Abstract
A strong link currently exists between entrepreneurship and use of technology and the Internet, primarily because young people increasingly use digital and online strategies to start and develop entrepreneurial initiatives. The goal of this document analysis is to propose a reference framework for digital rights in youth entrepreneurship based on selection and analysis of 20 documents with legislation, regulations, and reports that focus on guaranteeing safe, responsible digital environments. The study resulted in a framework for connecting digital rights and responsibilities with young entrepreneurs, based on three main points: rights to equality and participation; rights to freedom; and rights to development, creation, and sustainability. In addition to including concepts, practices, and applications in young people’s initiatives, the framework is useful for educating young entrepreneurs, guiding future research, and helping public administrations to promote the guarantee of digital rights and responsibilities for all.
Keywords
Introduction
The digital society has transformed all areas of citizens’ life due to constant Internet use. A tremendous medium of communication with numerous uses and tools, the Internet also generates significant dependence in society, affecting people’s day-to-day lives and even transforming work scenarios for young people today and in the future (Livingstone & Third, 2017).
A discourse of Internet-related human rights is thus emerging, independently of the broader context of governance of the Internet (Pettrachin, 2018), where controversial concerns are expressed about the relationship between platforms, their users, and the information obtained from platforms and given to citizens, among other questions. With these issues comes the increasingly urgent need to find a way to apply these values to articulate a set of desirable restrictions to the power exercised by the digital world. This need represents a key challenge and opportunity to achieving digital constitutionalism (Suzor, 2018).
From the perspective of entrepreneurship, the COVID-19 pandemic presents significant challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurs, especially the youngest, who choose to use the digital realm as a fundamental tool to survive the crisis and often even prosper (Cueto et al., 2022). Young people’s distinctive characteristics for technology use and dependence on cell phones lead them to use the Internet to express themselves in the business world (Smith, 2011). They employ such strategies for various actions—for example, web page creation, social media use (Benson et al., 2010), use of artificial intelligence services (Huang & Rust, 2021), data-based marketing strategies (Alford & Page, 2015), and development of technical digital skills for monitoring and measuring customers’ online participation (Soonsawad, 2013).
These new situations move a large quantity of data and involve privacy issues and other citizens’ rights. They thus require young entrepreneurs to be careful and to ensure that they comply with the standards and regulations for digital rights and obligations governing e-commerce. Young entrepreneurs are, however, generally ignorant of these regulations (Hannafey, 2003). Saura et al. (2021) argues that concern for users’ privacy increases in step with innovation and that the models developed are increasingly advanced.
To tackle these two essential aspects of youth entrepreneurship, studies (like this one) have emerged that focus on the ethical problems, challenges, demands, and consequences of companies’ digital transformation. First, from the technological perspective, the labor market demands better digital qualification of workers and more attention to digital transformation processes in firms. Embedded in the digital society, firms must guarantee the digital rights of citizens when they use communication tools and platforms to socialize with society. Second, we observe exponentially inverse growth in technology training for digital security, technological development, and universal access among entrepreneurs. This demand for qualification occurs because training for entrepreneurship does not include the necessary content and information in the programs offered to the new generations.
This last question motivates special interest in and greater attention to digital rights in the areas of international policy and research. These rights are defined as the set of actions oriented to preservation of digital content that people create and develop (Bechtold, 2004), as well as of the rights of people who use the Internet. They include digital rights management (DRM) and the digital rights of citizens, which the Council of Europe links to responsibilities. These include rights such as privacy, safety, access and inclusion, and freedom of expression, all of which bring with them responsibilities, such as ethics and empathy, as well as others to guarantee safe, responsible digital environments for all (Council of Europe, 2022).
An increase in the digital gap among citizens has recently been registered due to economic, social, and cultural factors. The above-mentioned COVID-19 pandemic made this gap more visible by situating Internet users as potentially more vulnerable people in situations of deprivation and violation of their digital rights (dignity, equality of opportunity, freedom of expression, etc.). Young people were also positioned as one of the groups most susceptible to suffering certain threats and gaps in their Internet use (Costa et al., 2017).
In addressing the needs in training for employment in which technology plays an important role, the European Commission’s renewed agenda for Higher Education indicated the need to tackle questions related to the digital transformation, application of digital learning strategies, and exploitation of technology to benefit staff and students (European Commission, 2017). Examples include initiatives based on telecollaboration and virtual exchange for youth entrepreneurship in society. Both of these initiatives focus on fostering digital competences and competences for entrepreneurship for the 21st century: intercultural, linguistic, digital, and teamwork as well as social entrepreneurial mindset (Sevilla-Pavón & Nicolaou, 2022).
