Chicken, Twitter & Gay Marriage: The Downside of Social Technology

Now that we've not only discovered the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 tools but also considered the question how to measure the impact of such tools last week, it is time to talk about the risks of stepping on the grounds of Enterprise 2.0 and focus on potential drawbacks of misusing social technology. This will be - at least for the near future - the last blog post in this series of Enterprise 2.0-related topics. However, this does not mean that the possibility that I'll continue this blog at another point in time is completely ruled out forever. Whatever the case may be, let's have a look at this week's example:

Chick-fil-A and Dan Cathy 

 

Chick-fil-A is an U.S.-based fast food restaurant chain which was founded by S. Truett Cathy in 1946. The company primarily sells chicken sandwiches and has over 1,800 stores across the United States. Due to its founder's strong religious beliefs, the company is well-known for its conservative image. For example, all Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays.

Source: Katie Lobosco (2013). CNN Money. Retrieved from: http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/27/technology/social/chick-fil-a-gay-marriage-tweet/

In 2013, Dan T. Cathy, son of founder S. Truett Cathy and by that time president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, released this twitter post as a response to a Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. Even though he deleted his post quite quickly, the twitter post certainly brought back memories of a huge debate one year earlier when Cathy stated in an interview with the Baptist Press that the company supports the "biblical definition of the family unit". Back in 2012 this statement caused a lot of uproar in the media and general public. Jim Henson Co, a toy producer for Chick-fil-A, decided to terminate its contracts with the chicken giant and the majors of Boston and Chicago raised their voices against openings of new restaurants in their cities. Ultimately, the whole debate was resolved with the company ceasing all funding to parties who are against same-sex marriage and emphasising that they want to keep out of any political debate.

Ethical Issues & Consequences

 

First of all, it is important to clarify why this twitter post can be considered as unethical or misuse of social technology. Rogerson (n.d.) describes 8 ethical principles that serve as some sort of checklist when it comes to actions associated with computer systems. Drawing from these principles, Cathy's twitter post breaches the principle of Honesty - Will the action violate any explicit or implicit agreement or trust? - as the company agreed to not take part in any political debate and Cathy ignored this agreement with his twitter comment. This is a close call though, as one could argue that it is his personal opinion that he is expressing over his personal twitter account. I think, however, that he should have been well aware that his persona is representative of the entire company and every comment will be eventually linked back to it. Additionally, such a discriminating view is quite likely not shared by all employees, shareholders and most importantly all customers and therefore also breaches the principle of Fairness (are all stakeholder's views considered with regard to the action?).

Dawson (2008) talks about key risks and concerns of implementing Enterprise 2.0. Clearly, one of the most visible risks in the presented case is the loss of reputation due to negative external comments and inapproriate staff behaviour. The twitter post is particularly bad because the company had gone through the whole debate one year earlier and seemed to have finally recovered from an anti-gay image. Now, with just one (!) personal comment by the COO and founder-son on his own twitter account the public was again picking up on the old stories and reputation was suffering. Although there are no specific figures of sales drops or alike, I think many people might have been disappointed to see that not that much has changed in the end and decide to boycott Chick-fil-A. Same goes for their employees or future candidates, who might not want to work for a company whose public face is clearly discriminating against others. Still, many others might say it is Cathy's personal freedom to express his opinion and this should not be linked in any way to the business. There is clearly a blurred line for managers who are so close connected to the image of the company. 

Lessons learned

 

Just one day after the incident, the company announced a statement saying that Cathy recognises that he is aware of the fact that his views and beliefs might not be shared by all people who are involved with Chick-fil-A. This year, now-CEO Cathy admitted that he has made mistakes in the past with bringing up controversial personal opinions that are or might be connected to the company. He underlined that the organisation is more important than personal issues. So what can we learn from this story? Firstly, because of the fact that any faux pas or infelicitous remark on social media platforms will spread rapidly across several channels (and hence the chance that nobody will notice it is almost zero), every business or business representative has to be cautious of what to post on these platforms. Secondly, persons who are closely connected to their company - which is the case for almost all Entrepreneurs - have to pay special attention to what they publish on any social technology platform as every statement or comment, even just over personal accounts, will be connected to their company. For Chick-fil-A to avoid issues like this in the future it very much depends on the behaviour of CEO Dan Cathy. In general, however, businesses need to establish policies and rules for all of their employees how to engage with social technology at or outside the workplace.


One last question to round this last blog post up: Do you think managers like Dan Cathy should be allowed to express their personal opinions on social media platforms?

References

• Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0. San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.
• Rogerson, S., & Fidler, C. (n.d.). A practical perspective on information ethics. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/322961/A_Practical_Perspective_of_Information_Ethics.