Business Ethics-in SOcial media
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MC-301 Business Ethics
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MC-301 Business Ethics
Assignment The ethics of the business of social media
Submitted by: Rahul Kumar Jha 0258/49
Rahul Kumar Jha (0258/49)
IIMC
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Contents
Assignment .................................................................................................................................................................1 Copy of Approval ........................................................................................................................................................3 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................................4 Report .........................................................................................................................................................................5 Recommendations................................................................................................................................................... 14 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 15
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Copy of Approval
Dear rahul Your proposal is accepted. Regards sanjana
> Hi, > > Please find below my required details: > > Name: Rahul Kumar Jha > Reg No : 0258/49 > Section E > Title: The ethics of the business of social media > > Scope: The controversies in the use of unethical practices in social > media, > lack of privacy concerns of the users of social media, suggested > Remedies > which can help solve this concerns > > Methodology:- Article, news reports > > Regards, > Rahul Jha
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Executive Summary
In today’s world social media is ubiquitous. We cannot live without it seems. Everywhere we go facebook, linkedin, twitter, etc are with us. People marry, people die, everything is updated, and nothing is left. It is like everything that happens around us is there on some social media website. This has led to various businesses mushrooming which not only tap social media but also help other firms use social media to promote their business. Now the question arises is what the need of business ethics in social media is. The answer is obvious: Social media is us and businesses are using us to sell things to us. In popular language it is said in a world where nothing is free, the product being on social media is you-the people. Well this angle is correct, social media websites sell our information to other companies and help them form a better opinion of us, of our habits and so on. But we need to draw a line somewhere, there are genuine privacy concerns. People need to learn how to use social media or at least they need to be made aware of the fact that every bit of information they share may be used by social marketers to sell something to them or on their behalf to someone else. Every link you click or every video you watch on youtube is being watched by algorithms which learn our habits and suggest some other links to our liking. This seems nice but when the same information is used to sell things, it might not be that bad but it can get worse. We need a lot of ethical practices in Social media business and this article talks about that.
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Report
We all hear the term Social media everyday. It is there everywhere around us. What exactly is Social Media and how is it being used by businesses? Social media is an umbrella term used to describe social interaction through a suite of technology based tools, many of which are internet based. This includes, but is not limited to, internet forums, networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus, webcasts, and blogs. Social media exhibits unique characteristics when compared to ”traditional‟ media forms. Its speed and scope means that once content is published it is available instantaneously, to a potentially global audience. Social media tools tend to be free or available at a very low cost relative to other forms of media and do not require users to have much technical knowledge. This allows larger numbers of individuals to access and publish material than with traditional media forms. Social media is usually interactive in a way that traditional media is not, so users can comment on and edit published material, making it difficult to control content. Social media blurs private/public boundaries when individuals’ personal information and opinions enter the public domain. The boundaries between personal and work life also become blurred as companies make use of social media (originally designed for personal use) for business purposes, and likewise employees access personal sites while at work. These days, ‘ethics’ is a hot topic, especially when we start talking about big business and advertising. Terms like ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) have recently entered our business vocabulary. Generally we associate the term CSR with how well a business takes responsibility for its impact upon the environment, and how well it upholds social justice when dealing with employees and residents of the local region in which they operate. But while these are the ‘mega’ issues we tend to hear about in the media, the fundamental issue of ‘ethics’ has a far deeper and more personal purport. Page Carrying out our natural duty to ‘do no harm’ to our planet and humanity does not automatically make
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IIMC
