Technology Run Amok: Crisis Management in the Digital Age

By Ian I. Mitroff

The recent data controversy with Facebook highlights that the tech industry as a whole was utterly unprepared for the backlash it faced as a result of its business model of selling user data to third parties. Despite the predominant role that technology plays in all of our lives, the controversy also revealed that many tech companies are reactive, rather than proactive, in addressing crises.

This book examines society's failure to manage technology and its resulting negative consequences. Mitroff argues that the "technological mindset" is responsible for society's unbridled obsession with technology and unless confronted, will cause one tech crisis after another. This trans-disciplinary text, edgy in its approach, will appeal to academics, students, and practitioners through its discussion of the modern technological crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9783319957418

Ian I. Mitroff

Ian I. Mitroff is often called the father of modern crisis management. He is a professor in both the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California, and is the author of several landmark books, including Managing Crises Before They Happen, The Essential Guide to Managing Corporate Crises, and A Spiritual Audt of Corporate America. He lives in Manhattan Beach, California.

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2019

Ian I. MitroffTechnology Run Amokhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95741-8_1

1. Introduction

Ian I. Mitroff¹  

(1)

Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Ian I. Mitroff

Email: [e-mail]

Make no mistake about it. The unauthorized release of the private data of millions of Facebook users is not only the worst in its checkered history, but it’s even worse for the tech industry as a whole. At the root of the crisis is a highly disturbing pattern. Unless this pattern is recognized for what it is, and ultimately curbed, then we’ll just lurch from one crisis to another.

Indeed, in his testimony before Congress in April 2018, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the crisis was due to his and the company’s failure to see the big picture. Although I deal with it throughout, this book is not primarily about Facebook. It’s about a larger pattern that the crisis reveals about the tech industry in general.

Five components are key. Each is not only critical in its own right, but acting together, they spell disaster. They’re guaranteed to bring an organization and its leaders to their demise. Although I discuss each in turn, in reality they operate in tandem. I also explore them in depth throughout:

1.

Too much early success is actually detrimental to long-term survival and prosperity. It makes one complacent and thereby blind to the fact that there are serious problems lurking within one’s basic business model that need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

2.

The fact that one has weathered early crises also blinds one to the fact that one needs to start building a serious program in crisis management in order to be prepared for major crises later on that can’t be easily dismissed.

3.

The smug assumption that compared to technology, management is easy, if not trivial, prevents one from taking management seriously. I explore this later in terms of the phenomenon known as Splitting. It’s responsible for dividing the world sharply into good versus bad guys. It’s the basis for demonizing those we hold in contempt.

4.

The best crisis-prepared companies take immediate responsibility for their crises. They don’t issue meaningless apologies that only make the initial crises worse.

5.

And, finally, The Technological Mindset blinds its proponents to the fact that all technologies are abused and misused in ways not envisioned by their creators. Worst, it seriously hampers one from considering that all technologies come with serious downsides, and therefore, from taking appropriate preventative actions to mitigate their worst effects.

The Problems with Too Much Early Success

If a company is too successful from the start, e.g., its technology performs as intended and thus fulfills and even exceeds expectations, it breeds the mistaken belief that it will last forever. The bigger the initial success, and the longer it lasts, the greater the feeling that one has found the golden goose that lays the legendary golden egg. In short, the founder/company have found the magic formula for success that should not be tampered with in any