WHich values conflict?
Examine value conflicts
What is the result of this step?
The previous step may have pointed out that some values conflict, which can give rise to ethical questions. This step will provide a method to work towards an answer to those questions, which will attend to the values of all stakeholders and which will help technology developers to progress on their technology.
Why?
Value conflicts may hinder further development of the technology. They can be considered as constraints on the design space. Examples are; the support for the value ‘food safety’ may jeopardize the realization of ‘privacy’, as food safety may demand to trace unsafe foods back to the origin of the contamination and this may reveal the identity of the source. Other typical value conflicts may include environmental sustainability versus economic competitiveness, transparency versus security or knowledge sharing versus remaining competitive (see box 7 for more examples relevant for the agri-food domain).
The purpose of ethical deliberation is trying to come to an agreement about the best way to solve the conflicts between values. The final goal is making better products and services and improve their acceptability among users.
How?
Basically, ethical deliberation is a structured discussion. Preferably, representatives of relevant stakeholder groups are included in the discussion. For practical reasons, you can also do the deliberation with a mixed group from the project development team (e.g. from finance, legal, sales, production section etc.), who are engaged to play the role of stakeholders. In this case you should identify the external stakeholders’ interest and concerns based on the earlier steps 3, and 4. Find detailed instructions on how to do the deliberation in the guideline for ethical deliberation (download the guideline).
Box 7: Example
Conflicting values
Box 7
Example of conflicting values
A slaughterhouse decided to organize an ethical deliberation with all stakeholders, because their ideas about a data platform received mixed reactions In their view this platform had to integrate slaughterhouse data with farm data to improve pig feeding, providing an algorithm which prescribes what feed pigs should get, as in a feeding machine.
Pig producer organization 1 welcomed the feeding algorithm as it is supposed to give advice on feed and treatment. The organization underlined, however, that the system should leave room to the farmers’ own decision making. Farmers in this organization wonder who will have access to all the farm data and fear that this data platform will finally lead to a situation in which the slaughterhouse could control them and then will prescribe what kind of feed should be used an how to take care of the pigs. Also, part of the farmers in this organisation are reluctant to do investments in this technology, because they decided they will stop farming within five years.
Pig producer organization 2 that produces organic pigs, does not like the idea of introducing an automated feeding machine at all, as it could interfere with the natural feeding behaviour of pigs. It shares the worries of pig producer organization 1 on the access to the data and also fear that the system might develop over time into an instrument to control them.