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us ‘ethical’. Ethics is not simply the absence of a negative; it is not a list of ‘rules’ we should follow and ‘regulations’ we should not break. Rather, it is a vibrant code that expresses our values. When we live an ethical life or run an ethical business, it means our decisions, policies and behaviour are all congruent with our values, and that these values illuminate a higher purpose and vision for the world. What that actually ‘looks like’ is, admittedly, more than a bit hazy. What one person puts at the forefront of their values may not match another person’s values. But I believe when we dig deeply enough and get to the core of the intent behind those values, we find a great deal of common ground. For example, we hear a lot of people say they think ‘greed’ is the ‘evil’ that drives people to be unethical. But I believe greed is just a symptom of something subtler. Beneath greed, you will always find fear – fear of loss, fear of survival, fear of rejection, or whatever. And if you dig even more deeply to look beneath the fear, you will eventually find the root cause from which the apparently ‘unethical’ behaviour of greediness was born: a fundamental feeling of disconnection. It is my view that disconnection is at the root of all so-called ‘evils’ in the world. When we feel disconnected from Self, people or planet, we open the door to various shades of ‘unethical’ behaviour. Greed is just one of the darker shades of disconnection. It is a repeated observation that if you look beneath the surface of any ‘unethical’ behaviour, whether it be of an environmental, economic or societal nature, you will always find the ‘Deadly Sin of Disconnection’ as its point of origin. Because of this, if our view of ‘ethics’ is defined solely by behaviour rather than the cause of that behaviour, we as a society are likely never to reach consensus about what is ‘ethical’ and what is not. Rather, we only increase this Deadly Sin of Disconnection by putting people into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘good’ and ‘evil’. At its most extreme, this superficial understanding of ethics can produce a polarity of thought that creates a sword of division between individuals, races and nations, and becomes the fuel of crime, terrorism and warfare. Page
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Because of this, it is preferred to take a core-focused perspective of ethics, where the underlying assumption is that if we are driven by a desire to create a deeper, more genuine, more respectful connection with others, our outward behaviour will automatically be ‘ethical’. And while we will openly express my personal views on what I believe ‘ethical marketing’ might look like on social media (and Twitter in particular), I do respect that you will undoubtedly have your own interpretations of what is and is not ethical, which may differ from mine. The idea of Corporate Social Responsibility came about in response to an urgent need of our changing times: the need to address ecological imbalance and social injustice. There is a need to address how social media is changing the way we communicate. The rise of social media is arguably the fastest paradigm shift in communication humankind has ever experienced. Statistics show that our adoption of communication platforms like Facebook and Twitter has spread at lightning speed, hundreds of times faster than the adoption of either the telephone or television in the 0th century. Social media has slipped into our lives so quickly and so pervasively that many people find it overwhelming, confusing, or even repugnant. Others have embraced it with great enthusiasm, seeing it as an alluring, wide-open canvas for experimentation and innovation. But within that vast, exciting world of lightning-speed change, experimentation and innovation lies a dilemma: the old paradigms for communication are being stretched and morphed into a new culture we don’t fully understand yet. We’re making up the rules as we go along, like a mob. When things start to get out of hand, the policy makers behind platforms like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn step in and announce a new set of ground rules. Then, all the end users have to shift gears and the whole mob dynamic starts again. You could say that social media is one big global communication laboratory, and that every one of us is playing a part in its creation. If we can step back from our personal feelings about Page
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social media just enough to look at it from a sociological perspective, we can perhaps begin to appreciate what a powerful and fascinating chapter in human history this is. On Twitter, our communications are no longer limited by time and space; instead they are limited to 140 characters. Our conversations are no longer with one person at a time, but with hundreds or even thousands. And because we are in the midst of a major shift in our communication paradigms, we are also in the midst of a shift in our paradigms for ethics. Our old ideas about privacy and propriety are being challenged. Many ‘old school’ advertisers are starting to stick out like sore thumbs when they barge into our new communication universe. We can sense that the status quo of business and marketing is changing, but we have not yet reached a consensus as to what is ‘ethical marketing’ and what is not. Reaching that consensus is what we as a world are being called upon to do now, while we are still amidst this blitz of change. There is no point in talking about ethics AFTER things have ‘settled down’. If we wait until then, the ethical standards that emerge will most likely be the dogma of the loudest or most powerful voice. If this happens to be a large corporate or political entity whose primary motive is to protect their financial or political interests, chances are that dogma will be only a slight variation of the old paradigm. No, we cannot wait any longer; the only sensible time to talk about ethics is when we are exactly where we are now – confused. It is only within the ‘mess’ of our confusion that we will find our greatest resource for innovation and social change. A vibrant, new, value-driven paradigm for ethics can only be created if we begin the dialogue NOW, rather than wait for big businesses, governments or even the social media platforms themselves to make our minds up for us. These unique characteristics of social media pose ethical challenges for business, through employees‟ use of social media on behalf of the company, as well as their personal use. Page