We thus see a significant push toward educational processes to strengthen self-employment and achieve economic growth as a way to reduce social inequalities and improve social cohesion through business-related and social empowerment. Yet these education processes include little information and education on digital rights and responsibilities. This is the case because the topic is just emerging and we lack directives and instructions on proper development of Internet-focused strategies (Ratten & Tajeddini, 2017) in the digital transformation of companies.
Digital entrepreneurship becomes an opportunity for young people and a social tool to encourage digital transformation of companies. It includes technologies and uses web pages, social media, applications, open education resources, crowdsourcing, 3D printing, digital images, and data mining, among other resources (Steininger, 2019). Digital entrepreneurship requires a combination of legal-technological knowledge and knowledge specific to the creation and consolidation of firms. Such entrepreneurs must be familiar with concepts and practices associated with regulations on data protection, privacy, the information society, and the guarantee of digital rights in digital environments to enable maximum exploitation of Technology 2.0 with awareness of ethical behavior for and in socially responsible practices (Téllez, 2021).
We must address questions of DRM and the digital rights of citizens related to privacy and data protection, safety, inclusion, and other fundamental rights connected to ethical responsibilities and empathy to guarantee a safe, responsible digital environment by and for all. Along these lines, Saura et al. (2021) argue that certain company practices can give rise to unethical situations that violate the privacy of users’ personal data. As Barbosa et al. (2022) argues, such situations can occur because entrepreneurs lack sufficient knowledge of new data collection and treatment techniques for their business models.
The use of technology in entrepreneurship provides new opportunities for research and e-commerce, but countless Internet opportunities also pose a series of ethical dilemmas for entrepreneurs (Hannafey, 2003), as well as moral dilemmas for which people—not the technology—bear responsibility. Ethical design of digital environments must thus be a priority for firms. Digital environments must be based on strategies that improve users’ trust and the type and amount of information they publish on the online market (Sembada & Koay, 2019). For proper development of these environments, both the people who are entrepreneurs and the users of the services provided must know, assume, and respect their digital rights and obligations. It is thus necessary to generate a framework for digital rights and responsibilities (DR&R).
The literature tackles some concepts on the topic proposed in this study through related topics. We identify two lines that contribute to this effort: knowledge of youth entrepreneurship and questions on the importance of digital rights; and guarantees in entrepreneurship that focus on safety, data protection, and digital marketing. Table 1 presents a synthesis of studies on related topics.
Studies Related to Digital Rights and Responsibilities.
Source. The authors.
Within youth entrepreneurship research, we find studies that tackle knowledge of entrepreneurship (Koe et al., 2012), digital competences (Scuotto & Morellato, 2013), and influence of education programs (Fayolle & Gailly, 2015). Studies have also been performed on young people’s business psychology from the perspective of computer technologies (Wang et al., 2021).
Among studies related to digital rights and guarantees, Niranjanamurthy et al. (2013) and Li and Yazdanifard (2014) investigate safety in e-commerce and accessibility and equality and Saura et al. (2021) have written on privacy of personal data. Alford and Page (2015) explore questions about digital rights and guarantees in the study of digital marketing, while Kee and Yazdanifard (2015) approach questions of localization; personalization; diversification of approaches; and trust, ethics, and honesty (among other issues) in online marketing. Karppinen and Puukko (2020) analyze issues related to citizens’ rights. An analogous study by Taylor (2017) studies data-based discrimination in technology use. In a systematic review of the main uses of digital marketing, Barbosa et al. (2022) analyzed the variables use of data analysis techniques through the dashboards in the customer’s path in digital environments. Their goal was to improve or drive sales, social media marketing, big data (cloud) analytics, digital platforms, management of reviews, and digital reputation.
Knowledge of digital rights and responsibilities for entrepreneurship is thus a key issue for entrepreneurial initiatives closely linked to critical and ethical indicators of digital society. Two strategic lines promoted by the Council of Europe converge in this topic: improving citizens’ digital competence and education for digital safety in entrepreneurship.
Taking the foregoing into account, this study aims to develop a comprehensive framework for DR&R in youth entrepreneurship based on studies, reports, and legal regulations in effect in Europe. We call this the Framework for DR&R in Youth Entrepreneurship and hope it will contribute to an emerging topic that focuses on safe, responsible Internet use—that of digital rights at the intersection of existing European frameworks for digital and entrepreneurial competences (DigComp and EntreComp).
We have defined the following research questions:
RQ1: What European regulations and directives regulate proper promotion of and compliance with digital rights in youth entrepreneurship?
RQ2: Based on existing frameworks, what digital rights involved in youth entrepreneurship compose a useful framework for young people’s initiatives?
RQ3: How does the framework of digital rights and responsibilities impact practical cases of youth entrepreneurship?
