Ethical consumerism, supply chains, and deceptions with RFID-based systems

Ethical consumerism has led manufacturers and retailers to develop new initiatives to align their products and services with related requirements, such as the management of supply chains for ethically produced products. To this end, recent years have witnessed the growing reliance on technological innovations to corroborate claims on ethically produced products. RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification)-based systems have found a natural fit for such applications due to their ability to uniquely identify individual items and locally store their characteristics and history. While the benefits of such a setup are clear, there is a paucity of research on associated unethical risks. What is often unclear is the possibility of deception when RFID-generated information is used to certify ethical production. We draw on stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, social contract theory, and Mason’s information ethics theory to study the underlying dynamics. We show that enhancing RFID information accessibility and accuracy in supply chains is key to mitigating the unethical risk of deception and ensuring that RFID-based systems can truly certify ethically produced products. We develop a portfolio of such risks, identify means to mitigate identified risks, and then use a case study to examine the impact of varying degrees of RFID-generated information accessibility and accuracy on the detection and prevention of associated deceptions.