Unwritten Rules
People generally underestimate the important role played by unwritten rules in just about every facet of our lives. From family, to church to work to play, all sorts of unwritten rules (philosophers may refer to them as “norms” or “conventions”) give structure to, and generally civilize, our world. Some unspoken rules are pernicious, of course. In some places still today, there is an unspoken understanding that one part of the beach is for whites and the other part of the beach is for blacks. And in some institutions, there’s an unspoken rule that women don’t get equal consideration for promotion. But in general, unspoken rules make our world safer and more enjoyable, and they reduce the need for explicit rules of the kinds promulgated and enforced by government and other institutions.
In that regard, here’s a very interesting short piece rom The Guardian’s Bike blog: Winning the Tour de France means learning its unwritten rules.
Written ethical codes don’t count for much in cycling. There have been a couple of attempts to make professional cyclists sign charters stating they won’t take drugs, but they have been quietly abandoned, because they didn’t stem the tide of positive tests, and they were viewed solely as window-dressing. The unwritten rules are another matter. They are everywhere, although the Contador-Schleck episode shows that as in Pirates of the Caribbean, the “code” is sometimes merely viewed as a guideline….
So, food for thought: what unwritten rules civilize the world of commerce? What unspoken standards civilize the following:
- Interactions with your co-workers, or with your boss?
- Interactions with the businesses you interact with daily, both big and small?
- Interactions between businesses?
BP’s Faked Photos
Often when a person or company does something bad, it’s most reasonable to assume that stupidity is the cause, rather than malicious intent. Some behaviour of course is both stupid and unethical. At BP, it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.
Everyone’s least-favourite oil company has now been found to have been posting faked photos on its website. (A small excerpt of one photo is above. Lots of others can be found online, including in various news reports on the story. Even at low resolution, you can see tell-tale signs of photo-alteration. The bits of brightness around both men’s heads is evidence of a sloppy cut-and-paste job. Also, the image on the screen shown at bottom-centre of the photo is slightly crooked.)
MSNBC tech blogger Wilson Rothman provides this good, brief summary:
A site called Americablog spotted a press photo of BP’s Houston command center, ostensibly taken on July 16. The image had quite visibly been Photoshopped — badly — to include more on-screen camera action.
Once word got out — the story was picked up by the Washington Post, where it was then spotted by the tech blog Gizmodo and others — BP ‘fessed up. A spokesman admitted that the image was altered, said that a photographer had inserted shots where the TV screens were blank, and provided the original image….
(Here’s the Washington Post version, by Steven Mufson: More doctored BP photos come to light)
Now, it’s worth noting that the changes to the photos are not actually misleading in any material way. Nothing important is hidden, and the faked photos don’t really tell any lies. The changes are basically cosmetic. (In a sense, the photos were merely enhanced to make them more authentic.) But as MSNBC’s Rothman points out, “Though the command center alteration doesn’t seem to be an attempt to hide facts or confuse the public, it heightens skepticism for the company at a time when it should be trying to build trust.” And as WP’s Mufson points out, “While the changes were minor, the embarrassment was major, coming at a time when the oil giant is trying to convince the American public that it is being open and transparent about the oil spill.”
Both Rothman and Mufson are correct as far as P.R. goes. Being caught in even a trivial fib is pretty bad for BP at this point. But what about ethics? Are the faked photos a sign that we generally can’t trust BP? Or rather, since there’s pretty little trust for BP in the first place at this point, does the revelation that they faked these pics give us new, ethically-relevant information about the company? Probably not.
Perhaps most disturbing about this whole fiasco is BP’s attempt to blame the (unnamed) photographer involved. As some have already pointed out, the photoshopping is so clumsy that it’s hard even to believe that it was done by a professional photographer. But at any rate, passing the buck and blaming the photographer is the wrong way to go. If there’s anything the public wants from BP now even more than honesty, it is evidence of willingness to take responsibility.
