management and data transparency management. Our findings extend the discussion on how SMEs comprehend and respond to digitalisation and managing digital footprints, given the different nature of facilities, characteristics and managerial styles of SMEs compared to large corporations. Our findings highlight how organisations such as an SME can understand digital footprint better by identifying digital footprint as (1) an entity, that has its own identity/role (driving decision of consumers and providing better information to others/stakeholders), (2) a traceable activity, generated independently or collaboratively both within the organisation (digitally) and outside on the web. Our findings coming from interviews highlight the need for SME to encourage digital footprint awareness with its employees which includes the jeopardy of data usability, the threat of blurry boundaries, data leakage hazard and the challenges of stakeholder engagement. Also, awareness of digital footprint is found to be important to enhance the employees' experiences and organisational performance and output. Hence, SMEs can overcome the digital footprint challenges such as the limited availability of specialist resources by addressing and making clear their data transparency, data protection management and data privacy management. This finding offers important suggestions to SMEs on how to make aware to their employees on the importance of digital footprints and its implications. Also, this highlights the need for policymakers/funders to support SMEs to develop relevant skills and capabilities to manage digital footprints. |
| Title | Survey Poll via LinkedIn |
| Description | The poll was titled 'What are your (business) priorities when it comes to managing your digital footprint?'. The polls do well on LinkedIn because they are powerful. They're an easy way to create a connection with our audience. With this poll, we asked our audiance engaging questions, stimulate conversations, and even nurture leads through our pipeline. The question we asked via this poll was: What are your priorities when it comes to managing your digital footprint? A) Protect my personal information B) Maintain my professional reputation C) Protect my business's image and future prospects D) Gain competitive advantage E) Build trust with stakeholders F) I'm not bothered about my digital footprint |
| Type Of Material | Data handling & control |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The survey poll via LinkedIn discussed what were the businesses priorities when it came to managing their digital footprint. The post had been viewed by 959 viewers, it had 16 comments and 28 votes by participants. 57% of the participants believed that their priorities was to protect their personal information; 7% of participants believed that to keep professional reputation; 7% believed that to protect business images and 29% believed that to gain competitive advantage. |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6821086687213453314-kZ-R |
| Title | Twitter Post 2 for data collection - netnography |
| Description | Netnography is a specific type of qualitative social media research. It is for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts and it is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in online participant observation. Netnography mainly concentrates on reflections and data provided by online communities and explores rich contextual portrayals of the lived experience of online social life. It is also more efficient compared to digital ethnography as it tends to be faster and cheaper compared to another nethnography study, as it leverages online archives and everyday technologies to gather and sort relevant data. Netnographic research is faster and cheaper in comparison with ethnographic research. Netnography will help us to explore the types of digital footprints SMEs generated and their ethical implications in relation to how SMEs manage their digital footprints. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Our findings through the LinkedIn posts and participants' responses show that the digital footprints (DF) that individuals leave behind from various digital activities are beginning to attract considerable attention. In the current digital era, many organisations will spend significant amounts of money and time to capture employee data which may create insights about the employee lifecycle and generate organisational value. However, many managers fail to understand how they need to harness the employee data in an ethical way. Hence, to ensure ethical practice, both individuals (employees and customers) and businesses need to take some responsibilities in terms of ethical actions and practice to manage digital footprint from various ethical perspectives such as trust, privacy, transparency and accountability. Furthermore, our blog posts will be useful especially to prompt the digital footprint awareness among SMEs and assist them to manage their big digital data in an ethical manner. Our post 1 on Twitter had attracted 288 impressions and post 2 on Twitter had 52 impressions. These interactions have created a considerable amount of meaningful awareness about the digital footprint and its ethical implication among SMEs and scholars. From the start of the debate at the early stage of the pandemic, we understand that there is a limited amount of awareness about cloud computing and its impact with little concern about security and privacy threats. This is mainly because SMEs are not well-experienced and -knowledgeable in terms of the risk associated with disregarding the ethical concerns in digital platforms. Furthermore, they do not have staff with sufficient competencies and knowledge in relation to digital footprint and digital ethics. Nevertheless, it depends on the type of the business and how the SMEs are using technology that creates digital footprints. |
