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.
Tom Davies is a British spectacle designer who founded TD Tom Davies in 2001; the Bespoke service started in 2002, and the company shortly became one of Britain's leading Bespoke eyewear brands. Tom’s prestigious handmade eyewear products are realized with high quality materials, like natural horn, pure titanium and cotton acetate. Since the beginning, the production activity was offshored in a owned plant in China, because of the lower production costs. However, in 2017, the designer decided to relocalise the eyewear manufacturing in a new plant in Brentford (United Kingdom). Among the declared motivations, the opportunity to leverage on the "made in UK", and the reduction of the costs gap.
Eurofound (2017), Tom Davies, Reshoring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 43, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/43.