Interview: Andrew Potter and The Authenticity Hoax
Filed under: advertising, books, environment, food, greenwashing, health, honesty, labelling, natural |
Comments (14) 
My pal Andrew Potter is a public affairs columnist with Maclean’s magazine (Canada’s premier newsweekly) and a features editor with Canadian Business magazine. He also has a Ph.D. in Philosophy.
Andrew’s new book, The Authenticity Hoax, is excellent. I interviewed Andrew recently, about the implications the issues discussed in his book have for a range of topics in Business Ethics.
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Chris MacDonald: Your new book, The Authenticity Hoax, is about the way our pursuit of authenticity is in many ways the pursuit of a mirage, and you argue that the pursuit of it is ultimately not just futile, but destructive. You say that one element of that — or is it a result? — is a lack of faith in the market. Presumably that plays out, in part, in a perception that business quite generally is unethical, on some level. Is that one of the deleterious effects of the pursuit of authenticity?
Andrew Potter: According to the theory I offer in the book, the quest for the authentic is largely a reaction to four aspects of the modern world: secularism, liberalism, technology, and the market economy. And I think you’re right, that hostility towards the market is probably the most significant of these. Why is that? That’s a whole other book! Though I think something like the following is at work:
First, markets are inherently alienating, to the extent to which they replace more gregarious and social forms of interaction and mutual benefit (e.g. sharing or gift economies, barter, and so on) with a very impersonal form of exchange. The second point is that the market economy is profit driven. This bothers people for a number of reasons, the most salient of which is that it seems to place greed at the forefront of human relations. Additionally, the quest for “profit” is seen as fundamentally amoral, which is why — as you point out — the mere fact of running a business or working in the private sector is considered unethical. Finally, you can add all the concerns about sustainability and the environment that the market is believed to exacerbate.
The upshot is that we have a deep cultural aversion to buying things on the open market. We think we live in a consumer society, but we don’t. We live in an anti-consumer society, which is why we feel the need to “launder” our consumption through a moral filter. That, I think, is why so much authenticity-seeking takes the form of green- or socially conscious consumerism.
CM: Claims to authenticity are a standard marketing gimmick at this point. In The Authenticity Hoax, you argue that authenticity isn’t the same as truth. Authenticity has more to do with being true to some essence, some deeper self. It strikes me that that makes for some very slippery advertising, including lots of claims that can’t be backed up, but can’t be disproven either. Is authenticity the ultimate marketing gimmick that way?
AP: Absolutely. What advertising and politics have in common is that they are both “bullshit” in the philosophical sense of term (made popular by Harry Frankfurt). What characterizes bullshit is that it isn’t “false”, it is that it isn’t even in the truth-telling game. That is why I think Stephen Colbert was dead on when he coined the term “truthiness” to refer to political discourse — he essentially means that it is bullshit.
What is interesting is that authenticity has the same structure as bullshit, in the following way: from Rousseau to Oprah, the mark of the authentic is not that it reflects from objective truth in the world or fact of the matter. Rather, the authentic is that which is true to how I feel at a given moment, or how things seem to me. As long as the story I tell rings true, that’s authentic.
And that fits in well with advertising, since advertising is all about telling a story. Everyone knows that most advertising is bullshit — for example, that drinking Gatorade won’t make you play like Jordan, or that buying a fancy car won’t make you suddenly appealing to hot women. But what a good brand does is deliver a consistent set of values, a promise or story of some sort, which fits with the idealized narrative of our lives, the story that seems true to us. That is why branding is the quintessential art form in the age of authenticity. Bullshit in, authenticity out!
CM: There’s an irony, of course, in the fact that so many companies are making claims to authenticity in their advertising and PR, since for most people the very term “PR” implies a kind of spin that is the exact opposite of authenticity. But that apparent irony echoes a theme from your previous book, The Rebel Sell (a.k.a. Nation of Rebels), doesn’t it? In that book, you (and co-author Joe Heath) argued that all supposedly counter-cultural movements and themes — things like skateboarding, hip-hop, environmentalism, and now add authenticity — are bound to be co-opted by marketers as soon as those ideas have gathered enough cultural salience. Is that part of what dooms the individual consumer’s pursuit of authenticity?