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In a survey of large companies, 6 of 7 respondents identified integrity risk as the main ethical challenge with regard to social media. When an employee uses social media in an irresponsible way either on behalf of the company or through their personal social media account, it can undermine the company’s commitment to ethical practice and expose it to integrity risk. The case of Nestlé provides an example. In March 2011, an employee who was managing content on the company’s Facebook Fan Page posted offensive comments in response to negative remarks by fans. The employee’s behaviour violated the company’s business principle of integrity and their commitment to “avoid any conduct that could damage or risk Nestlé or its reputation” and provoked a consumer backlash. Amidst calls to boycott Nestlé, members of the general public also joined the Fan Page specifically to criticise the Company. Alternatively, employees might post negative comments about the company on their personal social media profile. This is harder for companies to control. Unfortunately, we've not yet reached an era where social media sites share ethical responsibility for public content. Therefore, organizations and individuals should develop their own ethical policies and processes for handling social media internally. Many recent lapses have occurred and are occurring daily. For example, a frustrated Tweet about traffic sent on the wrong site caused an employee to be fired and his company's consulting contract to be terminated. In combating this misuse, individuals need proper education and training, much in the same way as ethics, sexual harassment, fraud and internal control training are conducted -- this should include the penalties for specific violations. In addition, organizations must monitor the remarks of employees as well as those of their stakeholders. Customer or other stakeholder complaints may add value by identifying product and process issues to be addressed. The power of social media is constantly emerging on a global basis, which has even provided the impetus for government changes in some parts of the world. However, we all have a duty to use social Page
IIMC
media in an honourable manner and take responsibility for our actions. A sensitive topic we've all
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grappled with is the subject of ethics in social media marketing practices, specifically: the proper uses of, often times, very personal data. The story is complex and one blog post will certainly not solve the many ethical dilemmas that data privacy presents. For example, there are ethical concerns about how social networks inform users of what their privacy levels are, how to change them and to what degree their data is deemed 'public.' There are ethical concerns about the uses of data in complex political and legal situations in which people might be at risk if their identity is revealed. Lastly there are ethical concerns around the use of social media data for brand marketing purposes where the lines blur between 'relevant' and just plain old 'creepy.' I want to specifically address this last concern. My position: I believe that brand marketing within social media is a positive step forward for the end consumer, but I also contend that there is a tremendous amount of progress yet to be made to fulfil on this positive vision. First: Why is social media marketing a positive step forward for the end consumer?. If only, I wane, I had product x, y or z and all my ills would be solved, all fears allayed, all dreams realized. Over time, the messaging has dulled our senses and for a period the ads had to become more and more sensational just to get our attention at all. Then social media showed up on the scene. With the advent of social media the idea of understanding a person's personal taste became a reality. The marketer no longer had to boil the ocean with a single idea. The marketer could move beyond analyzing the standard fare of demographic and psychographic data presented by a TV show advertising opportunity, a magazine buy or a website display ad for example. Now, the marketer can read the data of what people like, what their affiliations are, how they engage with the world online and begin to carve out who their best audience really is. They can find the people that want to hear from them. In sum: By knowing more about their audience and having a direct channel to reach them brands can Page reach the right people, the people who truly do want to hear from them. Secondly, when they do reach
