Digital Transformation and the Culture of Responsibility: Rethinking Human Agency in AI Mediated Societies

Background: The growing integration of artificial intelligence into decision-making is transforming how individuals and institutions exercise agency and attribute responsibility. While current debates emphasise regulation, transparency and accountability, less attention is paid to the cultural conditions through which responsibility is understood and enacted.

Purpose: This study explores responsibility culture as a sociological lens for examining human agency in AI-mediated environments and introduces the RESC Framework as a conceptual model. RESC conceptualises responsibility as a culturally formed capacity to recognise, interpret and assume responsibility, rather than solely as an externally imposed accountability requirement.

Methods: The study adopts an integrative conceptual synthesis of interdisciplinary literature on responsibility, human agency, digital transformation and AI governance.

Results: The synthesis highlights a structural gap between formal accountability mechanisms and actors’ cultural capacity to exercise responsibility in AI-mediated contexts. It argues that preserving human agency requires attention to technological and regulatory structures as well as the social processes through which responsibility is formed and enacted.

Conclusion: Responsibility culture provides a complementary perspective for understanding digital transformation beyond compliance-based approaches.

Implications: The framework provides a basis for future empirical research and human-centred approaches to AI governance.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; digital transformation; human agency; RESC Framework; responsibility culture