AP: Yes, that’s exactly right. Chapter four of my book (“Conspicuous Authenticity”) is a deliberate attempt to push the argument from the Rebel Sell ahead a bit, to treat “authenticity” as the successor value (and status good) to “cool”.
We have to be a bit careful though about using the term “co-optation”, because it isn’t clear who is co-opting whom. Both cool-hunting and authenticity-seeking are driven not by marketers but by consumer demand, in particular by the desire for status or distinction. And in both cases, the very act of marketing something as “cool” or as “authentic” undermines its credibility. Authenticity is like charisma — if you have to say you have it, you don’t.
That doesn’t mean marketers can’t exploit the public’s desire for the authentic, but it does mean they have to be careful about the pitch they employ; it can’t be too self-conscious. We all know that “authentic Chinese food” just means chicken balls and chow mein, which is why I actually think that things that are explicitly marketed as “authentic” are mostly harmless. It’s when you when you come across words like “sustainable”, or “organic,” or “local” or “artisanal”, you know you’re in the realm of the truly status-conscious authentic.
CM: I’ve got a special interest in ‘greenwashing.’ It occurs to me now that accusations of greenwashing have something to do with authenticity. When a company engages in greenwashing, they’re typically not lying — they’re not claiming to have done something they haven’t done. They’re telling the truth about something ‘green’ they’ve done, but they’re using that truth to hide some larger truth about dismal environmental performance. When companies greenwash, they’re using the truth to cover up their authentic selves, if you will. Do you think the public is particularly disposed to punish what we might think of as ‘crimes against authenticity?’
AP: I’m not sure. It is certainly true that in extreme cases of corporate bad faith the public reacts badly. The case of BP is a good example; as many people have pointed out, its “Beyond Petroleum” mantra is a very tarnished brand right now, and it is doubtful they’ll be able to renew its polish.
But at the same time, I don’t see any great evidence that the public as a whole is disposed to punish companies for greenwashing. Actually, I think the exact opposite is the case: I think the public is very much disposed towards buying into the weakest of greenwash campaigns. The reason, I think, goes back to the point I made earlier about most of us being fairly ashamed of living in a consumer society. Yet at the same time we like buying stuff, especially stuff that makes us feel good about ourselves and morally virtuous. Even the most half-witted greenwashing campaign is often enough for consumers to give themselves “permission” to buy something they really want.
CM: Let’s talk about a couple of product categories for which claims to authenticity are frequently made.
First, food. You argue that much of the current fascination with organic food, locally-grown food, etc., is best understood as the result of status-seeking. So the idea is basically that food elites start out looking down on everyone who doesn’t eat organic. But then as soon as organic becomes relatively wide-spread, suddenly eating organic doesn’t make you special, and so the food elite has to switch to eating local, or eating raw, or whatever else to separate themselves from the masses. And I find that analysis pretty compelling, myself. But a lot of devotees of organic and local foods are going to reject that analysis, and object that they, at least, are eating organic or local or whatever for the right reasons, not for the kind of status-seeking reasons you suggest. And surely some of them are sincere and are introspecting accurately. Does your analysis allow for that possibility?
AP: Sure. The key point is that these aren’t exclusive motivations. In fact, they can often work in lockstep: You feel virtuous eating organic, but you also want to feel more virtuous than your neighbour (moral one-upmanship is still one-upmanship, after all). And so you try to out-do her by switching to a local diet. And when she matches you and goes local too, you ratchet up the stakes by moving more of your consumption to artisanal goods (e.g. small-batch olive oil, handmade axes, self-butchered swine, and so-on).