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their target audience they no longer engage in a 'top-down' manner; instead brands are able to listen and create truly engaging and more meaningful ways of interacting with that audience: from interactive applications that make people's lives easier, to rich media campaigns that are relevant, entertaining and even at times cause based or political. The bottom line: The communication funnel is being reversed. The end consumer is now the one able to determine the landscape of their marketing experience and the brand is better off as a result. As I mentioned early on, it's not all a rosy parade. Brands have a long way to go to get better at understanding how to use social media as a listening device that shapes their campaigns. Additionally, those engagements need to evolve beyond the contest, sweepstakes, give-away model to deliver a truly meaningful experience. The best way to explain my point is with an example: Oreo recently launched a campaign called the Oreo Daily Twist. Each day Oreo took a sometimes fun and at other times quite politically risky approach of visually refashioning their iconic cookie to be relevant to a news level topic of the day. The campaign was successful on many fronts: it was time relevant, it was news relevant, it was at times risky and political and it understood the nature of it's social community and their willingness to support and engage with the effort. Additionally the end consumers had a thoughtful and interesting experience, of the sort they had never experienced before with the brand. The singular nostalgic message of a childhood cookie and cup of milk was nowhere to be found yet the campaign succeeded wildly. The brand listened to the data, used it effectively and the end consumer had a relevant, engaging and thoughtful experience. Truly, what we call a 'win-win.' You will know you’ve graduated beyond the superficiality of social media marketing when you shed the “social media” label from your thinking. Certainly, I’ve built a nice reputation by talking a lot about Page
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social media in the last few years. But social media is a small part of what will drive customers to buy or try, think or say. Another thing the purists are married to is an unrealistic ethical positioning. For instance, instead of embracing advertising as an integral part of a marketing plan, they tend to insult it as if ads are not effective at all. They call email marketers spammers and look down their noses at people who still spend money on Pay-Per-Click and online media campaigns. And god forbid you actually take out an ad on Facebook?! Sacrilege. Used in the right way, social media can provide many professional and personal benefits, including maintaining the interconnectivity of family members, classmates, colleagues, alumni and friends. However, keep in mind that "less is more" when disclosing information about yourself. It may only take one sitting through a FBI presentation on cybercrime to raise awareness. Also, ensure that your organization has adequate policies in place to guide the use of social media and that the staff is properly trained. Identity theft, phishing, hacking and other privacy concerns can stop you or your business in its tracks. The positive effect of social media is quite general: just about any time we find a way to foster mutuallyadvantageous market exchanges, we’ve done something unambiguously good. This is one example of the ethical power of social media. Another big enemy of efficient markets is monopoly power, or more generally any situation in which a buyer or seller is able to exert “market power,” essentially a situation in which some market actor enjoys a relative lack of competition and hence has the ability to throw its weight around. Social media promises improvements here, too. Sites like Groupon.com allow individuals to aggregate in ways that give them substantial bargaining power. Page
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The general lesson here is that markets thrive on information. Indeed, economists’ formal models for efficient markets assume that all participants have full knowledge — that is, they assume that lack of information will never be an issue. Social networks are providing increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for aggregating, sharing, and filtering information, including important information about what consumers want, about what companies have to offer, and so on. So while a lot of attention has been paid to the sense in which social media are “bringing us together,” the real payoff may lie in the way social media render markets more efficient. In the words of Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility”, social media has provided firms as well as people with lots of information and that information weilds a lot of power. The need of the hour is to use this power with great responsibility both from the firms as well as the users.
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Recommendations
To solve the problem of privacy as well as lack of awareness of people about social media, it is most important that users of social media first and foremost read and understand what all is shared and what all is protected. To do this is simple, just read about the privacy policy of your social network. Facebook for example gives you a lot of power to decide what is shared and what is not. So go ahead and understand those features and use them if you have concerns. Secondly businesses using social media to sell need to understand what they are doing with the data. They should not use some sensitive information about users against them and try to use the information which is important but not too personal. This doesn’t restrict the profitability of the businesses’ selling campaign and also helps keep the trust of users in the businesses. It is also of prime importance to notify breach of data, attempts at privacy invasion etc by the social networks. There is a need to expose the businesses using unethical practices so that users know which firms are rogue and they can take their own decisions whether they want to buy or not. Social media is a great tool and can be used for the benefit of all, what is required is a sense of trust and use of ethical practices.
