Outline and Summary of Scandal
Discuss about the Corporate Social Responsibility And Sustainability.
Facebook is the well-known organization and it is considered to be one of the top most companies in which people want to work. Recently in the month of March 2018, it was found out that the employees of Facebook want to shift themselves from Facebook to WhatsApp or Instagram. When the reason was asked to those employees, they said that it was because of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal according to the New York Times. In the month of March, Christopher Wylie, who is the founder of the data analytics company named as Cambridge Analytica confessed that the organization had used the data of the Facebook users which were about 50 million in number for influencing the voters after it was hired by the Trump Campaign before the elections of 2016. Facebook was also aware that this scandal was being done. Cambridge people also asked Facebook to change its advertisers’ rules in the year 2015 but it was never followed up if the deed was done or not. It can be said that this was ethically working for the Facebook users as they trust Facebook with their personal information (Bhardwaj, 2018).
There were the ethical issues raised in Cambridge Analytica scandal. Let is discuss those issues.
- Cyber Security: When the inception of the internet was done, hackers also developed and came in picture to exploit everything from sophomoric mischief to theft etc. In accordance of that, cyber security also had grown advanced with time. Ethical questions can easily be raised if any of the personal data is revealed of any of the individual or public(Papacharissi & Fernback, 2005). In case of Facebook revealing the data of its users who actually trusted the company with their personal data can easily be considered as data breach as well as the misuse which was done with internet. The users of the Facebook did not really know that their data was being used for any other scandal. Though no harm was done to the customers but it would still be considered as a breach.
- Big data: It is a criminal offense if the data of any of the user is shared without their consent. This is known as informed consent in ethical terms. Privacy is taken to be as a right of the human and this right comes under multiple declarations and treaties. In the year 1998, ECHR in UK had implemented this as Human Rights Act for the protection of the data that is personal by Data Protection Act 1998. In today’s world, anyway there is no privacy left but when it comes to the personal data or information, then it is a responsibility of any organization to respect and keep the data confidential. Facebook did just the opposite of it. Facebook had to face the loyalty issues because of this breach done by it and even after that, Mark Zuckerberg did not seem much apologetic towards the people about this incident(Service, 2017).
- Legal Issue: Every organization wants its employee to behave ethically but many are such organization which do not follow the same rules as they apply on their employees. Even if there is no breach of criminal law, but there will still always be liability. This consists of the legal obligation for making restitution or for compensating for the wrong things committed(Cain & Fink, 2010). The bottom line is the organization can easily be taken under the financial liability for the unethical actions. All the organization should work under the behavior and actions which are ethical and accepted by the society and the public. In this case, Facebook was legally wrong as it let go off its user’s data very easily to Cambridge Analytica.
In the system of Corporate Governance, the rules, norms and processes exist due to which the firm is controlled and directed. This system consists of the interest which should be balanced and this interest should be in the favor of the company and all other stakeholders (Mudashiru et al., 2014). In this scandal, Facebook employees did not know that Mark knew about the data being given to Cambridge people. This hampered the image as well as the trust of the employees of Facebook and this was the reason why they were trying to leave Facebook and work with Instagram or WhatsApp. Facebook did not stand on the policies which Corporate Governance stands for.
CSR can be defined as the initiative that the corporation takes for the effects of environment and social wellbeing of the organization itself. This is usually applied by the regulator or protection groups of that country. An organization is responsible for keeping the internal environment clean as well as the external too. The image of the company depends on a few actions which are done in the benefit of the users and the employees (Wang et al., 2016). Due to this scandal, the internal environment of the company got very much hampered as well as the American users were also feeling bad. There were even comments of deleting the Facebook accounts after such incidents from many people in America.
Ethical Issues Raised
This consists of the social responsibility about the organization and its business and to the extent of which the company is able to meet the legal, ethical and economic responsibilities which are developed by the stakeholders. The major objective is to live upon the high standards and quality for growth and get motivating investors and also employees (Fontaine, 2013). Facebook did not at all worked ethically and legally as is discussed in the summary of the scandal.
Leadership is that capability to manage the company in achieving the set of goals and also sustain in the competition and inspire people. Facebook was unable to motivate people to stay with them after the information of this scandal came out (Hao & Yazdanifard, 2015). Mark Zuckerberg who when took over Instagram and WhatsApp, his examples were being given in the world and leaders wanted to become like him and follow his leadership style. After this incident took place, people wanted to shift from Facebook and wanted to work in other institutions.
