By Xie Fang
Facebook, one of the world’s most popular social networking platforms, was caught up in a severe trust crisis this March when it was reported that the accounts of around 87 million Facebook users were leaked to two data analysis companies which used these data to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Back in 2016, the Chinese online search giant, Baidu, also sparked public outrage for a false medical advertisement which was directly linked to the death of a young Chinese cancer patient who was searching for effective cancer treatments on the company’s search platform.
In an exclusive interview with the China Fortune Media recently, David De Cremer, KPGM Professor of Management Studies at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, pointed out that these two scandals revealed a lack of responsible leadership, a problem which is often found in what he called digital platforms.
Prof. De Cremer in an exclusive interview with the China Fortune Media (Photo/China Fortune Media Group)
“So little responsible leadership can be found in the development of these technologies, especially when it comes down to digital platforms,” Prof. De Cremer told the China Fortune Media.
As an accomplished psychologist, Prof. De Cremer has been committed to applying psychological theories to such research topics as trust and leadership effectiveness. He successfully predicted the ethical and leadership crisis facing Facebook today in one of his articles titled The Challenge of Leading Digital Platforms in Responsible Ways which was written in 2017.
Prof. De Cremer noted that nowadays, a growing number of tech companies had adopted digital platforms as an efficient business model which, by facilitating value-creating interactions among different parties, brings a better customer experience at a lower operating cost.
In his opinion, the founders of these digital platforms failed to take the potential negative impacts into account when they developed these platforms. “If you designed it, you are also responsible for the consequences,” said Prof. De Cremer, adding that he was surprised that it took so long for Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, to realize that “he failed as a leader for the platform that he created.”
Prof. De Cremer believed that it was the kind of mindset which he called the innovation only bias which hindered these tech entrepreneurs from assuming a responsible leadership. “Most of these entrepreneurs in tech companies focusing only on innovation and not anticipating what might be the negative consequences,” he said.
He thought that at the heart of this responsible leadership is a pro-active vision. “Responsible leadership is a form of pro-active leadership where all the possible consequences of a decision are evaluated in light of the interests of all stakeholders in mind,” said Prof. De Cremer. “It requires acting on something that we cannot see yet.”
Unfortunately, as pointed out by Prof. De Cremer, the corporate cultures we know today don’t reward, but rather punish, responsible leadership. “Most of us fail to see the necessity and validity of responsible actions before any bad outcome takes place,” he said. “That indicates that corporate cultures are not fertile breeding grounds for responsible leadership.”