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Bibliography
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-social-networking/ http://businessfinancemag.com/article/ethical-challenges-social-media-0321 http://businessethicsblog.com/2012/07/09/the-hidden-ethical-value-of-social-networking/
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Assignment The ethics of the business of social media
Submitted by: Rahul Kumar Jha 0258/49
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IIMC
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Contents
Assignment .................................................................................................................................................................1 Copy of Approval ........................................................................................................................................................3 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................................4 Report .........................................................................................................................................................................5 Recommendations................................................................................................................................................... 14 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 15
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Copy of Approval
Dear rahul Your proposal is accepted. Regards sanjana
> Hi, > > Please find below my required details: > > Name: Rahul Kumar Jha > Reg No : 0258/49 > Section E > Title: The ethics of the business of social media > > Scope: The controversies in the use of unethical practices in social > media, > lack of privacy concerns of the users of social media, suggested > Remedies > which can help solve this concerns > > Methodology:- Article, news reports > > Regards, > Rahul Jha
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Executive Summary
In today’s world social media is ubiquitous. We cannot live without it seems. Everywhere we go facebook, linkedin, twitter, etc are with us. People marry, people die, everything is updated, and nothing is left. It is like everything that happens around us is there on some social media website. This has led to various businesses mushrooming which not only tap social media but also help other firms use social media to promote their business. Now the question arises is what the need of business ethics in social media is. The answer is obvious: Social media is us and businesses are using us to sell things to us. In popular language it is said in a world where nothing is free, the product being on social media is you-the people. Well this angle is correct, social media websites sell our information to other companies and help them form a better opinion of us, of our habits and so on. But we need to draw a line somewhere, there are genuine privacy concerns. People need to learn how to use social media or at least they need to be made aware of the fact that every bit of information they share may be used by social marketers to sell something to them or on their behalf to someone else. Every link you click or every video you watch on youtube is being watched by algorithms which learn our habits and suggest some other links to our liking. This seems nice but when the same information is used to sell things, it might not be that bad but it can get worse. We need a lot of ethical practices in Social media business and this article talks about that.
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Report
We all hear the term Social media everyday. It is there everywhere around us. What exactly is Social Media and how is it being used by businesses? Social media is an umbrella term used to describe social interaction through a suite of technology based tools, many of which are internet based. This includes, but is not limited to, internet forums, networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus, webcasts, and blogs. Social media exhibits unique characteristics when compared to ”traditional‟ media forms. Its speed and scope means that once content is published it is available instantaneously, to a potentially global audience. Social media tools tend to be free or available at a very low cost relative to other forms of media and do not require users to have much technical knowledge. This allows larger numbers of individuals to access and publish material than with traditional media forms. Social media is usually interactive in a way that traditional media is not, so users can comment on and edit published material, making it difficult to control content. Social media blurs private/public boundaries when individuals’ personal information and opinions enter the public domain. The boundaries between personal and work life also become blurred as companies make use of social media (originally designed for personal use) for business purposes, and likewise employees access personal sites while at work. These days, ‘ethics’ is a hot topic, especially when we start talking about big business and advertising. Terms like ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) have recently entered our business vocabulary. Generally we associate the term CSR with how well a business takes responsibility for its impact upon the environment, and how well it upholds social justice when dealing with employees and residents of the local region in which they operate. But while these are the ‘mega’ issues we tend to hear about in the media, the fundamental issue of ‘ethics’ has a far deeper and more personal purport. Page Carrying out our natural duty to ‘do no harm’ to our planet and humanity does not automatically make
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IIMC
