Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International, on How to Make Corporations (Including Google) Do the Right Thing
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ISSUE 23 MICHAELMAS TERM 2018 OXFORD UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR CORPORATE REPUTATION The Big Interview Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International, on how to make corporations (including Google) do the right thing Marketplaces on the dark web Country reputations Keeping it real How trust works in the land of the fake How perceptions of a nation’s firms From craft beer to crowdfunding, why are affected by terrorist atrocities, authenticity means such different Viewpoint – does being good pay? what influences the level of impact, things to different people Perspectives from sustainable and the buffering effect of investing and CSR research promotion strategies News and appointments COMMENT WHAT’S THE MOTIVATION? climate change – particularly given the is not going to get any easier, but the cost recent 12-year warning from the United of being seen not to try are getting higher. Nations. That threat is already creating some interesting “bedfellows”. In this AUTHENTICALLY YOURS issue Andrew Parry of Hermes Investment The current focus on authenticity in Management (see p4), explains how business promises much: to enable Hermes is trying to put sustainability and consumers to access goods that reflect Google (“Don’t be evil”) and parent good governance on the agenda of public their values; even to embed pro- company Alphabet (“Do the right thing”) companies, with the added benefit that it social motivations into businesses and are having some difficulty convincing their can pay to do the right thing. economies. Trust academics to spoil it staff of their good intentions. Earlier this all: on p10 the winner of our latest Best year the corporation ditched Maven, an AI Both were attendees at our Activist Published Paper award, Justin Frake, project to aid the targeting of US military Congress in August, which sought to examines the inexact processes behind drones, in the face of an employee revolt. explore where practitioners and activists assumptions of authenticity. On p11 our Now comes Dragonfly, a controversial might find common ground in addressing International Research Fellow Brayden censorship-enabled and user-identifiable the questions facing humanity. A King analyses how people looking for Android search app that the company particularly striking recent example is Shell, authenticity in the context of crowdfunding has been developing with the approval of which – with some reluctance from its CEO can take it to mean entirely different things the Chinese government. Last month the – has just signed up to a pioneering series and yet act in concert. company’s employees signed up in their of commitments through engagement with hundreds to an open letter that declared: a coalition of investors under the umbrella This sometimes “We refuse to build technologies that aid of Climate Action 100+. misplaced group buy-in the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, can nevertheless act as wherever they may be”, and pledging ‘Today I would argue a powerful reputation their support to the Amnesty International endorsement campaign against the project. that reputational and mechanism, with relational capital has a strong potential For Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of downside. A good example is the recent Amnesty International and this issue’s Big become significantly crowdfunding efforts by the challenger bank Interview (see pp6–7), employee power more important’ Monzo, which has a Community forum is a vital brake on objectionable corporate hosting tens of thousands of committed behaviour – whether or not you agree Shell has committed to some benchmark- users. When commentators started to point that the above qualifies as such – and setting emissions targets and to a truly up a potential conflict of interest, in that something he expects to see grow, as challenging set of reporting proposals, Monzo could lend money to crowdfunders stakeholder relationships begin to make including tracing the carbon footprint of its supporting it, the pushback from its affronted an increasingly tangible contribution to an own activities, suppliers and end users along community was loud and concerted. organisation’s viability: “Once upon a time, the whole of the value chain. It is also the when we said capital, you just thought of first energy company to link remuneration But was it all from disinterested users, conventional capital. Today I would argue of the business’s leaders to its performance asked a number of commentators including that reputational and relational capital – against this set of environmental goals. the Financial Times, or were some players how you relate to the communities where exploiting the commitment of fellow you draw your labour, where you site Although the commitments are couched members for their own commercial ends? your factories and so on – has become in the form of proposals, the combination As Felipe Thomaz points out (opposite) in his significantly more important.” of reputational risk exposure, shareholder fascinating work on dark web marketplaces, and regulatory pressure – through the the construction of online identities is a Naidoo, previously head of Greenpeace, cumulative obligation to fulfil such targets hall of mirrors. That applies to authenticity, thinks this will intensify as “doing the once they are formally announced to too (see pp10–11). If you can fake it – to right thing” becomes more urgent in the investors – is likely to see Shell striving to misquote the legendary comedian George face of the existential threat of irreversible perform as promised. Doing the right thing Burns – you’ve got it made. Reputation is a termly magazine published by the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, Saïd Business School, Oxford OX1 1HP. Tel: + 44 (0)1865 288900. Enquiries to: [email protected]. Website: www.sbs.oxford.edu/reputation ©2017 Saïd Business School. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of the publisher. 2 OXFORD UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR CORPORATE REPUTATION At our annual Reputation Symposium in September, Felipe Thomaz presented his groundbreaking work on illegal online marketplaces. Below are some of his findings on the key mechanisms at work, and some implications for more mainstream settings. RESEARCH FOCUS: REPUTATIONS ON THE DARK WEB The dark web provides refuge for behaviour of these newcomers. The better, knowledgeable extraordinary and illegal marketplaces After all, you do need some players are not exposed to where billions of dollars change hands level of trust for money that risk because they every year. If it were a country, it would be to leave somebody’s determine when the the 16th largest economy on the planet. pocket and end up in lottery collapses, and Reputation is at the heart of everything somebody else’s. If I’m their pay-outs are taken that happens on them, but it works in very a smart, full-information from the combined particular ways. player, I can rig the pool of appropriated system to generate trust “naive money”. The The basic question is: how can this between naive players in game resets with a illicit system possibly work? By virtue of a way that ensures I will new marketplace, and a how the dark web operates and privacy ultimately pocket the money. new lottery pool starts. The mechanisms, names are transient and naive buyers are certain that entities you trust today might not exist The naive players believe this time will be different, and that tomorrow. Sellers try to build a name, a themselves to be competent, but they this new black market is honest. They have brand and a reputation associated with a overvalue information and fall prey to been told as much. persona that they have created, but the common heuristics. They might see a time and opportunities to do so are limited. shop with 5,000 apparent transactions The implications of the network effects and believe this to be a true representation are important, too. We understand that The threat of authorities intervening is of its activity. They might go into a forum privacy changes behaviour. These illicit constant. The game is managing the and find people who will vouch for a seller, communities avoid connectivity and rely on perception of that persona for buyers, so without any way to validate that forum a few central organisers for coordination. that you’re manipulating the system to This results in very tight communities, support beliefs that advance your goal. ‘The naive players and on the dark web this minimises the You could, for example, suggest that threat of exposure. But beyond this darker you’re “an effective hacker”, even though believe in and behave environment, with the interconnectivity of you might know nothing about coding. The according to the social media for example, we see that the lack of stable institutions and validating average distance to any other person on information makes confirmation of claims rules created by the the network is getting much smaller, and difficult, for better and for worse. knowledgeable set’ our own “audiences” are getting larger. The ecosystem relies on ratings, or those users’ reputations. A whole Marketing research has shown that for recommendations and discussion forums narrative is created around believability certain people, the greater an audience to establish reputations, but the entire without an ability to validate any of the you have, the more likely you are to system is built on a recursive problem: statements being made, nor their sources. actually stop talking, because the somebody will trust you because they These naive buyers accumulate enough associated reputational risk is too high trust me, but why do they trust me? It’s evidence to convince themselves of the (none of us like making public mistakes because someone else told them I was likelihood of a positive outcome: that they or looking foolish). In business, these trustworthy. If you pull that particular are likely to get what they paid for, and not growing and interconnected networks logic string enough, you find it’s built on get their money stolen or be arrested for are also governance mechanisms, one first person’s gamble.