Even big tech & faculty should be held accountable (or we need more research on the bad behavior of big tech & faculty)
Two news items jumped out the past 24 hours.
The first was Kim Kardashian being fined for failing to disclose her financial arrangements with a crypto company that she promoted.
I applaud the government for issuing the fine & Kim for being accountable.
The second was eBay employees being held accountable for harassing a pair of journalists.
I applaud the journalists for standing up to eBay & hope that they will be made whole through further legal action.
These two incidents though beg two questions for academics.
Question One: How many faculty have conflicts of interest with companies where they conduct their research? And when will they start to report them?
Many faculty write about the power of crypto or blockchain solutions on the one hand & take money from companies and agencies involved in deploying "innovative solutions" with the other.
If Kim Kardashian can be fined for not reporting a conflict of interest, then many academic & citizen researchers should be held to the same standard.
Unfortunately, while journals ask, we have no way to know how many faculty who take industry funds & publish related research.
We rely on an honor system.
Proper reporting will require institutional change that forces faculty to "come clean" on their conflicts of interest with industry.
We need this change if we are to credibly speak on problems created by IT and big tech.
Question Two: When will business disciplines, particularly information systems, turn their attention to IT-enabled misconduct by by tech in general? And big tech in particular?
Rarely, if ever, do people in STEM disciplines go after badly behaved big tech.
Sure, I see economists or non-STEM types, who do not know tech or tech culture, go after "badly behaved" tech companies.
But do they feel tech in their bones?
Usually, STEM research focuses on drivers of successful businesses & show scant awareness of how a policy or technology can lead to bad behavior at the organizational level.
So,I can't help but ask, if eBay did this? How many others companies have engaged in similar behavior? And why aren't we studying organization-level IT-enabled misconduct? and misconduct in big tech?
Such research will require two difficult changes in academia.
First, cybersecurity researchers will have to pivot away from studying how to force employees to comply with policies to studying how tech enables badly behaved firms and managers.
Shifting a paradigm is hard.
Second, academics and regulators will need to develop a shared database that makes possible studying the types, frequency, & impact of IT-enabled misconduct by tech in particular, and industry in general.
When we hold faculty & big tech accountable for bad behavior, we have a shot at tackling ethical issues posed by how we fund research & the companies that fund our work.
Lets build a better academy!
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