Othmar Manfred Lehner, Kim Ittonen, Hanna Silvola, Eva Ström and Alena Wührleitner
This paper aims to identify ethical challenges of using artificial intelligence (AI)-based accounting systems for decision-making and discusses its findings based on Rest's…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify ethical challenges of using artificial intelligence (AI)-based accounting systems for decision-making and discusses its findings based on Rest's four-component model of antecedents for ethical decision-making. This study derives implications for accounting and auditing scholars and practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is rooted in the hermeneutics tradition of interpretative accounting research, in which the reader and the texts engage in a form of dialogue. To substantiate this dialogue, the authors conduct a theoretically informed, narrative (semi-systematic) literature review spanning the years 2015–2020. This review's narrative is driven by the depicted contexts and the accounting/auditing practices found in selected articles are used as sample instead of the research or methods.
Findings
In the thematic coding of the selected papers the authors identify five major ethical challenges of AI-based decision-making in accounting: objectivity, privacy, transparency, accountability and trustworthiness. Using Rest's component model of antecedents for ethical decision-making as a stable framework for our structure, the authors critically discuss the challenges and their relevance for a future human–machine collaboration within varying agency between humans and AI.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on accounting as a subjectivising as well as mediating practice in a socio-material context. It does so by providing a solid base of arguments that AI alone, despite its enabling and mediating role in accounting, cannot make ethical accounting decisions because it lacks the necessary preconditions in terms of Rest's model of antecedents. What is more, as AI is bound to pre-set goals and subjected to human made conditions despite its autonomous learning and adaptive practices, it lacks true agency. As a consequence, accountability needs to be shared between humans and AI. The authors suggest that related governance as well as internal and external auditing processes need to be adapted in terms of skills and awareness to ensure an ethical AI-based decision-making.
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Anna Sandler, Amir Shani and Shahar Shilo
Home-based commercial hospitality (HBCH) is the focus of this study. This community-based tourism (CBT), which has received little research attention, is examined to reveal the…
Abstract
Purpose
Home-based commercial hospitality (HBCH) is the focus of this study. This community-based tourism (CBT), which has received little research attention, is examined to reveal the meaning of commercially hosting visitors in private homes for experiential meetings on a variety of topics such as food, art, culture, folklore and various workshops.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative research method was adopted, using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with HBCH providers in the desert town of Arad, located in southern Israel.
Findings
The study reveals the impact of this unusual occupation on the host's quality of life, the factors that encourage and suppress involvement in this entrepreneurship, as well as the positive and negative consequences of HBCH on the local environment.
Practical implications
The findings could offer important guidelines to municipalities and local governments seeking to encourage CBT and sustainable micro-enterprises.
Originality/value
HBCH is a recent phenomenon and, as such, has been little researched. This study of one community raises issues that may be shared by HBCH enterprises. The findings could contribute to developing such initiatives elsewhere, avoiding the obstacles faced in this pioneering effort.