Knowledge Centre

Virgin Australia cuts 737 Max 8 order

Jessica Gardner, The Australian Financial Review, Tuesday 30th April 2019, 29 April 2019 Virgin Australia, the country’s second largest airline, said Tuesday that it had restructured its order of Boeing 737 Max 8 planes with the embattled airplane manufacturer. Virgin has decided to convert 15 of the 737 Max 8s it had planned to take into the larger Max 10 model. This change will psh out the time at which Virgin receives the new...

crisis management

Regulators around the world are circling Facebook

Cecilia Kang & Adam Satariano, The New York Times, Thursday 24th April 2019, 22 April 2019 After years of seeming disinterest and half-steps, regulators on four continents are preparing for a long-awaited showdown with Facebook. Mostly, they have the same goal: to change the social media company’s behaviour. Figuring out how is the hard part. Members of the Federal Trade Commission in the US are weighing what sorts of constraints they...

socio political environment

Google 'retaliating against harassment protest organisers'

BBC News, Wednesday 24th April 2019, 20 April 2019 Organisers of a series of walkouts in protest at Google’s treatment of women have said the company has since retaliated against them. In November, 20,000 employees walked out of their offices demanding several key changes in how sexual misconduct allegations were dealt with at Google. Now, in an internal email published by Wired, two of the...

advocacy

Burger King pulls 'racist' chopsticks ad after outcry in China

Pei Li and Brenda Goh, The Australian Financial Review, Wednesday 10th April 2019, 09 April 2019 Burger King has pulled a promotional video in New Zealand showing customers trying to eat burgers with chopsticks following outcry from China, and demands for the US fast food to chain to apologise. The video posted on a New Zealand franchisee’s Instagram account showed Westerners with an oversized chopstick in each hand struggling to eat the...

socio political environment reputation

Britain proposes broad new powers to regulate internet content

Adam Satariano, The New York Times, Monday 8th April 2019, 07 April 2019 Britain has proposed sweeping new government powers to regulate the internet to combat the spread of violent and extremist content, false information and harmful material aimed at children. The recommendations take aim at Facebook, Google and other large internet platforms that policymakers believe have prioritised growth and profits over limiting...

socio political environment public policy

As Boeing confronted a swelling crisis, it had little to say

David Gelles, The New York Times, Wednesday 27th March 2019, 26 March 2019 Boeing would appear to be well prepared to deal with a crisis, with its deep ties in Washington, its large spending on lobbying, and its Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg, who sits on the board of the Business Roundtable, an influential group that seeks to shape public policy. Yet in recent weeks, with increasing scrutiny, the company initially...

crisis management

EU decides against bloc-wide ban of Huawei in defiance of US

Manabu Morimoto, Nikkei Asian Review, Wednesday 27th March 2019, 25 March 2019 The European Union has chosen to let each member nation decide whether to use equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies despite American demands to keep the company away from high-speed 5G networks. “EU member states have the right to exclude companies from their markets for national security reasons, if they don't comply with the country's...

socio political environment public policy

In search of the Holy Grail of trust

Wayne Burns, Centre for Corporate Public Affairs Newsletter, Vol. 27 no. 1, 22 March 2019 Trust is a commodity in high demand, but not only is it too often conflated with reputation, it's also commonly taken for granted. The Centre's Executive Director Wayne Burns explores the art of gaining and maintaining trust in the feature article of the Centre's latest newsletter.
“If an organisation is perceived by stakeholders to have a...

corporate reputation reputation

Millions of Facebook passwords exposed internally

BBC News, Thursday 21st March 2019, 21 March 2019 Millions of Facebook users’ passwords were accessible by up to 20,000 employees of the site, it’s been reported. Security researcher Brian Kebs broke the news about the data protection failures, which saw up to 600 million passwords stored in plain text. In a statement, Facebook said it had now resolved a “glitch” that had stored passwords on its...

reputation

British Panel Calls for Stricter Antitrust Rules on Tech Giants

Adam Satariano, The New York Times, Tuesday 12th March 2019, 12 March 2019 Britain has this week added its voice to the global backlash against the growing power of technology companies, as a British government report released on Wednesday affirmed that Big Tech is reducing consumer choice and harming innovation. The 150 page report said the country needed stricter rules on acquisitions in the technology industry and...

socio political environment