Social Media, Ethics and Transparency
2010
A modern brain-washing?
Following the Friday Session about ‘Social media and Transparency – New Ways of Lobbying?’, I come back to the era of transparency as a starting point for another “New ways of” article. Going further into the analyse of transparency trough social media, I want to talk about the bright and the dark side of this trendy concept.
The era of transparency in which we are supposed to be is the slogan you cannot avoid. Companies, associations are claiming proudly and loudly: we are transparent! Transparency is seen as a solution to internal crisis and mostly integrated within an autoregulated system.
“We are transparent in our work, says CWG secretary general”
“We are transparent” – Tullow Oil boss
“Social Media ROI: we are transparent, so we better have passion for what we do”
“Why we need transparent pricing in microfinance” – Mftransparency.org
Transparent does not mean translucent : the bright side
First of all, what is transparency? Being transparent includes clarity, information. It is mostly a state of mind: accept that others could have access to information to which they would not have normally. With a transparent information, people do not have to search; it is available right here and now.
This claim for transparency appeared for the first time with the Enlightenment Movement. This movement promoted a more participative political system in opposition to the institutions and their fuzzy way of working. Kant, for example, promoted the concept of Publicity (make things public) as a condition of democracy .
Public Opinion is watching you
Nowadays, transparency is claimed in every field. From politics [ii] to banks [iii], through solar panels installator… all of them are requested to have a transparent information about their product and/or service. This request for transparency is supposed to avoid the uncorrect behaviors and bring trust to the customers/clients. Transparency would normally be linked to an ethical behavior.
In which way? If you are promoting yourself as transparent, you let others having a look at what you do. If anybody has access to this information, you are now submitted to another law!?! Public Opinion is watching you! You became the perfect well-equiped company of “doing things well”. Now transparency gives people the right to ask who, how and why a company is doing such things. People have the permission to give their point of view and arguing if it is not done the way they want it. They are expecting from you a certain behavior. In fact, they are expecting you to be legitime in what you do, to have an “ethical” label. You gave them a “droit de regard”, and they use it, as it was predictable, as a “droit de juger”. This right of inspection was used to inspect, strictly speaking. Following this ethical movement of inspection, Code of Conduct, White Book, labels, and guidelines… are doing great for now.
The shareholders era
Social media platforms are playing in this general movement of inspection. They are transparent in the way they are diffusing and submitting some information to the Public Opinion. It is a way to diffuse and manage your image, your ethical reputation (among other things, of course). They help making information accessible.
We are now dealing in the company culture with an extended stakeholders community, the shareholders community, to which consumers belong. “Shareholder” means that the company interest cannot be resumed to the only ones who have a financial interest, the interest must be widen to all kind of stakes.
Transparent does not mean translucent : the dark side
Transparent does not mean translucent! Being transparent does not include avoiding any secret and reveal everything publically. Some information need to be private, the secret is intrinsically linked to heir own nature [iv]. It also means that some obligations can be avoided. The lie by omission is permitted! Between the image communicated and the actions, there is a gap.
Social media don’t want to be transclucent, they are transparent in the way they diffuse information. Excepting that before diffusion, there is always selection of information. Here is the first gap.
The second gap can be found in the use and the knowledge people have of these technical issues:
- Are people aware of the way social media are managed?
- Are they aware of the privacy policies?
- Will social media still be open to the collective knowledge for free?
Social media can be a real weapon of reputation management but I wouldn’t talk about a revolution! I prefer being sceptical and pragmatical. Even if of course nobody can predict the way people are going to use social media in 40 years, there is still some things that must be kept in mind when we use it on a daily base. The gap between the transparency declared and the transparency applied in social media is one of these things.
Ethics were supposed to change the world
In this discussion, nothing is black or white, maybe is it my philosophical background talking here?!? One thing is sure: transparency is not as easy to study as it seems. We are only at the beginning of the conflict between transparency, social media and ethics.
Concluding with a personal reflexion. When I started studying ethics, I was convinced companies behavior was about to change. Ethics could change the world! Now I am more in a … disenchantment! Concretly, ethics reflects more in words than in facts! Organisations use the media channels to diffuse ethical principles. Even if I cannot blame companies which are submitting themselves to ethical principles, companies have tendency to follow in general the green and ethical brain-washing without wishing a change of their real problematic behaviors.
Read for example “Projet de Paix Perpétuelle“.
[ii] Example: Transparency International Belgium
[iii] Example: ECB
[iv] Some professions are defined by the professional secret and the violation of this Code of Honor leads to the exclusion/humiliation of the peers. Ex: doctors, advocates, bankers…
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Most interesting topic, especially if one is to consider the following facets of the subject:
Your article speaks of “droit de regard”, and the right to cast judgement, but by which standard does such judgement occur? How quickly should such judgement happen? If we were to sequence “mental positions”, what would gained by making ourselves open, curious and full of compassion before casting judgement?
Finally, I’d like to make a point about shareholders because that’s been a point on which I seriously doubt currently prevalent theories are right about the necessity to serve their interests exclusively. The story goes that if you serve shareholders’ interests well, then you’ll necessarily act in the best interest of all other communities who are influenced by the economic activity that belongs to the aforementioned shareholders. However, that line of reasoning totally ignores externalities and the longer term impacts of a given economic activity not only on local communities but also on people elsewhere. For example, the shareholders of a dairy products company in Europe may be well served by their management whose work also involves influencing elected officials to support their industry, but that does not necessarily mean the production, processing and distribution of those products is good for people locally, let alone for producers or consumers elsewhere. Reading your text, I’m not too sure the word “shareholder” is appropriate. Stakeholders seems more adequate even though one may think it’s been overused and made to sound too “politically correct” in the sense that we all feel good about professing service to or respect of larger communities of stakeholders, except there is often not a rigorous definition of the stakes and therefore of those stakeholders. Coming back to the previous example, in the dairy products industry or in agriculture are stakeholders just European rural communities, the entire European market, human beings anywhere on the planet who are even indirectly affected by the activity or all sentient beings potentially affected by the activity? Depending on your answer, you’ll get different definitions of “stakeholders” and hence different definitions of what’s ethical and what’s not; which in turn means that the extent to which we need transparency to support moral behavior is truly variable and highly dependent on the pre-existing level of education among those that would be given access to the “true” information in a transparent way, not to mention their mental attitude and ability to devote necessary time and energy to careful consideration of ethical aspects.
One could write for hours on the subject without reaching a final and firm conclusion, which is perhaps one of the reasons why it’s so important to keep examining with a mind as free of prejudice as is humanly possible.
Thanks Alex for all these reflections.
I don’t have the ambition to answer point by point to all these reflections
I think we would need another Friday Session to go back in detail to all the very interesting comments you pointed it out.
First of all, as you mentioned it, there is a difference between ethics and moral. This difference would be the one between “Bon” and the “Bien” in French. I think this is THE starting point making possible the “ethical movement” I tried to describe. The “bien” is supposed to be much more linked to the evolution of the Society. Morality normally not. I don’t totally agree on this because Morality is still linked to what cultural values would consider Good.
In ethics, the aim (if there is only one) is reaching “Le Bien” which is linked to life – in a practical way. Unlike morality, which is on a transcendant level (but the internalisation of the values is necessary). I don’t think only a tool, as social media is, would influence the morality of people. Ethics is about the improvement of living and in this case social media can be a useful tool. Because it is a medium of communication. In my opinion, the only powerful tool that can influence (influence, not change, not form) morality is law. But are social media as much powerful as law?
To be short, when I talk about this kind of ethical movement I don’t think there is this internalization of values that should normally be. What to do you think?
In this article, my point was that social media is a tool of transparency leading companies to have a more ethical behaviour. My disillusion was about the difference you just noticed, the difference between the being (être) and the appearence.
What is also playing in this “ethical movement” is the power of language. I make reference to Searle and the language as “performatif” (french again.”Quand dire c’est faire”). The only obligation companies have, is the accountability of their actions, actions we cannot directly control. For a very interesting analysis of this “companies behaviour” I recommend you this brilliant text (http://bit.ly/hKzth3). In my opinion, transparency, is a tool for promoting an ethical speech. And language is a powerfull tool of influence. It is a system in creation, there is not one ingredient before another. (For examples, have a look at the Global Compact of the UN)
The link between ethics and social pressure is for me questioning the definition of human being and in this case I don’t have only one point of view. I don’t agree with Rousseau neither with Hobbes. The subtelty of human morality is wonderfull… What is you opinion about it?
Coming back to your question of study, I didn’t had the opportunity to study the evolution. Do you? Because if you did, I really would like a summary
Think of the famous example of Nike which had its own “Code of Conduct” but violated it by making children working in Asia with its subcontractings. The Public opinion discovered it and… they had to change!
In point 6, you mentioned standards. And that is exactly the way ethics is working now with the ISO etc. They use standards and generalisation of what is “bien” which is not universal and linked to cultural values… You also talked about the “Guerre Juste”, do you know Robert Kagan ?
About the spiral dynamics, I return you the question, what do you think?
And finally,the shareholder point, I totally agree with you. How can we define and limit what is the totality of stakeholders?
To conclude, my important personal question to which I still have no answer is this one: even if ethics is more about speech than action, is there a move for an ethical world? Is it still better that than nothing?
Hope to have you comments back
Sorry to be a little bit fuzzy about all this
Cheers
Social Media, Ethics and Transparency http://t.co/BKCOGp32 via @cleverwood