Knowledge Centre

Facebook’s big federal fine could just be the beginning

Barbara Ortutay & Marcy Gordon, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sunday 28th July 2019, 26 July 2019 Although Facebook just received a record $US5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), senior management should expect more investigations and regulations to affect the tech giant, according to analysts. Facebook is still facing numerous probes around the world, and the FTC recently announced that the tech giant will be facing an...

reputation socio political environment

Unilever warns it will sell off brands that hurt the planet or society

Zoe Wood, The Guardian, Thursday 25th July 2019, 20 July 2019 Unilever has warned it could sell off brands that do not contribute positively to society as it ponders a cull linked to the company’s sustainable business agenda. Alan Jope, Unilever’s chief executive, said it was no longer enough for consumer goods companies to sell washing powders that make shirts whiter or shampoos that make hair shinier...

reputation corporate responsibility

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

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

ASX governance council dumps ‘social licence to operate’ from guidance

Joanna Mather, Australian Financial Review, Thursday 28th February 2019, 28 February 2019

Following a furore over political correctness, the phrase ‘social licence to operate’ has been dumped from updated guidance by the ASX Corporate Governance Council. All references to the term have been replaced with ‘reputation’ and ‘standing in the community’ in the fourth edition of the council’s principles and recommendations on best...

corporate reputation corporate narrative

Facebook users continue to grow despite privacy scandals

BBC News, Thursday 31st January 2019, 31 January 2019 Despite a series of well publicised data privacy scandals, Facebook said the number of people who logged into its site at least once a month jumped nine per cent last year to 2.32 billion people. Founder Mark Zuckerberg said the firm had "fundamentally changed how we run the company to focus on the biggest social issues". The company's shares have...

reputation

A ‘black eye’ for Apple: Facetime bug shakes faith in iPhone security

Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian, Wednesday 30th January 2019, 30 January 2019 It was a “nightmare scenario” for Apple this week as news emerged on Monday that a bug transmitted audio and video to a caller despite the recipient not having accepted the call. It was triggered when the initial caller added a third person to a FaceTime call. Apple, yet to issue a software patch, has disabled group chatting on FaceTime,...

reputation

Google fined record €50m by French data protection watchdog

Alex Hern, The Guardian, Monday 21st January 2019, 21 January 2019 The French data protection watchdog has fined Google a record €50m for failing to provide users with transparent and understandable information on its data use policies. It marks the first time a company has been fined under new terms laid out in the European general data protection regulation (GDPR). The maximum fine for large companies under the...

corporate reputation

Goldman boss apologises for 1MDB scandal

BBC News, Wednesday 16th January 2019, 16 January 2019 The new boss of Goldman Sachs has apologised to Malaysia for the role an ex-partner played in the corruption scandal at one of the country’s wealth funds. CEO David Solomon also distanced the bank from the scheme, which saw billions of dollars embezzled from the state development fund, 1MDB. Goldman had helped raise money for the fund, and Mr...

corporate reputation