And this would be a good thing if there were any evidence that these moves actually had the social and environmental benefits that their proponents claim for them. But unfortunately, the evidence is – at best – mixed; the more likely truth is that the one-upmanship angle has completely crowded out the moral calculations.
The more general point is that we need to stop assuming that something that gives us pleasure, or feeds our spiritual needs, will also be morally praiseworthy and environmentally beneficial. That assumption is one of the most tenacious aspects of the authenticity hoax, and it is one that we have no reason to make. There are good and bad practices at the local level, and artisanal consumption has its costs and benefits. Same thing for conventional food production — there are good things and bad things about it. It would be nice if the categories of good versus bad mapped cleanly on to the categories of local versus industrial, but they simply don’t. The belief that they do is nothing more than wishful thinking.
CM: What about alternative therapies? Much of the draw of those products — and at least some of their marketing — seems to revolve around authenticity. People who are attracted to alternative products seem to want to reject modern medicine, which they find alienating, in favour of what they perceive as something more authentic. Now most critics of alternative therapies such as homeopathy primarily object that there just isn’t good evidence that those therapies actually work. But your own analysis provides a further kind of criticism, rooted in the way that those who seek ‘authenticity’ via alternative medicine are engaged in what is more generally an unhealthy rejection of modernity. Is that right?
AP: There is a lot to dislike about modernity, and my argument is not that we should just suck it all up and live with it. My point is rather that modernity is about tradeoffs, and that we need to accept that for the most part, the tradeoffs have been worth making. Yes, some things of value have been lost, but on the whole I think it’s been worth it.
But if there is one part of the pre-modern world that is well lost, it’s the absence of evidence-based medicine. Yet for some bizarre reason, the longer we live and the healthier we get, the more people become convinced that we are poisoning ourselves, and that modern medicine is not the solution to our woes, but part of the cause.
The turn away from the benefits of modern medicine is one of the most disturbing and pernicious aspects of the authenticity hoax. My book has been interpreted by many as an attack on “the left”, but it perplexes me that things like naturopathy, anti-vaccination campaigns, and belief in the health benefits of raw milk are considered “left wing” or “progressive” ideals. As far as I’m concerned, this is part of a highly reactionary political agenda that rejects many of the most unimpeachable benefits of the modern world. We know that naturopathy and homeopathy is a fraud; we know that vaccines don’t cause autism and that public vaccination is the one of the greatest public health initiatives ever; we know that pasteurization has saved countless lives over the years.
But for reasons I cannot fathom, these and many other related benefits are ignored or shunned in favour of an “authentic” lifestyle that is an absolute and utter hoax.
Progressive Garment Factory, or Charity?
Filed under: aid, charity, employees, international, labelling, profits |
Comments (17) What’s the difference between a progressive factory and a charity?
Here’s the story, by Steven Greenhouse, for the NYT: A Factory Defies Stereotypes, but Can It Thrive?
…Ms. Castillo had long dreamed of a bigger, sturdier house, but three months ago something happened that finally made it possible: she landed a job at one of the world’s most unusual garment factories. Industry experts say it is a pioneer in the developing world because it pays a “living wage” — in this case, three times the average pay of the country’s apparel workers — and allows workers to join a union without a fight.
“We never had the opportunity to make wages like this before,” says Ms. Castillo, a soft-spoken woman who earns $500 a month. “I feel blessed…”
There’s lots that’s interesting, here, but what most struck me was the similarity between the factory described (which produces apparel under the label “Alta Gracia”) and the controversial (Product) RED campaign. As you may already know, (Product) RED is a project that attempts to leverage consumerism into charity, by donating a small portion of profits from certain consumer goods — RED-branded iPods, for example — to the Global Fund (to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in needy countries). I wrote about RED here and here.
See the similarity? Red asked consumers to pay a premium so that money could be donated to the Global Fund. Alta Gracia asks consumers to pay a premium so that the money can be donated to the company’s workers. In both cases, there’s an attempt to advance a worthy cause (disease prevention on one hand, poverty alleviation on the other) by appealing to affluent consumers via value-laden branding.
