Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
On 26 June 2008, the Austrian newspaper „Der Standard“ reported plans of the Italian UniCredit bank group – after its acquisition of Capitalia – of intensifying the corporation’s cost saving programme. Accordingly, the group’s CEO, Alessandro Profumo, announced redundancy plans involving around 9,000 employees in the medium term, mainly in Italy, but affecting also its subsidiaries HypoVereinsbank in Germany and Bank Austria in Austria. In parallel, 1,300 new branches are planned to be set up in the CEE countries (900 of them in Russia, Turkey, Romania and Ukraine) with the creation of an estimated 11,500 new jobs. The UniCredit group is the second largest bank operator in Europe and the most important operator in the CEE region, employing around 70,000 people in the CEE countries.
Eurofound (2008), UniCredit, Merger/Acquisition in World, factsheet number 66784, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/66784.