Why more and more companies are going to have to do more than talk about CSR
Responding to their employer’s intention to bid for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), a secret US Department of Defense project aimed at “increasing the lethality of the department”, a group of Microsoft personnel have written an open letter to the company asking it to refrain from participating.
This isn’t the first time people working in the technology sector have protested against what they see as the questionable ethics of their companies: Google staff have opposed the Maven Project as well as plans for a search engine that meets China’s strict censorship, while Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce workers have made clear they are unhappy working on behalf of the immigration service or the police. In short, people employed in the tech sectors are demanding to know what or who they are working for, threatening to refuse to do so if the task in hand doesn’t meet their code of ethics.
These ethical stances are becoming increasingly frequent in the technology sector, where workers who are highly mobile and unlikely to be cowed by the threat of losing their position are practicing internal activism. News of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi has led many people to question Silicon Valley’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, and lists of companies and apps partially financed by Riyadh have been drawn up in what could become a boycott.
In short, in some sectors, companies’ authority is being questioned by the workforce, as the Microsoft open letter shows:
“We joined Microsoft to create a positive impact on people and society, with the expectation that the technologies we build will not cause harm or human suffering.”
If those principles, which are part of the value proposal when accepting a job offer, are to be brushed aside when they get in the way of business (JEDI is a $10 billion project that many tech companies are eager to take part in), then companies can expect resignations. People who work in the tech sector these days are looking for more than a pay check; they seek out companies with projects that inspire them and want to make a contribution with the code they create, to feel proud. If you can’t turn your company or your project into something along these lines, attracting and retaining talent could be difficult. If, in addition, there are ethical matters, then things can be really difficult. Google was forced to publish a corporate statement of ethical principles about the use of artificial intelligence, essentially limiting what the company can do or not do with its technology, while Microsoft has created Aether, an ethical oversight committee staffed by the company’s senior executives and external experts, which has already rejected some contracts due to ethical issues.
Soon, this types of bodies will be standard at many companies, and will demand, among other things, that the corporate social responsibility mission statement in the annual report is reflected in reality. The gap between the executives of supposedly defined the strategy of the companies and the workers who put it into practice is widening. It’s time companies and management thought through a few things.
(En español, aquí)
