Big Tech’s power, political corporate social responsibility and regulation

Abstract

The dominant position of large internet tech companies, specifically the so-called Big Five (Google, Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, and Microsoft [GAFAM]), in the global economy fundamentally challenges the organization of society. Their positions raise old and new theoretical questions at the crossroads of information systems (IS) and political philosophy. In liberal democracies, companies traditionally appear as economic operators—not as powerful political actors that threaten to limit fundamental citizenship rights significantly through their operations. The traditional understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the liberal democratic conception of moral labour’s division between public and private powers in a market economy. In this article, we focus on this division by analysing the various types of political power these companies wield and the challenges in regulating this power. This paper contributes to theoretical discussions in the IS discipline by introducing political theory concepts that hold untapped potential in reconciling the clash between Big Tech and the liberal democratic conception of society. We use these concepts to discuss six types of power divided into following sub-chapters: business versus politics, democratic government, institutions of market economy, companies, civil society, and citizens. As such, this work provides potential research directions and example research questions for the IS field to tackle.

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