The social and ethical aspects connected with e-space development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is, firstly, an analysis of the behavior of entities operating in the virtual space (termed in the paper “e‐space”) which has emerged and has been continuously developing around the internet (understood in a purely technical way as a global network infrastructure) and, secondly, to create a framework of the impact of these entities on an organization, especially in the context of emerging new ethical challenges. The motivation for undertaking this research was a lack of literature on such a holistic approach to this important problem facing contemporary organizations and the systematization of these issues.Design/methodology/approach – The framework proposed in the paper was developed based on analyses of case studies of organizations from various industries which use the internet and the inter‐related mobile infrastructure. To create this framework the stakeholder theory and the cost‐benefit analysis approach were used.Findings – The basic findings of the paper include...