Kurumsal sosyal sorumluluğa yeni bir yaklaşım: Kurumsal dijital sorumluluk, Türk bankacılık ve e-ticaret sektörlerinin analizi

Since the mid-20th century, the intense impact of globalization and rapid developments in communication and transportation technologies have led to the standardization of products and services, creating new needs for differentiation in institutions. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, one of the crucial pillars of corporate communication, have significantly met this need and contributed to organizations gaining an advantageous place in the market. With the new expectations of target audiences from corporations and the acceptance of expectations as legitimate and natural by corporations, companies have focused on making action plans with the awareness of their responsibilities towards all stakeholders and environment. With the rapid development of digital technologies and the spread of digital transformation processes to all sectors, more than social responsibility activities adopted in the past have been required to keep up with age. With the influence of digital ethics, the concept of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) has taken its place in the literature in addition to the idea of CSR (Lobschat, et al., 2021). Based on the conceptual and social developments, this dissertation aims to investigate the present status of digital responsibility in Türkiye's banking and e-commerce industries. Because this topic has yet to be extensively researched in Turkish literature, the contribution of this thesis to the academic discourse is twofold. This study expands on the existing Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) research and delves into how two major sectors in Türkiye process this fairly new concept. The research aims to make a theoretical and sector-specific contribution by addressing the gap in the literature on CDR. This research is significant as it is the first study in Türkiye examining CDR in the banking and e-commerce sectors. Moreover, it offers valuable insights for other industries seeking to operate within the CDR landscape. Corporate communication refers to the set of activities, processes, and strategies that an organization uses to manage and communicate information internally and externally to achieve its goals healthily (Çetintaş, 2014). It covers the various ways in which a company shares its messages, values, and goals to its employees, stakeholders, customers, and general public. Corporate communication is an important channel that enables organizations to adapt to ever-changing social, environmental, and technological situations, to take quick action to change, and to maintain their existence firmly. One of the important branches feeding this channel is the corporate social responsibility activities of companies. The concept of corporate social responsibility has transformed, expanding beyond mere philanthropy to encompass an organization's obligations to all internal and external stakeholders. These stakeholders may include employees, customers, partners, investors, and environment. Business strategies are now being devised to incorporate these responsibilities into decision-making processes and operational plans (Gedik, 2020). According to the Green Paper (2001) prepared by the Commission of the European Communities, corporate social responsibility denotes the voluntary integration of social and environmental concerns into business operations. Although corporate social responsibility activities are designed and carried out with good intentions, in consideration of fundamental rights and freedoms, and in line with the legitimate expectations of the target audience, ethical problems may be encountered in practice. The intersection of corporate social responsibility and ethics relies on a symbiotic relationship between theory and practice. Ethics drives the conceptual framework, while CSR initiatives provide tangible action, as Güven (2016) observed. This interdependence is pivotal in fostering a harmonious collaboration between responsibility and ethics, ultimately leading to desirable and constructive outcomes. With new technological developments, digital technologies have become more than a tool for users to achieve their goals. Rapidly developing digital technologies and digital transformation processes we encounter in every field have transformed our living standards, perception of reality, and relationship with nature; it has become a dominant factor in determining our choices and decisions. For this reason, the development of digital technologies has also led to profound social transformations. With the obligations brought about by digitalization, the need to make a new addition to the point where the importance of corporate social responsibility and ethical harmony is emphasized has arisen, and the concept of digital ethics has emerged. Ethics focuses on moral actions and judgments such as human rights, social justice, world peace, and equality. Digital ethics, on the other hand, can be defined as a set of rules that prioritize the proper behavior in order not to harm the rights of others in the channels where technology is effective and to maintain the system in good faith in all actions performed in the systems used. In digital life, which has become a part of everyday life, digital ethics provides a moral framework for the individual's actions and aims to integrate digital technology and human values (Rogerson, 2015). While our actions determined by the science of law fall within the field of ethics, it is expected that the concept of ethics will also be digitalized as our daily life habits are transformed by digitalization. However, existing systems need to be more comprehensive to evaluate actions regarding ethics in the digital world. In these cycles, which can be defined as a digital dictatorship, investment instruments have moved from financial products such as gold and money and started to take shape as data ownership. So much so that land and land ownership, legalized by laws, have been replaced by database ownership regulations (Özcan, 2021). The development of digitalization and digital ethics has led to the emergence of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) and Corporate Social Responsibility. CDR requires being active and prioritizing ethical principles while shaping the digital world. Examples of CDR activities include setting clearly defined limits on data use, providing users with comprehensive and transparent information about data collection processes, supporting employees with regular training on data security, and collaborating with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on digitalization (Eissfeller, 2020). Digital technologies should be organized to increase the capacity of users from all walks of life and prioritize inclusiveness. This is because users of relevant tools are consumers and community participants (Hyde, 2008). Corporate digital responsibility can be classified into four distinct categories: social, economic, technological, and environmental corporate digital responsibility. The common point in these areas is that all these categories focus on the digital aspects of responsibilities. Social CSR prioritizes the relationship of organizations with individuals and society. This includes protecting the data privacy of users, stakeholders, and employees and addressing digital