Question

What is one emerging issue facing corporate governance? (400 words)

Answer 1

One emerging issue that is faced by Corporate Governance is that of ethical use of social media for recruitment in an Organization. Many organizations take a biased view on the applicant’s resume based on their social media accounts’ details and activities. It is ideally not fair to research an applicant’s social media profile other than if it is an official profile especially intended for the job and recruitment purpose such as LinkedIn. This is so because Social media accounts could be often misleading and that it could be highly fabricated on such platforms. You may be depressed in real life but show the best face of yours to the world. You may be going through the trying times but the world misinterprets you because of your social feeds. So truth may still not be what the social media presents to the Public. Moreover, even ethically, for the employers, to go through the social media accounts for the applicants or the employees is wrong, which is where the importance of Corporate Governance come in. The reason being, as mentioned initially, the personal aspects of an applicant might create a biased impression of the applicant on the minds of the recruiters which is certainly not desirable in a job recruitment process. The recruiter needs to maintain a neutral stand, free from any sort of biasness, in order to recruit a candidate based upon his professional worth to the Organization and hence to uncover information about a candidate through his social media profiles is rather an unethical approach.

Social media such as LinkedIn provides an excellent platform to search for the jobs and that could be used in favor of both, the employers as well as the job aspirants. The employers can come in touch with relevant job aspirants and therefore it would ease their process of lengthy physical document screening processes. On the part of the job aspirants as well, they can directly get in touch with the employers and other relevant persons in an Organization to inquire about the vacancy in the system and accordingly going ahead in applying for the same without resorting to the formal lengthy procedure of job interviews. In fact, even for the employers who are urgently searching for replacing the current employees for whatsoever reason, social media platform can play a significant role in supporting the same.

However, on the flip side, social media websites which are not meant to serve the professional purpose but only to facilitate a medium to interact with each other socially, can backfire the recruitment process if the employers choose to resort to the unfair means of uncovering information about the candidate on such platforms and forming a biased opinion thereupon. For example, an employer discovers that a certain job aspirant is found of ABC Band group, something which the employer highly dislikes, then accordingly, the employer may choose not to shortlist the candidate or select him even though the candidate’s personal liking for the band has got nothing to do with the job.

Corporate Governance should thus play an important role in this regard.