In my opinion, the decision that was made by Mark Zuckerberg to leak the data of Facebook’s users to Cambridge Analytica was completely unethical due to several reasons. Firstly, leaking the data without the informed consent of the users was legally very wrong. It is considered to be the crime in the real world. Secondly, the trust of the employees and the users of Facebook were broken. Thirdly, the organization itself had to go through the clarification phase and the image of Facebook got a little down for sure. The organization has to make sure that it goes on to the growth phase and keeps on growing but for doing it, the company cannot work unethically at all. Any decision taken in the benefit of the company would be temporary if that decision is not ethical. In the long term, it would definitely hamper the image and the organization on the whole (Graham, 2018).
For example: Earlier when Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, Mark was considered to be a good leader as his thoughts were genuine and his actions were for the benefit of the people, users and all the stakeholders of the company. He acquired both the two entities ethically and let them work independently even when it was an acquisition. This has taken not only Facebook to greater heights but Instagram and WhatsApp as well (Dubkevics, 2015).
It can clearly be seen a huge difference in both types of leaderships styles followed by the same person in two different situations.
Was the Decision Ethical?
According to me, utilitarianism philosophy is the one which is the most relevant out of all other philosophies for this ethical breach (Robertson & Walter, 2007). Utilitarianism suggests that the best of the actions are and should be done in order to maximize the utility of the organization and its surrounding on the whole. In every ethical theory, there are morals which can be considered as good and as bad as well (Marques, 2015). In Utility theory, good is considered to be as the pleasure existence and pain is nowhere. This is why it is named as utility as no pain is known as utility. It can be defined as the action which will grow the benefits and decreases the negative impacts or results for the huge number of people at a time. This theory takes this process as the greatest happiness principle which says that one action can increase the happiness or utility of the world. Actions are ranked in order of morality in this theory. Happiness is the degree of the actions which are performed morally (Eggleston, 2012). In this case study, the leader or the founder Mark Zuckerberg created a lot of chaos in his own organization by performing the action which was morally wrong. He did not care about the employees’ hard work they do in the organization. Those employees and the users of Facebook who are so loyal to it were left betrayed. A level of satisfaction was lost in employees and it was proved when some of the employees shared this desire of working with Instagram and WhatsApp instead of Facebook. Hence, I would have taken a decision of applying Utility Theory in this case to make an ethical decision.
Conclusion
This report focuses on the unethical move which was done by Facebook towards its users in collaboration with the organization named Cambridge Analytica. There are reasons discussed as to why be this decision unethical such as due to cyber crime, legal issues and big data. An organization should work ethically in terms of CSR, leadership, Corporate Governance and Corporate Citizenship. How Facebook hampered all these entities is emphasized in this report. By concluding, one can say that this scandal case study was totally based on an unethical move.
References
Bhardwaj, P., 2018. Some Facebook employees are reportedly quitting or asking to switch departments over ethical concerns. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.in/Some-Facebook-employees-are-reportedly-quitting-or-asking-to-switch-departments-over-ethical-concerns/articleshow/63685535.cms [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Cain, J. & Fink, J.L., 2010. Legal and Ethical Issues Regarding Social Media and Pharmacy Education. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 74(10).
Dubkevics, L., 2015. INTERRELATION BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND CLIMATE FOR CREATIVITY IN STATE THEATRES IN LATVIA. Journal of Business Management, (9).
Eggleston, B., 2012. Utilitarianism. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, 4, pp.452-58.
Fontaine, M., 2013. Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability: The New Bottom Line? International Journal of Business and Social Science , 4(4).
Graham, M., 2018. Facebook, Big Data, and the Trust of the Public. [Online] Available at: https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2018/04/facebook-big-data-and-the-trust-of-the-public/ [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Hao, M.J. & Yazdanifard, R., 2015. How Effective Leadership can Facilitate Change in Organizations through Improvement and Innovation. Global Journal of Management and Business Research: A Administration and Management, 15(9).
Marques, J., 2015. Universalism and Utilitarianism: An Evaluation of Two Popular Moral Theories in Business Decision Making. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 8(2).
Mudashiru, A., Bakare, I.A.O. & Babatunde, Y., 2014. Good Corporate Governance and Organisational Performance: An Empirical Analysis. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 4(7(1)).
Papacharissi, Z. & Fernback, J., 2005. Online Privacy and Consumer Protection: An Analysis of Portal Privacy Statements. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 49(3), pp.259-81.
Robertson, M. & Walter, G., 2007. A Critical Reflection on Utilitarianism as the Basis for Psychiatric Ethics. Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, 2(1).
Service, U.D., 2017. Big data and data Sharing: Ethical issues. [Online] Available at: https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/604711/big-data-and-data-sharing_ethical-issues.pdf [Accessed 24 May 2018].
Wang, Tong, Takeuchi & George, 2016. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: AN OVERVIEW AND NEW RESEARCH DIRECTIONS. Academy of Management Journal, 59(2), pp.534-44.
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