The recent Loblaws lawsuit against Wayne Lord, the man driving the bus involved in a horrific crash that tragically killed his wife and seven of his basketball players two years ago was quickly dropped by Loblaws after a social media backlash started to steamroll across the Internet.
Most of the analysis of this incident and other similar issues have focused on how PR companies and corporations will need to prepare and react to the new lightning fast reality of social media. However, I think there is something more interesting happening here. Incidents like this where social media is facilitating instant "value judgement feedback" may be the start of something more meaningful for our society: a more humane corporation.

Publically traded corporations like Loblaws for the most part are focused on optimizing shareholder value. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It is an important and, in many ways, an actual legal requirement to protect the public investor. But as a sole objective in combination with a corporation’s legal structure it has sometimes resulted in companies, while being staffed by sound ethical human beings to behave in clearly inhumane manners.

Corporations staffed with ethical people have opened third world sweatshops with brutal working conditions, covered up serious dangers in the products they sell, and have engaged in serious environmental damage with free flow toxic pollution. Activities that individuals would not “OK” on their own or in their own lives, are being “OKed” by those same individuals within a corporate environment. Why is this happening? My guess, is for the same reason Loblaws initially sued Mr. Lord.

An individual at Loblaws likely received the police and insurance report regarding the accident citing Mr. Lord as responsible. Understanding that Loblaws was out-of-pocket to the tune of $41,500, and that the standard procedure was to recoup that money when possible, the individual “OKed” the lawsuit.

Why was this "OKed", when almost any individual aware of the circumstances would have likely made the choice to not pursue a lawsuit? Probably because people's roles within a corporation generally do not permit them to make these decisions as individuals. They OKed the lawsuit because, "that is what the company does.” The company recovers recoupable losses – end of story. Understanding the trauma that Mr. Lord and the community has already endured, and the relatively small sum of money involved likely did not come into the decision making process.

It’s easy to criticize the decision by this Loblaws individual (or the company), but who really makes the moral or ethical decisions for a company as events occur on a daily and hourly basis? Who has authority to write off $40,000 and under what circumstances? Corporate policies alone cannot provide adequate guidance for all situations. If it could, computer programs rather than people would be managers.

The social media “backlash” clearly illustrated to Loblaws that the community was very unhappy with its decision. Loblaws in turn responded to the community, by retracting the lawsuit and apologizing. In the eyes of the community it did the right thing – the moral and ethical choice.

It would seem to me that social media has just made a major corporation more, human.