When the Algorithm Becomes the Brand Crisis: A Sociotechnical Theory of Distributed Responsibility and Accountable Transparency

2026-08-31

AI Summary

论文探讨了AI系统故障时责任分配问题，提出了一种社会技术过程理论，并引入负责任透明度作为解决方案。

Abstract

Artificial intelligence systems increasingly enact market-facing promises through chatbots, recommendation systems, automated decisions, and generative interfaces. Their failures, misuse, and misrepresentation raise a question that conventional brand-crisis models do not fully specify: how do stakeholders assign responsibility when technical causation, customer-facing control, and governance duties are distributed across an AI system, developer, deployer, vendor, and user? This conceptual paper develops a sociotechnical process theory from a structured, federated scoping synthesis of verified academic and primary sources. It distinguishes an AI/algorithmic incident from an AI-related organisational crisis and, in turn, from an AI-related organisational scandal. The framework proposes that incident configuration shapes actor-specific attribution; attribution informs capability, integrity, fairness, and relationship appraisals; and public moralisation may, but need not, escalate an incident into scandal. The theory offers a reconciliation of findings that algorithm involvement can buffer negative brand reactions in some settings while robot and chatbot failures can redirect responsibility to an associated firm in others. It introduces accountable transparency as a proposed response configuration that combines timely notice, an intelligible account, role-responsibility acknowledgement, remedy, evidence of correction, and recourse. The evidence supports conditional, proximal inferences about blame, trust, satisfaction, firm evaluation, and communication credibility more strongly than claims about durable reputation, brand equity, or market performance.

Problem

• Artificial Intelligence
• Distributed Responsibility
• Accountable Transparency
• Brand Crisis
• Stakeholders

Innovation

• sociotechnical process theory
• accountable transparency
• responsibility attribution