Two questions occur to me.
1) Will Alta Gracia be subject to the same kinds of criticisms that (Product) Red has been subjet to? If not, why not?
2) It seems to me that the choice of workers as beneficiaries of the Alta Gracia scheme is but one option. Who are other potential beneficiaries of schemes like this? If RED helps out by donating profits directly to third parties (i.e., via the Global Fund) and if Alta Gracia helps out by donating higher wages to its workers, are there other parallel mechanisms that would work? Here’s an example. What if the company that owns Alta Gracia (Knights Apparel) were publicly-traded (instead of privately-held). And what if it gave shares to poor families, so that they could receive dividends when the company makes a profit? Would that be ethically the same thing? Would people who generally think profit-seeking is evil suddenly think profits are a good thing?
Chiropractic Referral Fees & Conflict of Interest
Filed under: conflict of interest, health, honesty, professionalism, regulations |
Comments (3) Sometimes, when consumers need two different, but related, goods or services, they rely on the advice of the provider of one product to select a provider of the second. That often makes sense, because providers in related businesses often have specialized knowledge that lets them give good advice (e.g., the guy who sells you your carpet likely knows who would be good at cleaning that carpet.) In such a case, people in related businesses can be a good source of expert, independent advice.
That is, if the advice is truly independent. And the most obvious way to eliminate independence is to inject a financial interest into the scenario. If the person you’re relying on for advice is financially beholden to the person he or she is recommending, you have every reason to doubt that advice.
And if that advice you’re after isn’t about something mundane, like carpets (something about which a great many non-experts know quite a lot) but is instead about your health, you have every reason to worry — especially when one of the service providers involved is taking active steps to put the person you’re relying on for advice into a Conflict of Interest.
Here’s an article (in which I’m quoted) about just such a situation. It’s by Yoni Freedhoff, MD, writing for the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Chiropractic clinic offered referral kickbacks
A chiropractic clinic with locations in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba offered lucrative kickbacks to physicians for referring clients to its five outlets until the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) apparently stepped in to scuttle the payments as a result of CMAJ inquiries.
The offer of kickbacks, which were in the form of financial compensation, arising out of referrals from doctors, came to light as a result of a CMAJ request for a “doctor’s information kit” in accordance with instructions from an advertisement placed in the journal by the Low Back Clinic.
The kit included a document detailing appropriate patient referral criteria, which was followed by the proclamation: “In compliance with the C.P.S.O. standards, a $300 documentations fee will be provided once the patient completes care….”
Summary of problems:
- The payments put referring physicians into a conflict of interest;
- The payments, which are based on completion of a course of care, induce physicians to encourage patients to complete a course of care independent of whether that’s in the patient’s best interests;
- The payments risk jeopardizing patients’ trust in their physicians;
- The payments risk the professional reputation of the medical profession quite generally;
- Referring to the payments as being “In compliance with the C.P.S.O. standards” falsely implies that the payments are required by the C.P.S.O.
All in all, this scheme was a pretty bad idea. Perhaps the clinic offering the fee could be excused for not knowing that doing so was contrary to regulation. But health professionals certainly ought to know enough about conflict of interest to recognize that such a scheme is seriously ethically problematic.
Ethics and the SME
Here’s a very nice short article on business ethics, with a particular focus on SMEs (small and medium enterprises).
By Hendri Pelser, writing for Times Live (South Africa), Play fair and you will win:
With the effects of the global credit crunch still with us, it is pertinent to consider business ethics – the lack thereof helped create the recession.
But how does one approach business ethics? In the academic world, it is a philosophical discipline. For companies, it’s often a large volume of rules and regulations.
In the arena of small and medium enterprises, however, it simply comes down to the way you and your business behave – and decision makers face a myriad ethical challenges every day. These range from the way the tea lady is treated to the non-payment of suppliers or even bribes and kickbacks….