Methodology
Design
This study follows a methodology based on bibliographic document analysis, due to this method’s potential to systematize and define an emerging research field (Casasempere-Satorres & Vercher-Ferrándiz, 2020). The analytic procedure consists of identifying the most relevant information belonging to various documents on a specific theme; and examining, synthesizing, systematizing, and even classifying that information. The goal is to facilitate understanding of and approaches to a phenomenon using various computerized procedures to systematize the information and provide scientific rigor in the process (Coffey, 2014).
Among the options available for literature reviews, we chose this design for two reasons. The first was the nature of the study, since the document sources are frameworks, regulations, reports, and projects whose content is methodologically appropriate for qualitative analysis. The second is the increasing boom in and prestige of document analysis and its confirmed connection in analysis of digital rights (Téllez, 2020).
Data Collection Procedure and Information Analysis
Prior to searching the databases, members of the research team Guarantee of Digital Rights and Entrepreneurial Initiatives: DiagnosticTEC in Pre-Professional School Internships (Garantía de derechos digitales e iniciativas emprendedoras: DiagnosticaTEC en centros de prácticas preprofesionales) (Dig4Inn) performed content analysis, starting from Spain’s Digital Rights Charter (Carta de Derechos Digitales) (Gobierno de España, 2021) and the Declaration on European Digital Rights and Principles (2022) on youth entrepreneurship: Equality and participation; Freedom; and Development, creation, and sustainability. This classification, displayed in Table 2, guided the full process of identification, selection, and document analysis for the bibliographic search. The technique enables detailed, in-depth research on a specific topic based on collection, interpretation, and production of diverse data (Harwood & Garry, 2003).
Analytical Matrix.
Source. The authors.
The goal of the selection procedure was to use a “broad network” to capture the multiple perspectives, drawn primarily from the areas of digitalization and entrepreneurship—areas with diverse interests and regulatory assumptions. We also searched for applications of these issues in the sector of youth entrepreneurship population. One author of this manuscript searched Google Scholar, introducing the following keywords stepwise: Digital rights, Digital skills, Internet, Social responsibilities, Digital entrepreneurship, Young entrepreneurs, and finally EU Legal Framework. This first search identified over 50 regulatory documents. The winnowing procedure, performed by two of this manuscript’s named authors, determined that documents were relevant for inclusion if at least one of their subsections referred explicitly to one of the indicators obtained. Documents that covered the indicators only partially were considered too specific and not useful for purposes of this study. Data saturation was reached through a dialogue between expert team members until 100% agreement was reached on which documents to include.
Results
We represent the results in order of the research questions posed in this study.
RQ1: What European regulations and directives regulate proper promotion of and compliance with digital rights in youth entrepreneurship?
The search and winnowing procedure produced 20 documents, classified in Table 3 into different types: Overview framework (n = 5), Legislation and regulations (n = 8), Reports and projects (n = 3), and Resources and tools (n = 4).
Corpus on Legislation, Regulation, Reports, and Declarations Analyzed.
Source. The authors.
The findings contribute to DR&R not only indicators and concepts but also their application in youth entrepreneurship. Some documents were negotiated as consensually developed documents, others as regulations and legislation. Some were produced by intergovernmental organizations, others by regional, state, or supranational interests. Twelve documents come from the EU’s system and five from national public administrations, including legislation and national entities. Three provide tools and examples of proper application in the form of European projects.
We also included the two European frameworks, for digital competences (DigComp) and entrepreneurial competences (EntreComp), because they had unique regulatory value (Scuotto & Morellato, 2013).
RQ2: Based on existing frameworks, what digital rights involved in youth entrepreneurship compose a useful framework for young people’s initiatives?
To identify the digital rights involved in the area of entrepreneurship, we started from European frameworks for digital and entrepreneurial competences. More specifically, EntreComp (acronym for European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework) provides a tool to improve the entrepreneurial competence of European citizens and organizations. DigComp (Digital Competence Framework for Citizens) is also presented as a tool, although in this case designed to improve citizens’ digital competences. These tools were developed by the European Union’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), as the result of a scientific project commissioned by the Directorates-General for Education and Culture, and Employment. Our analysis uses the versions Digital competence framework for citizens with eight proficiency levels and examples of use (Carretero et al., 2017) and EntreComp into action: Get inspired, make it happen (McCallum et al., 2018). Table 4 presents the European frameworks in which the DR&R operate (DigComp and EntreComp), indicating the competence area and competence involved for this framework within each DR&R.
Digital Rights in the European Frameworks DigComp and EntreComp.
Source. The authors.
