Enterprise 2.0 and Business Ethics

Lene Pettersen and Johannes Brinkmann18th Annual International ConferencePromoting Business Ethics, St John’s University, New York, October 2011

Social software

InteractionDialogue

Collaboration and co-creation

T R U S T

The overall strategy of using the social business software (SBS):

• Build professional networks

• Develop competence by following others more skilled

• Finding out what others are doing

• Not reinventing the wheel

• Having things you’re working on easy to find and share

• Easily work with colleagues in other business units

The web The enterprise

Number of user Thousands Hundreds

Visibility Transparent, but more easy to hide

Very transparent

Context Private Professional

Mindset Fun, self selected tool Work, no choice

Organizational structure

“Flat” (ideally at least) Hierarchical

Attitude Sharing Hoarding (from push to pull)

Digital competence Often similar to your network

Varied

Adaption/Use Self selected Introduced/Influenced

Societal Private Public

Contextual differences

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By leaving comments and content in SBS you get extremely exposed. You don’t have any chance to withdraw it, delete it. And what if I liked something or had a comment some manager disagree with? I don’t want to leave any traces of me that can be tracked back to me and used against me later (employee at ICT)

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I never ‘Like’ anything. Because I do not think that is good. You get a blurred picture of the SBS usage. Those who are active will be visible to all of us. There more you ‘Like’, the more visible you’ll get. So there will be a distinction between active people and not so active people. And when the management demand us to use it, only the active users that leaves visible prints of their interactions will be noticed by the management (employee at ICT)

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It would be very awkward to fire off an email to the boss where I wrote “You held a good presentation at the meeting to day boss!”, but now I can push the ‘Like’ button at a blog post he writes to show him my sympathy. I am sure he notices who is contributing the most. Do you believe this could impact your career at ICT? Yes, most definitively (employee at ICT)

”

1. Which ethical issues – real or risked ones – do you see?

2. Do these issues vary by context (www vs workplace)?

3. What are the most important ethical threats and opportunities of SBS?

4. How can one reinforce rather weaken or risk the trust culture?

5. Does SBS have the potential of creating a true dialogue culture or is that naive?

Now we turn to you and ask:

Thank you!

Johannes.Brinkmann@bi.no

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lene.pettersen@bi.noThank you!