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us ‘ethical’. Ethics is not simply the absence of a negative; it is not a list of ‘rules’ we should follow and ‘regulations’ we should not break. Rather, it is a vibrant code that expresses our values. When we live an ethical life or run an ethical business, it means our decisions, policies and behaviour are all congruent with our values, and that these values illuminate a higher purpose and vision for the world. What that actually ‘looks like’ is, admittedly, more than a bit hazy. What one person puts at the forefront of their values may not match another person’s values. But I believe when we dig deeply enough and get to the core of the intent behind those values, we find a great deal of common ground. For example, we hear a lot of people say they think ‘greed’ is the ‘evil’ that drives people to be unethical. But I believe greed is just a symptom of something subtler. Beneath greed, you will always find fear – fear of loss, fear of survival, fear of rejection, or whatever. And if you dig even more deeply to look beneath the fear, you will eventually find the root cause from which the apparently ‘unethical’ behaviour of greediness was born: a fundamental feeling of disconnection. It is my view that disconnection is at the root of all so-called ‘evils’ in the world. When we feel disconnected from Self, people or planet, we open the door to various shades of ‘unethical’ behaviour. Greed is just one of the darker shades of disconnection. It is a repeated observation that if you look beneath the surface of any ‘unethical’ behaviour, whether it be of an environmental, economic or societal nature, you will always find the ‘Deadly Sin of Disconnection’ as its point of origin. Because of this, if our view of ‘ethics’ is defined solely by behaviour rather than the cause of that behaviour, we as a society are likely never to reach consensus about what is ‘ethical’ and what is not. Rather, we only increase this Deadly Sin of Disconnection by putting people into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘good’ and ‘evil’. At its most extreme, this superficial understanding of ethics can produce a polarity of thought that creates a sword of division between individuals, races and nations, and becomes the fuel of crime, terrorism and warfare. Page
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Because of this, it is preferred to take a core-focused perspective of ethics, where the underlying assumption is that if we are driven by a desire to create a deeper, more genuine, more respectful connection with others, our outward behaviour will automatically be ‘ethical’. And while we will openly express my personal views on what I believe ‘ethical marketing’ might look like on social media (and Twitter in particular), I do respect that you will undoubtedly have your own interpretations of what is and is not ethical, which may differ from mine. The idea of Corporate Social Responsibility came about in response to an urgent need of our changing times: the need to address ecological imbalance and social injustice. There is a need to address how social media is changing the way we communicate. The rise of social media is arguably the fastest paradigm shift in communication humankind has ever experienced. Statistics show that our adoption of communication platforms like Facebook and Twitter has spread at lightning speed, hundreds of times faster than the adoption of either the telephone or television in the 0th century. Social media has slipped into our lives so quickly and so pervasively that many people find it overwhelming, confusing, or even repugnant. Others have embraced it with great enthusiasm, seeing it as an alluring, wide-open canvas for experimentation and innovation. But within that vast, exciting world of lightning-speed change, experimentation and innovation lies a dilemma: the old paradigms for communication are being stretched and morphed into a new culture we don’t fully understand yet. We’re making up the rules as we go along, like a mob. When things start to get out of hand, the policy makers behind platforms like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn step in and announce a new set of ground rules. Then, all the end users have to shift gears and the whole mob dynamic starts again. You could say that social media is one big global communication laboratory, and that every one of us is playing a part in its creation. If we can step back from our personal feelings about Page
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social media just enough to look at it from a sociological perspective, we can perhaps begin to appreciate what a powerful and fascinating chapter in human history this is. On Twitter, our communications are no longer limited by time and space; instead they are limited to 140 characters. Our conversations are no longer with one person at a time, but with hundreds or even thousands. And because we are in the midst of a major shift in our communication paradigms, we are also in the midst of a shift in our paradigms for ethics. Our old ideas about privacy and propriety are being challenged. Many ‘old school’ advertisers are starting to stick out like sore thumbs when they barge into our new communication universe. We can sense that the status quo of business and marketing is changing, but we have not yet reached a consensus as to what is ‘ethical marketing’ and what is not. Reaching that consensus is what we as a world are being called upon to do now, while we are still amidst this blitz of change. There is no point in talking about ethics AFTER things have ‘settled down’. If we wait until then, the ethical standards that emerge will most likely be the dogma of the loudest or most powerful voice. If this happens to be a large corporate or political entity whose primary motive is to protect their financial or political interests, chances are that dogma will be only a slight variation of the old paradigm. No, we cannot wait any longer; the only sensible time to talk about ethics is when we are exactly where we are now – confused. It is only within the ‘mess’ of our confusion that we will find our greatest resource for innovation and social change. A vibrant, new, value-driven paradigm for ethics can only be created if we begin the dialogue NOW, rather than wait for big businesses, governments or even the social media platforms themselves to make our minds up for us. These unique characteristics of social media pose ethical challenges for business, through employees‟ use of social media on behalf of the company, as well as their personal use. Page