Note. DigComp: Area 1. Information and data literacy, Area 2. Communication and collaboration, Area 3. Digital content creation, Area 4. Safety, Area 5. Problem solving. EntreComp: Area 1: Ideas and opportunities, Area 2: Resources, Area 3: Into action.
First, two competences from Area 2 of EntreComp as a whole (Mobilizing resources and Mobilizing people) are present in most of the digital rights, especially those involving equality and participation, intimacy, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (European Union, 2016). Second, Ethical and sustainable thinking from Area 1 of EntreComp also appears in all digital rights tied to freedom, privacy, and data protection and to all digital rights involving development, creation, and sustainability (authorship, technological development, and sustainable digital environment). Third, training in the competences Coping with ambiguity, uncertainty, and risk and Self-awareness and self-efficacy (Areas 2 and 3 of EntreComp, respectively) focus especially (among other issues) on guaranteeing the rights to digital safety and cybersecurity and to identity in the digital environment.
Further, Area 4 of digital competence (Safety) is found in all digital rights to freedom, safety, and GDPR (European Union, 2016), Area 2 (Communication and collaboration) in fostering the competence Engaging in citizenship, and Area 3 expressly in reference to Copyright and intellectual property licenses from DigComp.
The Right to digital education is the most inclusive of all, involving all areas of DigComp, as well as the competences in Areas 1 and 3 of EntreComp (Ethical and sustainable thinking and Working with others), which are oriented specifically to digital education of citizens.
RQ3: How does the framework of digital rights and responsibilities impact practical cases of youth entrepreneurship?
Based on the review findings, we chose to focus specifically on the application of digital rights and guarantees for entrepreneurship within a sustainable framework in regulations, legislation, directives, and regulatory documents for entrepreneurship, which we now present. In this document, we identify four discourses of digital rights, linked to different ideological assumptions and political contexts: digital rights as protection of negative liberties (freedom of expression), positive rights and state obligation (active citizenship, equal access), rights as a vehicle of “informational justice” (protection of vulnerabilities), and affordances provided by platforms (technological opportunities), which require the union of individual rights, freedoms, and responsibilities (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020).
Our study proposes a framework for DR&R for young entrepreneurs that rests on three fundamental pillars, derived from the categories used in the document analysis: Rights to equality and participation, Rights to freedom, and Rights to development, creation, and sustainability. For each, we propose a set of rights that constitute this reference framework. These rights are drawn from our detailed analysis of legal regulations, projects, and reports, as well as from digital and entrepreneurial competence frameworks, as explained above.
This framework characterizes the main digital rights, based on the knowledge society, European digital and entrepreneurial regulatory frameworks, and these rights’ presence in youth entrepreneurship projects. We also include practices and criteria aimed to help prevent and handle possible situations involving violations of the digital rights of suppliers, workers, or users from the initiatives provided through digital environments such as web pages, blogs, digital advertising, and social media linked to entrepreneurial initiatives. Within the theoretical framework of DR&R and entrepreneurship, as well as the applications and examples, we attempt to facilitate understanding of DR&R and generate ideas and debate.
As Figure 1 shows, the first main point, termed Rights to equality and participation, includes questions related to guaranteeing the entrepreneurial project or initiative for universal accessibility, citizen participation, right to information, and freedom of expression, as well as digital education for all citizens. The point Rights to freedom, which focuses on issues of individual character and protection of personal data and safety in digital environments, is broader and includes protection of the right to intimacy, care for digital identity, safety, cybersecurity, privacy, and the rights of citizens included in the legislation on data protection and pseudonymity. Finally, the point Rights to development, creation, and sustainability develops issues involving relationship to other social agents involved that are located in the environment in which the entrepreneurial initiatives occur. We thus propose attending to the rights to authorship and exploitation, participation of other intermediaries, and technological development, while also fostering the creation of sustainable digital environments.
Main digital rights in the DR&R framework on youth entrepreneurship.
Next, we describe the practices recommended in youth entrepreneurship projects for each of the digital rights included in this reference framework and examples of these practices.
Rights to Equality and Participation
Digital rights must include the essential right to universal access, requiring promotion of universal, inclusive, accessible, high-quality, nondiscriminatory access for the entire population, including people with special needs. This right must overcome gender and generation gaps and address the distinctive situation of rural environments. It includes the rights to equality and nondiscrimination and the obligations of universal accessibility and protection of minors. The right to engaging in citizenship in the digital environment includes effective access to public information, transparency, accountability, proposal of initiatives, and implication of people in the actions of public administrations in their respective competence areas.
