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Global Tech, Data Futures, and Societal Normalization of Sociopathy

Taken from OpenVerse

The Astronomer crisis, circulating on digital platforms, based on an alleged affair between the CEO and the Chief People Officer (the irony of that title!, the one in charge of implementing organizational norms) of a global technology corporation caught on screen at a Coldplay Concert depicts the sociopathy that is normalized through the structures of global platform capital. 

That Andy Byron, with poor judgment and character, could climb the organizational ranks to the position of CEO, and that the ethically inept Kristin Cabot similarly could climb the ranks to the position of CFO (the one in charge of developing and implementing organizational culture!) speaks to a core feature of global tech: its moral rot, albeit replete with narratives of company culture, sustainability, effective governance, and stakeholder accountability.


Sociopaths usually climb to organizational leadership positions in contemporary neoliberal organizations because these organizations are often sociopathic in nature.

Sociopathy as a cultural feature of global data organizations is reflected in the everyday violation of ethical and moral norms. Such organizations normalize unethical behaviors as organizational features, shaping the everyday behaviors of the organization. That the CEO's response was to immediately scramble to hide his face when caught on screen speaks to the cowardice that forms the daily diet of organizational life. The feature of "being able to get away" (till one isn't able to get away!) is often promoted as leadership, replete with managerial lingo.

Neoliberal organizations craft diverse techniques of gaslighting: denying facts, manufacturing alibis, planting narratives to cover over unethical behaviors, and insisting on denial. In the face of evidence documenting the trespass, they concoct post-hoc narratives designed by crisis communication teams, with even more gaslighting. The unethical abandon that emerges from this sociopathy sees as judgmental any attempt at holding such organizations and their leaders accountable. To talk about ethics and to be held accountable based on ethical standards is judgmental, abusive, uncool. 

The architectures of platforms, driving extreme profits through the extraction of data, offer the basis for the arrogant confidence underlying everyday unethical behaviors. The violations of ethical codes become features of everyday life, with entire leadership teams working in unison to cover up. Without checks and balances in place, the Chief People Officer, positioned to implement and build an organizational culture of safety and professionalism, feels empowered to violate foundational workplace policy around appropriate relationships and behaviors. 

The organizational communication and Public Relations responses to this crisis will turn immediately to the question of how best to manage the crisis. A critical communication analysis will suggest that we must be asking much deeper questions as public relations and organizational communication scholars. We should be exploring the communicative processes that produce organizational sociopathy, and the policy responses that are necessary to create checks and balances on global tech organizations.

Sociopathy as a feature of global data organizations raises basic questions about the broader consequences of the futures that are produced through the data innovations that are sold by these organizations. What is the future we are co-creating as humanity when our fundamental practices of organizing life are shaped by data, extracted, curated, and circulated by organizations that are driven by sociopathy in leadership?


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