14 May, 2021

Facebook’s fail: the ‘story’, the risks and the role of the board

Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of 50 million Facebook users to help swing the US presidential election, but amid the trend for corporate governance ‘narratives’, did Facebook’s directors forget the chapter on ethics?

Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, data harvesting, data ethics

Image: AlexandraPopova / Shutterstock.com

One of the arguments that one increasingly hears these days is that corporate governance in the new economy will be all about the “story” of the company, not about its performance or assets. Value will be primarily dependent on the narrative of future growth. The role of boards in the future will therefore be to weave this story and make it as credible as possible to investors and other resource providers. This argument is partly right. The shareholder value of “growth” companies is not a result of the palt

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board risk oversight, Cambridge Analytica, corporate governance, data ethics, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg