Assignment on

Leadership and Governance

OSL- 306

Submitted to:
Sharmeen Akhter
Lecturer
Department of Organization Strategy & Leadership
University of Dhaka

Submitted by:
Sadia Islam
ID: OSL-FM-14
Batch: 2nd
Department of Organization Strategy & Leadership
University of Dhaka

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 Table of Contents
Executive summary....................................................................................................................... 3

Background information .............................................................................................................. 3

Real story of Facebook- Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal .................................................. 4

A breach of trust ........................................................................................................................... 5

The reasons behind the scandal ................................................................................................... 5

Political campaign ..................................................................................................................... 5

Failure of Governance .............................................................................................................. 5

Unethical issue ........................................................................................................................... 6

I see nothing, I hear nothing..................................................................................................... 6

Recommendations ......................................................................................................................... 6

Create a climate of trust and candor ....................................................................................... 6

Focus on privacy policy............................................................................................................. 6

Reward employees who highlighted the weakness ................................................................. 6

Evaluate the board performance ............................................................................................. 7

Emphasis on ethics .................................................................................................................... 7

Evaluate the morality of leaders and employees .................................................................... 7

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 7

References ...................................................................................................................................... 7

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Executive summary
I have been chosen the Facebook- Cambridge data scandal. This is one of the biggest corporate
scandal in the worldwide. This scandal was revealed in 2018. After that, Mark Zuckarburg had to
face many questions. That was the hot topic in 2018. In this report, it has been described the real
story of the Facebook- Cambridge data scandal and the reasons behind this scandal. Also it has
been analyzed the recommendations of this scandal.

Background information
The Facebook- Cambridge Analytica data scandal involved the acquisition of the personal data
of millions of Facebook users without their permission by the British Consultancy Cambridge
Analytica. All of these data used for political advertising. In 2013, the data were collected through
an application known as “This Is Your Digital Life” which was personally quiz application.
This app was developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kagon and his company Global Science
Research. Aleksandr Kagon who was an Academic psychologist and data scientist based at the
University of Cambridge. He worked as a research associate at University of Cambridge.
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA) is a British political consulting Firm that has influenced hundreds
of elections around the world and became famous through the Facebook- Cambridge Analytica
data scandal.

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Real story of Facebook- Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal
This Is Your Digital Life- this app contains a series of questions to establish a psychological
profile of the user and collect personal data from the user’s Facebook friends through Facebook’s
Open Graph platform. This application collected data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles. It
was began in 2014. 2.7 million People installed this app on the Facebook profile to take the quiz.
Using of this app, this app access of the Facebook user’s personal data like interests, status, bio
data, liked pages, check ins., private texts, emails, followers, location, political views, religion
views etc. Aleksandr Kagon didn’t stop here. Again he used these 2.7 million profile as a loophole
to gain access to their Facebook friends’ profiles. He had obtained total violation of Facebook
rules. He just took advantages of Loophole that Facebook has with their API key. After that he
gave all of these data to Cambridge Analytica. Then Cambridge Analytica took all data and
developed an artificial algorithm to analyze the person based on political view, liked pages, follow
groups etc. Cambridge Analytica had worked on Donald Trump Presidential campaign in 2016.
Experts believed that could have used that data to gain an unfair advantage in targeting voters. It
never informed people that their data had been improperly used.

For example, Mr. Arif follows all the travel groups and the most famous travelers in the world.
He also gives status about the tour and shared these types of videos. Now the AI combines data
together and concludes that Mr. Arif loves to travel around the world. Suppose around 7 million
people are interested in travelling. So, if it is a political campaign, then they will launch an
advertisement like if I get into power, I will develop tourism places and give more advantages to
the tourists. Obviously many people will influence about this advertisement and vote that person.

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A breach of trust
Mark Zuckerberg said, “This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and
Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust Facebook and the people who share their data with us
and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.” This scandal is all about privacy crisis.

The reasons behind the scandal

There are some reasons behind the Facebook- Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal. Such as-

Political campaign
The one of the main reasons was political reason. In 2016 election, The Trump campaign hired the
Cambridge Analytica for data operations. The company helped the election campaign identify
voters who were targeting advising and provide advice on how to better targets as method. It also
facilitated its strategic communication. According to website and various media reports,
Cambridge Analytica also cooperated with other presidential election in 2016.

Failure of Governance
A major failure of Facebook’s internal governance was that its CEO didn’t know what was going
on, and the company now insisted that until 2018 this issues will be made public to all of us. The
incident showed a fundamental flaw in Facebook’s handling of its responsibilities to those who
use the data for their own business interests. Because of this governance carelessness, Cambridge
Analytica could use the Facebook’s data.

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Unethical issue
The ethical breakdowns occurred within the Facebook and explored the company’s liabilities in
relation to the scandal. Facebook violated their own code of conduct and own data policies when
they became lax with the handling user data in respect to third parties. Cambridge Analytica
Company’s didn’t have enough ethics, that’s why it used the personal data of Facebook users
without informing that.

I see nothing, I hear nothing

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t know anything about the scandal. He just gave the permission to access
all the user’s information to Cambridge Analytica and didn’t notice that what happened with those
information. Mainly he had no interest to know and to keep the user’s information.

Recommendations
Create a climate of trust and candor
There is a general information asymmetry between management, with the fundamental facts, the
board must learn. The board of directors is led by the senior executives, who see it as an obstacle
to avoid rather than a trusted business partner, important information should be share with directors
in a timely manner so they can read and digest the facts. If Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
create a climate of trust and candor then, the scandal might be avoided. And they can be still work
together. Trust is important between the dealing partners in business.

Focus on privacy policy

Facebook should focus on privacy policy more. Many people don’t feel safe at using Facebook
because of this big scandal. So it is one of the biggest weaknesses of Facebook. Facebook should
more careful regarding this. To develop Facebook, one focused on privacy, reducing permanence,
and secure data storage. Facebook should increase the privacy policy so that Cambridge- Analytica
couldn’t misuse the Facebook data.

Reward employees who highlighted the weakness

The board of directors of Facebook should reward of those employees who highlighted the
weakness of the company or any kind of unethical situation happening in the company. This is the
best business practice ever.

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Evaluate the board performance
It is most important thing for the company. Without feedback from the business activities or
business environment, it is impossible to learn from mistakes or to know more about success.
Facebook’s board of directors need to evaluate their activities, so that they can avoid these type of
scandals.

Emphasis on ethics
Facebook should emphasis on ethics. This scandal was occurred because of the Cambridge
Analytica and might be Facebook also. If CA had enough ethics. It didn’t use the users data for
the political purposes. So Facebook and CA should emphasis on ethics. Then they will gain user’s
trust again.

Evaluate the morality of leaders and employees

Facebook should evaluate the morality of leaders and employees. The CEO of Facebook need
more careful about morality and ethical parts also. He should evaluate the other leaders and
employee’s morality. Because of this evaluation, Facebook can avoid future scandals.

Conclusion
Cambridge Analytica had been bought Facebook data from tens of millions of Americans without
taking any permission to build a “psychological warfare tool” on its own. These data had been
used for Donald Trump election campaign. Christopher Wylie revealed about the Cambridge
Analytica and the use of Facebook’s data. Mark Zuckarburg, the CEO of Facebook mentioned that
he didn’t know about this. He said sorry to the public. Mark Zuckarburg and other board of
directors should be more careful about the user’s safety and personal information also.

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/23/facebook-releases-new-cambridge-analytica-documents.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loOgecLIrU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6DOhioBfyY

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