This piece is nice in a number of ways. Too little has been written, generally, about ethical challenges faced by SMEs, and this article says a lot of smart things about that. But the article really is a good brief primer on business ethics, and an interesting read throughout.
My one quibble is with the title of the article, which is misleading (but which probably wasn’t chosen by Pelser, so it’s not his fault). Nothing in the article actually implies that if you play fair, you’ll win. Certainly there’s a suggestion that good ethics leads to a good reputation, which in turn can help a business achieve success. But the relationship between ethics and business success is clearly complicated. In some cases, success is what gives a business a bit of leeway to engage in the kind of overt ethical behaviour that will build its reputation. In such cases, the truth is closer to “win, and you can afford to play fair.” Also, it just cannot be denied that in at least some cases, you’ll play fair and lose. Or, more generally, there are situations in which you’ll lose no matter how you play — perhaps because other companies have better products, better staff, better marketing, economies of scale, whatever. That complexity, of course, is precisely what makes ethics in business a challenge. If acting ethically were a straightforward recipe for business success (and if it were uncontroversial just what counted as acting ethically), we’d see a lot less unethical stuff going on in the world of commerce.
Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics (Reviewed)
Here’s a useful review of an excellent new reference volume: “The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics, Reviewed by Matt Zwolinski, University of San Diego”.
I’ll admit right away that I’m biased: I’m co-author of a chapter in the Handbook (the chapter on Conflict of Interest) and Matt has nice things to say about our chapter in his review. But I’m pointing to the review as a way to make a point about the breadth of this thing we call “Business Ethics.”
Regarding the likely audience for the Handbook, Matt says the following:
The book will obviously be of interest to those for whom philosophical business ethics is a main area of interest. But the entries are clear and accessible enough to make the book of special value to at least two other groups: those whose approach to business ethics is not primarily philosophical will find here a useful ‘crash course’ in an alternative methodological approach to their own subject, and those philosophers who are not primarily interested in business ethics will be treated to a volume that makes clear the connection between business ethics and more standard philosophical subjects, and that will almost certainly provide them with new ways of thinking about both business ethics and other topics in value theory and political philosophy that are connected with business ethics in ways they might not have previously recognized.
Matt’s analysis of potential audiences is insightful, but I’d like to propose a further audience, namely those people who have a particular interest in business ethics, but who don’t know they’ve got a particular interest in Business Ethics. The people I have in mind here are the many many management professors, consultants, writers, and activists who have a deep (and sometimes professional) interest in ‘business doing the right thing’, but who do not (for one reason or another) identify with the term “Business Ethics.” That includes at least some professors who teach courses on “Business and Society” or “Corporate Social Responsibility,” and others whose work involves terms like “sustainability,” or “social responsibility” or “corporate accountability.” People working in those areas may, through an unfortunate fluke of language, be intellectually cut-off from mainstream academic Business Ethics, and a volume like the Oxford Handbook could be an excellent remedy for that.
(p.s., for a previous blog entry by me concerning the vocabulary of business ethics, see Barriers to Talking About Doing the Right Thing.)
(You can buy the Handbook via Amazon, here: Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics.)
World Cup Fever and Employee Productivity
The FIFA World Cup is one of the few events capable of diverting the world’s attention from the BP oil spill. I’m sure for many it’s a relief not to have a world-class disaster as the focus of their attention during every waking moment. In that regard, even for non-soccer fans, the World Cup is a welcome diversion. Of course, for many, it’s much more than that. It’s an obsession. It’s also a month-long diversion from other obligations.
Here’s a story about how businesses are dealing with the ways in which World Cup fever is affecting employee productivity. By Susan Krashinsky and Iain Marlow, for the Globe & Mail: The World Cup in the workplace – no keeper can stop it
[A]t its call centre in Brampton, the Canadian telecommunications giant [Rogers Communications] has wheeled in four giant projection screens to allow employees to catch World Cup games.
