The power associated to Big Tech, often equated to the ‘Big Five’ (Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft), is posing new problems at the societal and regulatory levels. Such problems lead to deeper questions in terms of power generation, use, and limitation, which a political philosophy perspective brings new flesh to. In this episode, we sit with Juho Lindman, whose award-winning paper "Big Tech’s power, political corporate social responsibility and regulation" interrogates questions in this range. Beyond regulation, he engages issues of political corporate responsibility and their relevance in the present international scenario.

Juho Lindman is Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Applied IT at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and the director of the University of Gothenburg Blockchain Lab. His current research focuses on open-source software development, blockchain governance, open data, and organisational change. His paper "Big Tech’s power, political corporate social responsibility and regulation", with Jukka Mäkinen and Eero Kasanen, won the Best Paper Prize by the Journal of Information Technology in 2024.

Resources:

Lindman, J., Makinen, J., & Kasanen, E. (2023). Big Tech’s power, political corporate social responsibility and regulation. Journal of Information Technology, 38(2), 144-159. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/02683962221113596.