Social Media And The Corporate Governance Professional

The recent collapse of autocratic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia – with the possibility of more to come – came about at least in part because of the ‘social media revolution’. The protests, which began in late January, did not kick off with guns or a flurry of terror, but with tweets, texts and videos that were made possible by the popular social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

According to reports, more than a third of the Arab world uses social media. In Egypt, what began as an anti-Mubarak Facebook page started by a Google engineer ended up igniting a powderkeg of rage among the country’s youth, and this eventually snowballed into a major protest in Tahrir Square.

As the protests intensified, Egypt temporarily cut off all access to the internet, thus stripping the country of its online presence and curtailing the protesters’ ability to communicate with each other and the outside world.

‘If this kind of thing can take down the government in Egypt, it can take down your company,’ says Doug Chia, assistant general counsel and corporate secretary of Johnson & Johnson. ‘You really need to be careful about what you put out there because, chances are, you won’t be able to take it back.’

Concerns like these are what made Eric Jackson, founder of corporate governance-focused investment company Ironfire Capital, initially apprehensive about using social media to get his message across. Instead, he took a back seat and quietly continued to monitor the networking sites. But as time passed and news stories about chief executives stepping down and companies operating under poor leadership started burning up the internet, Jackson decided it was time to make his voice heard.

He started blogging in late 2006. What he thought was a small post about the resignation of Yahoo!’s former CEO garnered a huge positive response. Now Jackson has more than 3,000 followers on Twitter, and he rarely lets an hour go by without updating his status.

‘Today there’s more action and communication going on, and we need to be more engaged,’ Jackson observes. ‘It’s all about staying on top of what’s happening and knowing what to say – and when to say it.’

Despite the fact that both large and small in-house legal departments have been reluctant to engage in internet dialogue, new media have created avenues for governance professionals to flourish as thought leaders and entrepreneurs throughout the industry.

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Source: businessinsider.com
By: Aarti Maharaj