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In a survey of large companies, 6 of 7 respondents identified integrity risk as the main ethical challenge with regard to social media. When an employee uses social media in an irresponsible way either on behalf of the company or through their personal social media account, it can undermine the company’s commitment to ethical practice and expose it to integrity risk. The case of Nestlé provides an example. In March 2011, an employee who was managing content on the company’s Facebook Fan Page posted offensive comments in response to negative remarks by fans. The employee’s behaviour violated the company’s business principle of integrity and their commitment to “avoid any conduct that could damage or risk Nestlé or its reputation” and provoked a consumer backlash. Amidst calls to boycott Nestlé, members of the general public also joined the Fan Page specifically to criticise the Company. Alternatively, employees might post negative comments about the company on their personal social media profile. This is harder for companies to control. Unfortunately, we've not yet reached an era where social media sites share ethical responsibility for public content. Therefore, organizations and individuals should develop their own ethical policies and processes for handling social media internally. Many recent lapses have occurred and are occurring daily. For example, a frustrated Tweet about traffic sent on the wrong site caused an employee to be fired and his company's consulting contract to be terminated. In combating this misuse, individuals need proper education and training, much in the same way as ethics, sexual harassment, fraud and internal control training are conducted -- this should include the penalties for specific violations. In addition, organizations must monitor the remarks of employees as well as those of their stakeholders. Customer or other stakeholder complaints may add value by identifying product and process issues to be addressed. The power of social media is constantly emerging on a global basis, which has even provided the impetus for government changes in some parts of the world. However, we all have a duty to use social Page
IIMC
media in an honourable manner and take responsibility for our actions. A sensitive topic we've all
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grappled with is the subject of ethics in social media marketing practices, specifically: the proper uses of, often times, very personal data. The story is complex and one blog post will certainly not solve the many ethical dilemmas that data privacy presents. For example, there are ethical concerns about how social networks inform users of what their privacy levels are, how to change them and to what degree their data is deemed 'public.' There are ethical concerns about the uses of data in complex political and legal situations in which people might be at risk if their identity is revealed. Lastly there are ethical concerns around the use of social media data for brand marketing purposes where the lines blur between 'relevant' and just plain old 'creepy.' I want to specifically address this last concern. My position: I believe that brand marketing within social media is a positive step forward for the end consumer, but I also contend that there is a tremendous amount of progress yet to be made to fulfil on this positive vision. First: Why is social media marketing a positive step forward for the end consumer?. If only, I wane, I had product x, y or z and all my ills would be solved, all fears allayed, all dreams realized. Over time, the messaging has dulled our senses and for a period the ads had to become more and more sensational just to get our attention at all. Then social media showed up on the scene. With the advent of social media the idea of understanding a person's personal taste became a reality. The marketer no longer had to boil the ocean with a single idea. The marketer could move beyond analyzing the standard fare of demographic and psychographic data presented by a TV show advertising opportunity, a magazine buy or a website display ad for example. Now, the marketer can read the data of what people like, what their affiliations are, how they engage with the world online and begin to carve out who their best audience really is. They can find the people that want to hear from them. In sum: By knowing more about their audience and having a direct channel to reach them brands can Page reach the right people, the people who truly do want to hear from them. Secondly, when they do reach
Rahul Kumar Jha (0258/49)
IIMC