Entrepreneurial initiatives must guarantee all users universal access, excluding no one from accessing all services the initiative provides through its digital environments. Enabling such accessibility involves planning the means and measures to be adopted to reduce possible digital gaps due to gender, age, economic status, race, or any type of disability. For example, any type of digital service provided must promote citizens’ participation in its environment. Such participation is made possible by giving users the opportunity to identify, select, propose, and use services. For example, the initiative might propose and use different communication strategies (Facebook surveys or tags on Instagram and Twitter) to empower citizens and make them participants in defining services or products.
The right to information and freedom of expression involves receiving accurate, accessible, comprehensible information in language accessible to any citizen. The information provided electronically to citizens on entrepreneurial actions must be true, neutral, concise, accessible, and easy to understand. The right to information involves using clear, simple language that is easy to view. The right to freedom of expression permits expressing opinions, perspectives, or criticism on digital media, while holding the authors of the information responsible for any illicit content or damage to goods or third-party rights that might require compensation. The right to information in the digital environment includes freedom of expression, transparency, and truth.
Internet users who access the content of entrepreneurial initiatives must be duly informed of the procedures to be followed to erase content published on the Internet’s spaces for entrepreneurship, such as images, opinions, or personal data. Users must be able to obtain information on the conditions of use of the digital platforms that house entrepreneurial initiatives and on issues related to commercial advertising through installation of cookies managed by companies other than the initiative itself. Good examples of the right to information and freedom of expression include processing data solely and exclusively for the purposes of which the user has been informed, adhering to advertising conduct codes, and having a clear cookies policy for browsing the Internet.
The right to digital education seeks to improve citizens’ competences and skills for the digital transition and full development. As it involves all educational agents, the education system must work to bring the educational community fully into the digital society and learn from use of digital media. Education must be oriented to a human-centered digital transformation of society that focuses on all persons. This effort requires that educational institutions deliver their services through digital environments to all sectors of the educational community: students, teachers, and parents. It especially involves teachers, who must receive information to acquire digital and teaching competences and competences for the transmission of values and DR&R; and parents, concerning the education of their children.
Both training to improve digital competences and digital transformation must be considered in training plans for youth entrepreneurship. The right to digital education must be included in the plans for preservice education, refresher courses, and lifelong learning not only for entrepreneurs but also for vulnerable groups. The business plan for an entrepreneurial project must consider training in digital competences as a right for employees and enable users to browse its environment easily through user-friendly design.
Rights to Freedom
Probably one of the most important digital rights of persons in the information society is the right to intimacy. The legislation on this issue, technological development, and digital transformation of companies must especially respect the right to intimacy in the work environment related generally to use of digital devices and more specifically to video monitoring, sound recording devices and geolocation systems. This right also includes the right to disconnect and not to answer calls from the company in order to guarantee rest time, leaves, or vacation, as well as personal and family intimacy. In remote work situations, the company must fully respect the working person’s willingness and dignity, especially guaranteeing their right to intimacy and work-life reconciliation by guaranteeing the rights recognized in legislation and agreements.
We can understand intimacy and private life as defining the limits of the right to information. Entrepreneurial initiatives must protect all manifestations of the personality of persons who use their services and of the company’s workers in step with technological advances and use of digital devices. Any entrepreneurial initiative that involves young people must thus take measures to avoid violating this right, for example, by using video monitoring or sound recording in common areas dedicated to employees’ and collaborators’ rest or recreation. Among other issues, it must also inform employees of the criteria for use of technological devices in the work environment and avoid implementing clock-in systems with biometric data.
The right to identity in the digital environment refers to the right to manage one’s own identity, attributes, and credentials. Identity cannot be controlled, manipulated, or supplanted by third parties against a person’s will. Proper management of the young entrepreneur’s identity is crucial to protecting them against problems associated with online reputation, or theft of property or identity. It also helps to reaffirm that self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-efficacy enable the application of different ways to protect online reputation. We thus propose that the young entrepreneur or student doing an internship in an entrepreneurial initiative be familiar with the concept, elements, and characteristics of identity and apply them to managing their own digital identity with real, up-to-date information on social media and professional networks.
The right to digital safety or cybersecurity refers to the right to security of communications sent and received by Internet, ensuring that suppliers of the services inform users of their rights. This right includes protection of devices and digital content, as well as understanding the risks and threats in digital environments. One of the most important issues for companies is protecting the information handled daily. In the face of constant threats due to failed security, one must have a plan with measures on how to respond to such incidents. It is important for the young entrepreneur to ensure that the information systems used for their personal, professional, or social activity have the proper security measures to guarantee the integrity, confidentiality, availability, resilience, and authenticity of the information processed. They must have a risk analysis and risk management report for handling personal data, with measures to identify and manage properly complex incidents such as risks from attacks by cybercriminals on the web and less complex incidents such as identification of false profiles, fake news, spam, or attempted scams, such as phishing.
