The Challenge of Organised Irresponsibility
Abstract:
While innovation and technology are often purport as the solution to the “grand challenges” our civilisation will face over the next century, an important alternative perspective is gaining traction: that it is not merely the lack or failure of innovation which hinder achieving sustainability and solving such challenges, but it is in fact also through the creation and success of innovations and technologies that hinder these aims. These negative manufactured side effects of modernisation are in fact, ʻdark sidesʼ of progress, science, and innovation, and they are perpetuated in the current system of manufacturing risks by a process called ʻorganised irresponsibilityʼ which posits that while there are certainly those who are ʻresponsible’ in the sense that they are involved in creating the problems, the system of ambiguous responsibility designation ensures that no one is specifically held accountable.
In recognition of this perpetuating challenge, there have been recent call for a new relationship or ʻcontractʼ between science and society: one in which science is responsive to society’s needs and ensures the taking of responsibility for its negative effects and internalises rather than externalises them, and allowing for no one to be held accountable. In this exploratory essay, I examine how do dominant responsibility frameworks address the dark sides of innovation. I assess three contemporary responsibility frameworks: Corporate Social Responsibility, Public Values Science, and Responsible Research and Innovation. Ultimately, I do not find conceptual evidence that these frameworks create a strong and robust system of responsibility, instead of simply creating tensions and confusions, and furthering the system of organised irresponsibility that perpetuates the manufacturing of further dark sides of innovation and technologies
Keywords: Responsibility, public values science, responsible research and innovation, corporate social responsibility, accountability, innovation, dark sides