inclusion and diversity. Economic CDR is concerned with assessing and improving the financial impact of digital technologies. IT departments, employee role definitions, and initiatives to achieve more efficiency at lower cost are examples of economic digital responsibilities. Technological CSR is closely related to digital ethics. It aims to ensure that artificial intelligence algorithms are created transparently and understandably that do not cause social harm, such as making them in a way that does not allow discriminatory practices. Environmental CSR focuses on achieving sustainability goals by minimizing the physical damage to the environment caused by technological developments (Wade, 2020). Despite all these sub-connections and the guidelines and standards developed by different organizations, there are deficiencies in practices, and it is rarely seen that all categories are considered and put into practice together. Based on the discussions mentioned earlier, this study's main problem has been determined as 'What are the policies, activities, and future goals of various organizations operating in the banking and e-commerce sectors in Türkiye regarding the concept of CDR?"In this context, the first part of the thesis is a literature review, discussing critical theories and concepts relevant to this research, including CSR, digital transformation, and CDR. First, corporate social responsibility and its historical development, which forms the basis of corporate digital responsibility, will be discussed. Then, changing practices of corporate social responsibility and the concept of digital transformation that contributed to the emergence of corporate digital responsibility will be discussed in detail in connection with the debate on digital ethics. Finally, the contributions of guidelines and standards prepared by various organizations will be discussed. In the 'Sector analysis' section, the e-commerce and banking sectors, which are among the sectors where data is used, processed, and shared the most, will be analyzed. The current state of development and scope of the application of CDR in these two sectors will be discussed in this section. Privacy has become one of the most significant challenges of modern life, especially with the increasing dependence on online technology, social media, and virtual systems (Durucu et al., 2019). One of the major problems in the e-commerce industry is that connected risks and governance systems do not protect consumer information and harm modern business operations (Umanailo et al., 2019). Conversely, the banking sector is vulnerable to privacy risks (Namahoot & Laohavichien, 2018), as individuals' savings, investments, lifestyles, and future survival depend heavily on the operation of a sound and ethical banking system (Jansen & Leukfeldt, 2016). Following a detailed literature review and sector analysis, data collection strategies, analysis, interpretation of the collected data, validity, and reliability will be explained in the research methods section. Two sectors were selected in this study, and in-depth interviews and content analysis techniques were utilized as qualitative research methods. The study's data set consists of semi-structured, in-depth interview data, social media content analysis, and document analysis to provide the triangulation technique recommended to support reliability and validity in qualitative research. The participant group of the study consisted of 20 senior managers, IT department employees, and corporate communication experts from the banking and e-commerce sectors. Since legal departments were frequently mentioned during the interviews, two employees were also included in the data collection process. The document analysis section was comprised of the analysis of the integrated reports of the relevant sectors for the last year. In the analysis of social media content, LinkedIn posts, reported as the most frequently used platform by the participants, were examined as a corporate communication tool. The findings section of the dissertation consists of three main headings: interview analysis, social media, and document analysis. The interviews section consists of three parts; the first one includes the findings of the banking sector, and the second part consists of the data results of the e-commerce sector. The main topic of the third section will be the comparison of banking and e-commerce results. The second part of the findings section will focus on document and social media analysis of the sectors to support the validity and reliability of the results. These analyses will again be discussed separately on a sectoral basis. The last section of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the results in relation to the literature. This section also includes limitations and suggestions for future research. The study's general findings are: (1) In addition to Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK), banks have had to prioritize digital responsibility activities due to the obligation of banks to comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the desire to benefit from the advantages of sustainability activities in international credit systems. (2) Reputation and trust are among the most critical issues for the banking sector, which has completed its institutionalization processes long ago, and ensuring data security is essential to protect its reputation. (3) The need for banks to be fast in their business development processes (e.g., competing with the speed of cryptocurrencies) has forced them to keep up to date and take action more closely. (4) However, the same speed is a disadvantage for the e-commerce sector; while trying to catch up with the agenda, business models they have yet to shape are postponed. This situation delays the structuring of the corporate culture, and digital responsibility activities remain suspended. (5) The positive impact of the pandemic process on the development of the e-commerce sector is relatively high. However, this effect needs to be increased in raising awareness of corporate digital responsibility. (6) The inadequate number of supervisory organizations and sanctions in the e-commerce sector delay taking the necessary actions on data privacy and security. (7) The developmental differences in the context of corporate digital responsibility in the banking and e-commerce sectors are evident in the content of the posts shared on social media channels. (8) While the posts shared by banks regarding digital responsibility activities are pretty intense in frequency and content, companies in the e-commerce sector do not go beyond sharing the awards they have received, employee satisfaction, and non-innovative corporate social responsibility activities. (9) The document analysis results were similar to the social media content analysis. While the integrated reports of the banks are comprehensive and detailed, the e-commerce sector still needs to reach the stage of preparing integrated reports or similar reports. As a result although the banking sector is ahead in terms of CDR activities, awareness, and future goals, it is evident that both sectors have a long way to go. In order to overcome this obstacle, governments should develop cooperation with NGOs and related organizations at local and national levels, and standardize laws to help the concept of digital responsibility develop and spread on common grounds.