In Brampton, Rogers has opted to face head-on the possibility of lost productivity during this global sports event. Almost all World Cup matches will take place during regular work hours in North America. Rather than pretend employees won’t be focused on the tournament, Rogers is supplying the screens – some playing silently for those taking calls, and one that will sit in the cafeteria, volume cranked up….
Two main ethical questions arise, here. One: what do employees owe their employers? The other: what do employers owe their employees? Alternatively, we can combine the two into the single question, ‘How should an important-but-time-consuming cultural event like the World Cup be integrated into the workplace? Obviously, cases will differ. In an Air Traffic Control tower, where distractions could be fatal, no one (hopefully) is going to make an argument for installing a big-screen TV to watch whatever game is on. On the other hand, if you happen to work in a sports bar, the question is again kind of trivial but for the opposite reasons.
Setting aside those extremes, what about your average, middle-of-the-road office environment? Clearly any sensible solution has to involve a formulation of shared expectations. Managers and employees need to come to an understanding about how (as opposed to “whether”) employees are going to check in on World Cup games. In principle, any mutually-agreeable solution is ethically acceptable. But I would think really wise managers would find ways to turn employees’ interest in the World Cup into a benefit, rather than a liability. The most obvious way is by using the World Cup as part of various morale-boosting activities. More subtly, companies might draw on sports analogies — analogies that should be particularly vivid during the World Cup — in order to create training activities, perhaps ones that provide lessons on teamwork and courage. Indeed, they could even draw on the world cup to create training activities that focus on ethics, building on the analogy between sports and business as two competitive domains that can and should be productive endeavours, but that are more likely to be so when played within the boundaries of a well-thought-out set of rules.
Flexible Ethics in the Wake of Disaster
What do businesses in the tourism industry in areas affected by the BP oil spill owe to customers and potential customers? Or, to put it another way, just how closely do businesses in the stricken region need to adhere to the “usual” ethical rules of commerce?
Many businesses along the Gulf Coast have of course been very hard-hit. At this point, large stretches of the Gulf Coast are essentially unthinkable as vacation destinations, unless you happen to be into eco-disaster tourism. As a result, businesses there are fighting for their lives — all due to circumstances beyond their control, but very much within the control of a certain oil company whose name, by now, is all too familiar.
In such circumstances, businesses are likely to do just about anything to draw what tourists they can. Though I don’t know of particular cases, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see some companies cutting corners, ethically speaking. For example, imagine a potential vacationer calls up a resort on the fringe of the affected area, wanting to know whether that particular stretch of beach is still vacation-worthy. And imagine that the usability of the beach is borderline. What answer should the owner of the resort give, over the phone? How scrupulously honest does she have to be, when the survival of her business (and the livelihood of her employees) is on the line?
The problem posed by the expectations of tourists and the way those are handled by resort owners is illustrated in this article by Mike Esterl, for the Wall Street Journal: In Alabama, a Fight for Tourists
“This is not what we expected,” said Clint Pope, 27, who drove his family to Gulf Shores from Thomasville, Ala., Friday for a weekend at the beach.
Mr. Pope’s 10-year-old son, Drew, and nine-year-old nephew, Nathan, still swam in this stretch of the Gulf on Friday afternoon, along with other tourists. But nobody was going into the water Saturday.
Now it’s tempting to say that the obligation of businesses to deal honestly with customers (and potential customers) is unchanged by current circumstances. But compare: many people thought that the looting that took place in the aftermaths of both Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti was morally excusable. Some said it doesn’t even count as “looting” at all, when you’re fighting for survival. Does that principle hold true when the party in question is a small business owner, rather than an individual consumer? If stealing (within reason) is ethically permissible in the aftermath of a disaster, is bending the truth (or even lying) ethically permissible, too?