| URL | https://twitter.com/WaheedMughal/status/1458765314947174413 |
| Description | The future of digital society: How do you manage your digital footprint |
| Organisation | Tech Mahindra |
| Country | India |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | This collaboration has been conducted as a webinar presentation with our industry partner from Tech Mahindra ltd. This event was focused on how to manage digital footprint in the future digital society. The research team prepared the survey poll to be conducted at the end of the webinar to measure the audience's understanding of how they manage their digital footprint with a particular focus on its' ethical implications. Survey Poll questions: 1- Do you think the digital footprint differs between big and small businesses? 2- Do you believe you have any ownership and control over your digital footprint? 3- Which of the following categories do you believe could be impacted most by digital footprint? Organisations Customers Employees 4- Which of the following ethical implications could be the most highlighted issues in relation to digital footprint. Privacy Transparency Inclusivity Equality Accountability Surveillance 5- Do you think SMEs can handle the digital footprint ethically? 6- How do you think organisations should manage their digital footprint? External and Internal Invites were made via email and LinkedIn, before the event (invite to externals was sent on 20th May & to the internals on 18th May), to the following organisations and departments including a description of the event, the Eventbrite link and the marketing material (poster file): External organisations: West London Business, Brunel Hive Hounslow Chamber Co-innovate London Business Partnership Design Plus Brunel London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham Brunel University/ Internal invite: ALL BBS academic staff North West London Chamber Director of Alumni and Executive Education Federation of Small Businesses UG programme London Chamber PG programme Tutoring BBS LinkedIn page |
| Collaborator Contribution | Our Partner Tech Mahindra executive Bhushan Patil, has delivered the presentation based on his over 20-years of experience in the tech industry. The presentation was well-received by around 50 participants from academia, industry and policymakers with insightful interaction through the chatbox and survey poll responses. |
| Impact | This collaboration created a platform to expand the knowledge on digital footprints and share experiences on how to manage them between different groups: policymakers, academics and professionals. This webinar helped us to create an ethical digital footprint framework, which intends to enable the impact to be scaled virtually. This evidence-based framework will be presented in reports and a policy briefing (including infographics) to disseminate knowledge widely and share best practices. This will help policymakers to adopt the most efficient and effective ethical policies to cope with the evolving digital economy, in supporting the U.N. General Assembly adopted resolution 68/167 (2013) on the negative implication of digital surveillance. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Discussion with BEIS Help to Grow Digital team |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | We are in conversation on helping BEIS to design digital adoption training content to support SMEs going digital after covid (Digital footprint) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/business-finance-support/help-to-grow-digital-uk |
| Description | Sharing current research findings on digital footprint, data and it's ethical implication on SMEs' performance and adoption" with a group of #future #globalleaders at City University of New York. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | We shared our current research findings on digital footprint, and it's ethical implication on SMEs' performance and adoption" with a group of future and globalleaders at City University of New York. The discussion session draws great attention towards digital ethics, particularly when dealing with digital footprint data. It was altering how individuals are concerned about their digital footprint, privacy and data ownership. Participants were curious to know how digital ethics play a very important role in the future digital economy and society. More importantly, they became aware that there are many different ways to manage their Digital Footprint Data to promote their business growth, maintain their professionalism and take good care of their wellbeing. Education has an important role to play in all this, and we must ensure that our researches and education strategies are aligned with this rapidly progressing digital transformation, adoption and its limitations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6908429174936354816-auui |
| Description | Webinar - The future of digital society: How do you manage your digital footprint |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | To ensure the project's dissemination, we introduced the digital footprint campaign by presenting in research seminar sessions to academics and conducting webinar and podcast series by industry experts and academics. The webinars and podcast series serve as another effective form of data collection process, which also serves as knowledge dissemination to our target audience (small businesses). This webinar has been conducted with the participation of both industry partners in this project (Tech Mahindra Ltd and HR Tech Partnership). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6802876624401375232/ |