The right to protection of privacy in digital environments is the right to have one’s personal information treated according to the information divulged by digital services governed by a “privacy policy.” It is important for young entrepreneurs to know how to use, manage, and share identifying or sensitive personal information without exposing either themselves or third parties to risk. When they use the Internet, they must decide whether to accept, configure, or reject the installation of cookies in their browser while they are working. They must also distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate content to share on the firm’s Twitter account to ensure that their privacy and that of their co-workers remains safe. If entrepreneurs receive training or orientation during the design of their entrepreneurial project, they will realize the importance of hiring SSL services during the creation of a webpage or app and defining clear privacy policies for users with necessary and sufficient information so that both the entrepreneur and users feel safe. Any entrepreneurial initiative must include clear, up-to-date information in its privacy policies about the type of data gathered and type of processing to be performed.
Related to this right, we find the rights to access, rectification, erasure (right to be forgotten), restriction of processing, and portability, and the rights to object and not to be the target of individualized decisions. In the European zone, these rights are contained in GDPR rights (European Union, 2016). The right to access enables someone to request information from the person responsible for any file about them if their personal data are being processed. The right to rectification permits the person affected to request modification of data that are inexact or incomplete. The right to erasure (right to be forgotten) is the right to have personal data eliminated after so requesting. The right to restriction of processing is anyone’s right to demand of the person in charge that their data be processed only for the purposes they authorized. The right to portability of data involves being able to request that the person in charge provide the personal data in a clear structure and format to another person. The right to oppose is the right of a person to oppose the processing of their personal information. The right not to be the target of individualized decisions guarantees that the person not be the target either of decisions based only on processing of any data of theirs that have been collected or of development of profiles that have legal consequences for them or that affect them significantly. Young people’s entrepreneurial initiatives must consider the principles of transparency, minimization, integrity, confidentiality, and limitation of processing for the personal data they use to perform their entrepreneurial project according to the legislation in effect. We thus propose that, within the framework of rights inherent in matters of protection of personal data, any user browsing the webpage of an entrepreneurial initiative should be able to exercise their right to oppose nonconsensual processing of their data without their explicit consent. Similarly, in a training or workplace scenario, the young entrepreneur can, with guidance, identify the type of information they must include relative to rights to access, rectification, portability, restriction, and objection. One way to integrate this right into an entrepreneurial initiative in some jobs is to grant a right to specific processing, to be forgotten, and to have any data collected preserved only for a specific amount time and for the purposes expressly agreed to.
To preserve anonymity when necessary, the right to pseudonymity requires access to digital environments on conditions of pseudonymity, according to the technical possibilities available and the legislation in effect, as long as personal identification is not required to perform the tasks belonging to this environment. When personal data are handled, young entrepreneurs’ initiatives must protect—through design and by default—any type of personal data in any data life cycle by using processes for pseudonymization or anonymization. Thus, when the entrepreneur persuades, involves, or inspires other people to perform any activity related to the entrepreneurial initiative, their identity can be anonymized to protect personal data. For example, one may preserve participants’ anonymity in an opinion survey on the quality of the services provided.
Rights to Development, Creation, and Sustainability
Within the framework for DR&R in youth entrepreneurship, DRM is important. The long trajectory of this term has for decades involved antiplagiarism programs and access control technologies used by publishing houses and copyright holders. Guaranteeing DR&R in this environment thus requires moral right to authorship, exploitation rights, and the right to participation of intermediaries. Moral (or personal) rights are the rights to have authorship recognized, to decide about the dissemination of a work (and its retraction), and to have the work’s integrity respected (and thus also modified). These rights are irrevocable and inalienable from the author throughout their lifetime (and subsequently, from their heirs). Economic rights are the rights to exploit the work in any way, especially the rights to reproduce, distribute, communicate publicly, and transform the work. They may not be performed without the author’s authorization, and they involve the right to remuneration. The right to participation of intermediaries is a related (or connected) right that protects intermediaries’ contribution of making original creations available to the public (artists who interpret or perform works, audiovisual producers, broadcasting entities, etc.). These entities are part of the reproduction, not the creation, of works. The rights of producers of audiovisual recordings can be transferred, granted, or made the subject of contractual licenses.
Anyone starting a business must ensure legal and ethical standards to protect intellectual property when publishing content in entrepreneurial initiatives. Young entrepreneurs must guarantee the right to authorship and know how to request data, information, and digital content under copyright, as well as different types of intellectual property licenses. They must request use, respect authorship of photography, and cite permission properly. Identifying the type of license and looking for images with CC licenses for use on webpages or requesting authorization from a person to publish their image on the webpage are examples of good practices of the right to authorship.