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their target audience they no longer engage in a 'top-down' manner; instead brands are able to listen and create truly engaging and more meaningful ways of interacting with that audience: from interactive applications that make people's lives easier, to rich media campaigns that are relevant, entertaining and even at times cause based or political. The bottom line: The communication funnel is being reversed. The end consumer is now the one able to determine the landscape of their marketing experience and the brand is better off as a result. As I mentioned early on, it's not all a rosy parade. Brands have a long way to go to get better at understanding how to use social media as a listening device that shapes their campaigns. Additionally, those engagements need to evolve beyond the contest, sweepstakes, give-away model to deliver a truly meaningful experience. The best way to explain my point is with an example: Oreo recently launched a campaign called the Oreo Daily Twist. Each day Oreo took a sometimes fun and at other times quite politically risky approach of visually refashioning their iconic cookie to be relevant to a news level topic of the day. The campaign was successful on many fronts: it was time relevant, it was news relevant, it was at times risky and political and it understood the nature of it's social community and their willingness to support and engage with the effort. Additionally the end consumers had a thoughtful and interesting experience, of the sort they had never experienced before with the brand. The singular nostalgic message of a childhood cookie and cup of milk was nowhere to be found yet the campaign succeeded wildly. The brand listened to the data, used it effectively and the end consumer had a relevant, engaging and thoughtful experience. Truly, what we call a 'win-win.' You will know you’ve graduated beyond the superficiality of social media marketing when you shed the “social media” label from your thinking. Certainly, I’ve built a nice reputation by talking a lot about Page
Rahul Kumar Jha (0258/49) IIMC
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social media in the last few years. But social media is a small part of what will drive customers to buy or try, think or say. Another thing the purists are married to is an unrealistic ethical positioning. For instance, instead of embracing advertising as an integral part of a marketing plan, they tend to insult it as if ads are not effective at all. They call email marketers spammers and look down their noses at people who still spend money on Pay-Per-Click and online media campaigns. And god forbid you actually take out an ad on Facebook?! Sacrilege. Used in the right way, social media can provide many professional and personal benefits, including maintaining the interconnectivity of family members, classmates, colleagues, alumni and friends. However, keep in mind that "less is more" when disclosing information about yourself. It may only take one sitting through a FBI presentation on cybercrime to raise awareness. Also, ensure that your organization has adequate policies in place to guide the use of social media and that the staff is properly trained. Identity theft, phishing, hacking and other privacy concerns can stop you or your business in its tracks. The positive effect of social media is quite general: just about any time we find a way to foster mutuallyadvantageous market exchanges, we’ve done something unambiguously good. This is one example of the ethical power of social media. Another big enemy of efficient markets is monopoly power, or more generally any situation in which a buyer or seller is able to exert “market power,” essentially a situation in which some market actor enjoys a relative lack of competition and hence has the ability to throw its weight around. Social media promises improvements here, too. Sites like Groupon.com allow individuals to aggregate in ways that give them substantial bargaining power. Page
Rahul Kumar Jha (0258/49) IIMC
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MC-301 Business Ethics
The general lesson here is that markets thrive on information. Indeed, economists’ formal models for efficient markets assume that all participants have full knowledge — that is, they assume that lack of information will never be an issue. Social networks are providing increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for aggregating, sharing, and filtering information, including important information about what consumers want, about what companies have to offer, and so on. So while a lot of attention has been paid to the sense in which social media are “bringing us together,” the real payoff may lie in the way social media render markets more efficient. In the words of Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility”, social media has provided firms as well as people with lots of information and that information weilds a lot of power. The need of the hour is to use this power with great responsibility both from the firms as well as the users.
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Recommendations
To solve the problem of privacy as well as lack of awareness of people about social media, it is most important that users of social media first and foremost read and understand what all is shared and what all is protected. To do this is simple, just read about the privacy policy of your social network. Facebook for example gives you a lot of power to decide what is shared and what is not. So go ahead and understand those features and use them if you have concerns. Secondly businesses using social media to sell need to understand what they are doing with the data. They should not use some sensitive information about users against them and try to use the information which is important but not too personal. This doesn’t restrict the profitability of the businesses’ selling campaign and also helps keep the trust of users in the businesses. It is also of prime importance to notify breach of data, attempts at privacy invasion etc by the social networks. There is a need to expose the businesses using unethical practices so that users know which firms are rogue and they can take their own decisions whether they want to buy or not. Social media is a great tool and can be used for the benefit of all, what is required is a sense of trust and use of ethical practices.
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IIMC
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Bibliography
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-social-networking/ http://businessfinancemag.com/article/ethical-challenges-social-media-0321 http://businessethicsblog.com/2012/07/09/the-hidden-ethical-value-of-social-networking/
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