Matt O'Brien and Rachel Lerman
Associated Press
Originally posted April 7, 2019
Here is an excerpt:
"Ethical AI" has become a new corporate buzz phrase, slapped on internal review committees, fancy job titles, research projects and philanthropic initiatives. The moves are meant to address concerns over racial and gender bias emerging in facial recognition and other AI systems, as well as address anxieties about job losses to the technology and its use by law enforcement and the military.
But how much substance lies behind the increasingly public ethics campaigns? And who gets to decide which technological pursuits do no harm?
Google was hit with both questions when it formed a new board of outside advisers in late March to help guide how it uses AI in products. But instead of winning over potential critics, it sparked internal rancor. A little more than a week later, Google bowed to pressure from the backlash and dissolved the council.
The outside board fell apart in stages. One of the board's eight inaugural members quit within days and another quickly became the target of protests from Google employees who said her conservative views don't align with the company's professed values.
As thousands of employees called for the removal of Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James, Google disbanded the board last week.
"It's become clear that in the current environment, (the council) can't function as we wanted," the company said in a statement.
The info is here.
Showing posts with label Corporate Governance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Corporate Governance. Show all posts
Friday, May 3, 2019
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
4 Ways Lying Becomes the Norm at a Company
Ron Carucci
Harvard Business Review
Originally published February 15, 2019
Many of the corporate scandals in the past several years — think Volkswagen or Wells Fargo — have been cases of wide-scale dishonesty. It’s hard to fathom how lying and deceit permeated these organizations. Some researchers point to group decision-making processes or psychological traps that snare leaders into justification of unethical choices. Certainly those factors are at play, but they largely explain dishonest behavior at an individual level and I wondered about systemic factors that might influence whether or not people in organizations distort or withhold the truth from one another.
This is what my team set out to understand through a 15-year longitudinal study. We analyzed 3,200 interviews that were conducted as part of 210 organizational assessments to see whether there were factors that predicted whether or not people inside a company will be honest. Our research yielded four factors — not individual character traits, but organizational issues — that played a role. The good news is that these factors are completely within a corporation’s control and improving them can make your company more honest, and help avert the reputation and financial disasters that dishonesty can lead to.
The stakes here are high. Accenture’s Competitive Agility Index — a 7,000-company, 20-industry analysis, for the first time tangibly quantified how a decline in stakeholder trust impacts a company’s financial performance. The analysis reveals more than half (54%) of companies on the index experienced a material drop in trust — from incidents such as product recalls, fraud, data breaches and c-suite missteps — which equates to a minimum of $180 billion in missed revenues. Worse, following a drop in trust, a company’s index score drops 2 points on average, negatively impacting revenue growth by 6% and EBITDA by 10% on average.
The info is here.
Harvard Business Review
Originally published February 15, 2019
Many of the corporate scandals in the past several years — think Volkswagen or Wells Fargo — have been cases of wide-scale dishonesty. It’s hard to fathom how lying and deceit permeated these organizations. Some researchers point to group decision-making processes or psychological traps that snare leaders into justification of unethical choices. Certainly those factors are at play, but they largely explain dishonest behavior at an individual level and I wondered about systemic factors that might influence whether or not people in organizations distort or withhold the truth from one another.
This is what my team set out to understand through a 15-year longitudinal study. We analyzed 3,200 interviews that were conducted as part of 210 organizational assessments to see whether there were factors that predicted whether or not people inside a company will be honest. Our research yielded four factors — not individual character traits, but organizational issues — that played a role. The good news is that these factors are completely within a corporation’s control and improving them can make your company more honest, and help avert the reputation and financial disasters that dishonesty can lead to.
The stakes here are high. Accenture’s Competitive Agility Index — a 7,000-company, 20-industry analysis, for the first time tangibly quantified how a decline in stakeholder trust impacts a company’s financial performance. The analysis reveals more than half (54%) of companies on the index experienced a material drop in trust — from incidents such as product recalls, fraud, data breaches and c-suite missteps — which equates to a minimum of $180 billion in missed revenues. Worse, following a drop in trust, a company’s index score drops 2 points on average, negatively impacting revenue growth by 6% and EBITDA by 10% on average.
The info is here.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Chief executives who lack ethics should be more afraid of public opinion than ever
Emma Koehn
Smart Company
Originally posted June 16, 2017
The age of the internet has made it near impossible for companies to hide when someone in their organisation makes a major blunder, and the research indicates the world is now tougher on bosses who stuff up than ever before.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers partners Kristin Rivera and Per Ola-Karlsson suggest in Harvard Business Review this week that the numbers don’t lie: more chief executives are being fired for “ethical blunders” than ever before, with scrutiny from both customers and shareholders accelerating.
The pair examine the numbers from PwC’s most recent global chief executive success study, which suggests the number of company heads who were dismissed for ethical lapses increased from 3.9% in the four years preceding 2012 to 5.3% at the end of 2016.
“Firstly, the public has become more suspicious, more critical and less forgiving of corporate misbehaviour,” Rivera and Karlsson say.
“Second, governance and regulation in many countries has become both more proactive and more punitive.”
The article is here.
Smart Company
Originally posted June 16, 2017
The age of the internet has made it near impossible for companies to hide when someone in their organisation makes a major blunder, and the research indicates the world is now tougher on bosses who stuff up than ever before.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers partners Kristin Rivera and Per Ola-Karlsson suggest in Harvard Business Review this week that the numbers don’t lie: more chief executives are being fired for “ethical blunders” than ever before, with scrutiny from both customers and shareholders accelerating.
The pair examine the numbers from PwC’s most recent global chief executive success study, which suggests the number of company heads who were dismissed for ethical lapses increased from 3.9% in the four years preceding 2012 to 5.3% at the end of 2016.
“Firstly, the public has become more suspicious, more critical and less forgiving of corporate misbehaviour,” Rivera and Karlsson say.
“Second, governance and regulation in many countries has become both more proactive and more punitive.”
The article is here.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Turning To Ethics When Trust In Business Is At An All-Time Low
By Dina Medland
Forbes
Originally posted July 24, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
The latest report from the UK’s Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) sets out why company directors need to be actively involved in setting and maintaining a company’s ethical values. One of the lessons of the 2008 banking crisis has been that ethics matters to business, both in terms of its reputation and its sustainability, writes Peter Montagnon, Associate Director in Ethics, Risk & Governance: a board briefing paper. The challenge for business is how to develop and embed real values in order to regain public trust, needed if they are to secure their franchise for the long term.
The entire article is here.
Forbes
Originally posted July 24, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
The latest report from the UK’s Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) sets out why company directors need to be actively involved in setting and maintaining a company’s ethical values. One of the lessons of the 2008 banking crisis has been that ethics matters to business, both in terms of its reputation and its sustainability, writes Peter Montagnon, Associate Director in Ethics, Risk & Governance: a board briefing paper. The challenge for business is how to develop and embed real values in order to regain public trust, needed if they are to secure their franchise for the long term.
The entire article is here.
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