Exploitation rights apply in the case of images from a digital image bank that are used to design a tutorial to train personnel from the entrepreneurial initiative or students in internships. One example would be the business owner’s transmission of exploitation rights from a computer program created through a work relationship, exclusively and with the reach needed to exercise the usual activity at the time the program is delivered.
Knowing and applying copyright regulations to use digital content and information when this property is managed by intermediaries and/or distributors is a fundamental premise any entrepreneurial project must address. In an audiovisual production, rights are the property of the producer, who must authorize any reproduction and copies. Another example is exploitation rights (among others) for an app as part of an entrepreneurship project at an educational institution.
Further, development of technology and digital environments must pursue environmental sustainability and commitment to future generations. The right to technological development and a sustainable digital environment may be combined insofar as the right to technological development coexists with the need for sustainability, durability, reparability, etc. of devices and systems to encourage a sustainable digital environment. For this reason, it is important to manage material, nonmaterial, and digital resources properly in the digital environment of the entrepreneurial initiative. One must always turn ideas into action while respecting the environment. Measures young entrepreneurs can adopt in their entrepreneurial initiative include acquiring equipment with high energy efficiency in the project or designing a set of “commandments” for responsible use of equipment to encourage energy conversation.
Discussion and Conclusions
This study has proposed a framework for connecting DR&R with young entrepreneurs, focusing on their education in an issue of increasing importance due to the massive expansion of the Internet. This framework characterizes the main digital rights, based on the knowledge society, European digital and entrepreneurial regulatory frameworks, and these rights’ presence in youth entrepreneurship projects. It also includes practices and criteria aimed to help prevent and handle possible situations related to violations of the digital rights of suppliers, workers, or users from the initiatives provided through digital environments such as web pages, blogs, digital advertising, and social media linked to entrepreneurial initiatives. Within the theoretical framework of DR&R and entrepreneurship, as well as the applications and examples, we attempt to facilitate understanding of DR&R and to generate ideas and debate.
Our proposition is grounded in two pieces of evidence latent in the literature review of youth and entrepreneurship and in the corpus of the different types of documents analyzed. First, following the pandemic, we observe that entrepreneurial spirit increased in young people—in Millennials and Generation Z, with their presence in small and large businesses (Liu et al., 2019). Second, more frequent use of the Internet and social media for e-commerce requires young people to seek and encourage opportunities for interaction (Kee & Yazdanifard, 2015; Kuzmina et al., 2019; Perdigón-Llanes et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2021), increase in social capital (Benson et al., 2010), and use of services for buying and selling products, goods, and services.
In accordance with indications from other studies, our approach stresses the importance of specific distinctive elements of the digital entrepreneurial ecosystem in regulation—among others, protection of intellectual property (Elia et al., 2020), privacy and protection of personal data (Elia et al., 2020; Romansky, 2019; Saura et al., 2021), ethics (Kee & Yazdanifard, 2015; Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2021), honesty (Perdigón-Llanes et al., 2018), adoption of safety measures (Romansky, 2019; Li & Yazdanifard, 2014), confidentiality, integrity of data, and security of data and information (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013).
Given entrepreneurs’ knowledge gap concerning data collection and treatment, described by Barbosa et al. (2022), this document analysis and the proposed framework were prepared from the perspective of education. These authors address the need to evaluate the relevance of education programs, as Fayolle and Gailly (2015) argue, to attend to the needs and expectations of the digital society. We cannot expect to discover DR&R by pretending that they are different from the fundamental rights already recognized in the corresponding legislation, or that the digital environment is established on some source of new citizens’ rights. We argue that it is important to ensure that educational processes promote education among entrepreneurs of the future to guarantee users’ DR&R in digital environments. We also believe that entrepreneurs’ knowledge of these rights will be assumed as a joint responsibility, not only of professors and specialists but also of the business owners and institutions that promote youth entrepreneurship (Green, 2013; Scuotto & Morellato, 2013). The rights and freedoms present in international law and declarations are applicable to entrepreneurial initiatives present on the Internet. Guaranteeing rights in digital environments means that all entrepreneurs—whether participants, recipients, or professionals—are obligated to respect these rights and the right to administrative and legal protection of their rights in digital environments, following the legislation in effect.
Limitations, Implications, and Recommendations for Future Research
This study is not free of limitations. First, conceptual approaches differ greatly depending on the sector in which the business is being established, with very high diversity of initiatives and projects. Second, the potential for growth and business ideas must be alert to the risks and problems on the Internet, as these are increasingly present in the digital society. Any future prediction involving digital rights must take these issues specifically into account. Third, document analysis does not permit a qualitative methodology that provides in-depth understanding of the phenomenon studied based on saturation obtained with other instruments (e.g., interviews).
