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Responsibility in the era of digital innovation: temporal dynamics and evolving paradigms
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Date
2026-01-28
Authors
O’Reilly, Katie
McCarthy, Stephen
Rowan, Wendy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Edward Elgar Publishing
Published Version
Abstract
Digital innovation is a burgeoning area of study which investigates how organisations and entrepreneurs leverage malleable digital resources to develop novel IT artefacts. However, despite the changing nature of systems development, our understanding of responsibility remains rooted in prior thinking which conceptualised it as a static obligation that ends, with the release of a system. In this chapter, we discuss responsibility in the era of digital innovation by investigating how practitioners and researchers think about responsibility within increasingly boundaryless digital innovation ecosystems and perpetually evolving IT artefacts. Building on insights from qualitative interviews with developers, IT ethicists, and user participant experts, our findings highlight the importance of accessibility, user-centric design, and foresight to anticipate unintended consequences and capitalise on resource and knowledge diversity. Through this research, we assert the need for responsibility to be reconceptualised as a continuous process that persists throughout the life cycle of digital innovations.
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Keywords
Responsible innovation , Digital resources , Use recombination
Citation
O’Reilly, K., McCarthy, S. and Rowan, W. (2026) 'Responsibility in the era of digital innovation: temporal dynamics and evolving paradigms', [forthcoming] in Carroll, N. (ed.) Research Handbook on Digital Transformation and Responsibility. Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar, pp. 186-204.