Now there are of course differences in the two cases. In the Katrina and Haiti cases, people were literally fighting for survival — it was literally life-or-death. Presumably no one in the Gulf Coast tourism industry is literally going to starve to death. But still, the general question remains interesting: to what extent can ethical rules legitimately be bent, when someone’s interests are seriously threatened?
Soccer Ball Ethics
Filed under: advertising, quality, sponsorship, sports, technology |
Comments (3) 
Amidst all the excitement over the start of the FIFA World Cup, one of the oddest bits of excitement has surrounded the innovative ball being used in the tournament, namely Adidas’ new “Jabulani.” Although the ball was designed to have superior aerodynamic properties, critics have attacked the ball for the particular way it flies though the air. Here, for example, cites Brazilian goalkeeper Julio Cesar as saying “It’s terrible, horrible. It’s like one of those balls you buy in the supermarket.”
Two things are interesting about this controversy.
One has to do with fairness. The controversy over the Jabulani — the ball that all teams will play with during the tournament — reminds us that the “level playing-field” metaphor so often appealed to in business is a sporting metaphor. It’s a reference to the fact that we think it desirable, generally, to make sure that no team has an unfair advantage. We want a level playing-field because if we play on a hill, one team is seriously disadvantaged by having to attempt to advance the ball up-hill, which requires considerably more effort. The point generalizes to any factors (including changes in the game) that give one side an unfair (dis)advantage. A change in the game is one thing, but a change that creates a differential advantage is quite another. And with regard to the Jabulani, even some critics have admitted that the fact that this change affects everyone equally mitigates the criticism. As English goalkeeper David James put it, “It’s horrible, but it’s horrible for everyone.”
But it’s worth noting the limits of this level-playingfield argument. While it’s true that all teams are subject to the same change, it’s not true that everyone is affected equally. First, it seems to be goalkeepers that are complaining most, suggesting that there’s a differential impact on them compared to other players — and that matters, at very least in terms of the ego of goalkeepers vs the egos of those scoring the goals. (In fact some suspect that this is an intentional outcome of the change in the ball: it will result in more goals, and hence more excitement, hence making it a better TV sport for North American viewers in particular.) Second, it’s not clear that all teams will be affected equally. Particular ball characteristics are liable to suit some teams’ strengths and strategies better than others. So why the “field” may be “level” at a superficial level, we may need to look deeper if we’re really interested in deciding whether this particular change is, in fact, a fair one.
The second interesting thing about the controversy has been the response from Adidas, the company that designed the ball. The response from Adidas has mainly focused on the science, and on pointing out that change is always difficult at first. But Adidas also had a more interesting defence, namely accusing (some) critics of conflict of interest. (See this definition of ‘conflict of interest’.) In particular, the claim is that most of the critics are subject to a possible financial bias. According to this story,
[Adidas spokesman Brueggen] pointed out that if you look closely at the players and goalies making these accusations you’ll notice one common thread among them: the all have contracts with Adidas’ competitors.
Now certainly not all critics have been affiliated with Adidas’ competitors. The soccer-gear website ‘Soccer Cleats 101,’ for example, reviewed the Jabulani back in January, and expressed some of the same concerns. Still, it’s an interesting accusation. And as always with such accusations, interesting questions arise. First, can Adidas’ claim be backed up empirically? If we actually count up the critics and look at what companies they’re sponsored by, will we see the pattern that Adidas claims? If Adidas hasn’t done such a tally (but is simply working from a rough impression) is it fair to make the accusation? Is the suspicion enough? And if we do confirm such a pattern of bias, what’s the specific explanation for it? Is it a matter of players consciously promoting the interests of companies they’re affiliated with, or is it more likely to be a more subtle, subconscious bias? And, finally — setting aside the fact that professional sport is, itself, a big business — what lessons can we learn from this sports story, and apply to the world of business more generally?
(p.s. Those of you with an interest in ethical dimensions of sports should be sure to check out Wayne Norman’s blog, This Sporting Life.)
