DATE AND TIME: Friday, October 21, 2022 at 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM PDT

LOCATION: SB1 5100 (Corporate Partners Executive Boardroom); Zoom link available on request

TITLE: “Frontline Professionals in the Wake of Social Media Scrutiny: Examining the Processes of Obscured Professional Accountability”

TALK ABSTRACT: Professional accountability is considered important to the sustenance of a profession. Prior research has examined the role that scrutiny by constituents, such as supervisors, regulators, auditors, and certification bodies, plays in improving professional accountability. With the advent of social media, a dispersed, diverse, and pseudonymous public can now scrutinize the actions of professionals, especially those at the frontline. In this research, I examine how social media scrutiny from the public impacts the professional accountability of frontline professionals and the consequences to the work of downstream professionals in the ecosystem. Based on an ethnography of 911 emergency management, I find that social media scrutiny of 911 call-takers—the frontline professionals in this setting—can obscure rather than improve professional accountability. I elaborate on the processes that produce these paradoxical outcomes and discuss their theoretical significance. Specifically, I unpack how and why social media scrutiny pushes frontline professionals to deviate from their professional mandate, which, in turn, obscures their sense of professional accountability. Beyond the frontline professionals, these processes also negatively affect the everyday work of downstream professionals (e.g., 911 dispatchers, police officers) in the professional ecosystem, thereby producing a cascading set of unintended consequences for multiple actors across the ecosystem.

SPEAKER BIO: Arvind Karunakaran is an Assistant Professor of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. His research examines authority and accountability at work in the context of technological change. Drawing on organizational theory and the sociology of work & professions, his current research focuses on the mechanisms and processes for holding professional groups accountable for their actions, especially during periods of change. He received his Ph.D. from MIT Sloan School of Management, and his research is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Research Policy.