We believe that the main implications derive from the connection between young entrepreneurs’ rights and responsibilities and a strong ethical and social component. Individual users, governments, industry, and public institutions have an obligation to maintain the integrity of the Internet community (Council of Europe, 2022). Envisioning mechanisms for fair, equitable participation, in which users’ powers are distributed optimally, will be the main challenge for the future. Those facing this challenge can draw inspiration from existing and emerging best practices, such as Wikipedia and blockchain technology, which permit the decentralization of control and power and the emergence of “real” online direct democracy in economically difficult times.
The golden rule is Do unto others as you would have them to unto you. Users must also try to read the terms of use on the websites, platforms, and applications they use. Each device, software system, application, and program has its corresponding legal documents that explain the user’s rights and responsibilities and—perhaps even more importantly—those of the website, platform, or application used. It is a challenge for all young entrepreneurs to exercise the right to use each and every digital technology, while simultaneously assuming the responsibility to use them in a safe, responsible way. Such practice means understanding their rights, as well as the procedures to be followed if their rights or those of other online users are violated. We identify three main actions to take in the case of violations of rights: ignoring the content, blocking the person who made the offensive comments, and/or reporting the person.
From the social perspective, we believe such action is necessary because cybersecurity and data violations are an imminent threat to any company and can be a significant concern for SMEs (Téllez, 2021, p. 27). We have thus developed this framework for DR&R in youth entrepreneurship as a model on these matters.
From the research perspective, the study responds to the need for theoretical development in the field of business ethics, as Hannafey argued in 2003 and as demonstrated by the small amount of literature found on social media in digital businesses from 2013 to 2018 (Perdigón-Llanes et al., 2018). Our study also addresses the gap identified by Saura et al. (2021) on the need to provide information on using users’ personal data in e-commerce, based on current GDPR regulations in Europe and reference frameworks for European and Spanish entrepreneurs. From different perspectives, these regulations and frameworks urge entrepreneurs to care for and protect citizens’ rights from the data market.
Ultimately, this article highlights the main contributions of 20 documents on DR&R that entrepreneurs should consider and know. Because this study is linked to document research, its approach and results may be useful to future research that focuses on education for entrepreneurship; studies on digital marketing, information gathering strategies, and data analysis of webpage and social media users. They may also be useful for studies on the adoption of technologies and on technologies that tackle processes for digitalization of companies as a product of entrepreneurship. Our analysis has established important guidelines and foundations for theoretical development of new content to be incorporated into the processes for educating young entrepreneurs. Along these lines, a recently published study, The Youth Workers’ Competence Framework for Entrepreneurial Learning (Koçak, 2022), presents an interesting direction for young entrepreneurs’ education and learning. The study provides insufficient guidance, however, on digital training. Although it includes the competence Empowering young people on how to access resources by using right digital tools to increase their entrepreneurial knowledge, we believe subsequent development of the issues in our framework will be needed in the future.
The research agenda for digital business spirit associated with information technology identifies the different competitive challenges that young entrepreneurs typically encounter by type of digital start-up, digital product or service, sales, and logistics mediated by information technologies and network externalities (Steininger, 2019). Some of these challenges are overcoming the chicken and the egg problem with scarce resources, administrating privacy (and considering how doing so is linked to network externalities), protecting digital products from being imitated or copied, and administrating and capturing value created by the user.
Effective guarantee of rights in the digital era imposes obligations on public powers to enable full access to technology tools by which people can develop their personality in the contemporary world concerning digital reality (Rallo, 2020). Far from helping to ensure that the number of persons involved in business behavior remains low (Geldhof et al., 2014), DR&R must form part of business spirit. They must provide a viable and tested path to economic growth and personal fulfillment that helps to decrease the discrepancy between business attitudes and action through education programs that foster development of business spirit in today’s youth anywhere in the world (Llisterri et al., 2006).
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Support received from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (FPU17/05164).
Author Contributions
Conceptualization and design: MJGA. Methodology and formal analysis: MJGA, SDM, and NTH. Drafting and preparation of the manuscript: MJGA, NTH, and IGM. Writing and revision: MJGA, NTH, and IGM.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) 2014-2020 Operational Program/Andalusian Government/Department of Economic Transformation, Industry, Knowledge and Universities/Project A.SEJ.46.UGR20.
Funding for Open Access Charge
School-Centered Teacher Education Research Group (FORCE HUM-386 Research Group)/Department of Didactics and School Organization (University of Granada, Spain).
Ethics Statement
Institutional Review Board approval not needed for this study.
ORCID iDs
Data Availability
The data generated and analyzed during this study are available from the authors on request.