The recent twitter exploits by the UK furniture retailer Habitat got me thinking again about corporate responsibility in a digital age. Habitat made a public apology for piggybacking on the current popularity of Twitter searches for Iran. One of the more unforgivable keywords their twitter promotion had targeted. I can only imagine this was an automated system judging by some of the tweets.
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I’m not convinced that digital ignorance should be accepted as an excuse. This all should come under the ethical and responsible behaviour we expect from our suppliers whether they are delivering, products services or customers.
While it is unclear if Habitat’s error was by one of their employees or a third party, more often, unethical marketing tactics are deployed by third party lead generators. Commonly referred to as affiliates, they are paid commission for generating customers. Not all affiliates practice unethical tactics, but a significant proportion of all online spam from emails to, now Twitter are usually conducted by third party affiliates. Where the vendor can deny knowledge of any malpractice.
In the offline world, many companies have been accused over the years of dodging responsibility through the use of offshore subcontractors with dubious labour practices. In 2007 the ethical credentials of the fashion giant Gap was brought into question, when an investigation by The Observer uncovered the use of child labour in an Indian sweatshop. Gap claimed that the Indian subcontractor had managed to escape their rigorous factory monitoring program designed to keep tabs on their supply chain.
Shouldn’t the same sense of responsibility apply to a company’s online supply chain?
