The Business Ethics Blog

Check out this story by Peter Foster in the National Post.

In it, Foster rails against George Clooney’s new movie, Good Night and Good Luck, for what Foster thinks is its unjustified anti-corporate slant. The film is a fictionalized account of newsman Edward R. Murrow’s courageous defiance of Senator Joeseph McCarthy. In particular, Foster criticizes the movie’s portrayal of the Aluminum Co. of America (now Alcoa), a sponsor of Murrow’s newscasts who eventually bailed out.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Foster’s article points to an interesting topic. Of course, the main reason Hollywood (as if “Hollywood” is an entity with one mind!) sometimes picks on big business is, well, ya gotta pick on someone. Movies need villains. For better or for worse, big business makes an easy target. Frankly, I don’t generally blame movie-makers for helping themselves to whatever boogie-men they can find, at least when they’re doing fiction. But then, GN&GL is a fictionalized account of real historical events.

This warrants more thought: what are the implications, for public perceptions of the corporate world, of portrayals of corporations in fiction (e.g., Wall Street, semi-fiction (GN&GL), and non-fiction (The Corporation)?

(Thanks to Andrew Potter for pointing me to Foster’s story.)

This one would make a terrific case-study for anyone teaching business ethics.

CBC ran a story back in February on the few Canadian stores then selling GloFish™. In case you haven’t heard of it, the GloFish™ is a small tropical fish (a zebra fish, to be exact) that has been genetically modified so that it glows in the dark. They were developed (and are now legally sold) in the U.S.

Apparently, the fish were imported into Canada in violation of federal regulations. According to the CBC’s story, the retail outlets they talked to had no idea that there was a problem.

Lesson #1: Monsanto isn’t the only firm we can talk about when discussing commerce in Genetically Modified Organisms. These issues, and a range of new demands, are facing a huge range of companies both very large and very small. See relevant comments here from an executive with the Federation of American Aquarium Societies.

Here’s the Advisory Note issued by Environment Canada back in February.

(On a related note: here’s a good commentary on current controversy over cloning pets.)

Issues here:
What is the responsibility of companies with regard to keeping up to date on environmental policies in general? Does genetic science change the rules in this regard?
One small-time fish breeder was unaware that he was breeding GloFish™ (purchased at a pet store) in violation of patent. Whose responsibility is it to get such industries “up to speed?”
More generally: Biotechnology has introduced *new* concerns into various commercial domains that previously faced few ethical issues. When is it problematic for a firm to assume that a tropical fish is just a tropical fish?

Here’s a neat example of internet-mediated grassroots monitoring of corporate behaviour.

Blogger LA Green Girl writes: “Starbucks agreed that, according to its own policy, company stores should French-press a cup of fair trade coffee for you, any day of the week, in the 23 countries it is licensed to.”

So, her blog asks people around the world to verify Starbucks’s compliance with its own policy, by walking into a local store and asking for a cup of free trade coffe, and to report back. (Participating also gets your name entered in a draw for “A 12 oz bag of Monkey & Son Velvet Hammer fair trade organic coffee.” Cool.)

Here’s the Starbucks Challenge 2.0

Two recent news stories raise the same issue (not that they were necessarily trying to raise the issue).

Just what IS “corporate social responsibility” (CSR)?

The Financial Times’ website has this item:
How corporate responsibility works in a market economy. I won’t complain too much about the fact that this story doesn’t actually make good on the promise implied by its title. The bigger worry is that the author doesn’t explain what he means by CSR. Now, definitions aren’t always crucial, and as Melissa Whellams has reminded me, in the case of CSR it’s probably much better NOT to insist on a single, universal definition. But in this case, where the issue at hand is whether CSR is compatible with, or likely to contribute to, market success, it seems pretty crucial to know what you mean by “CSR.” As some people define it (roughly: “seeking out initiatives that are good for the community AND good for profits”), CSR obviously passes the test. But other definitions of CSR are more demanding and, hence, less likely to be attractive from a purely profit-oriented point of view.

The second item is this:
NGO’s call for Partnership, Not Philanthropy, from IPSNEWS.net.
Skipping the actual substance of this story, I’ll get straight to the smoking-gun quote:
“Definitions of corporate social responsibility range from the most conservative position, which maintains that the only duty of private firms is to generate wealth, to the most progressive, which holds that companies should voluntarily donate part of their profits to philanthropic activities.”

Two problems there: first is that what they label “the most conservative position” is not actually a definition of CSR at all, though it is a position on what social responsibilities a corporation has. That’s a small but crucial difference. Secondly (and again I owe this point to Whellams) the version of CSR that the authors label as “most progressive” is actually pretty old-school. Lots of modern CSR advocates actually sniff disdainfully at the idea that companies can bill themselves as Socially Responsible just because they shell out a few (tax-decuctible) dollars.

I know just enough about sweatshops & child labour to know that it’s a complicated issue.

And I’m pretty sure that “rescuing” child workers who a) don’t want to be rescued, and who b) don’t have any other real options but to go back to the sweatshop as soon as they get the chance is a pretty lame solution. Clearly “someone oughta do something,” but just as clearly, this is not it.

Not that I’ve really got a better idea. (If I did, I probably wouldn’t be posting to this blog in between bouts of grading.)

I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my copy of the new movie,
“Wal-mart – The High Cost of Low Price.”

I’m anxious not because I expect the movie to be good (which I don’t), or even because I’ve got misgivings about Wal-Mart (I’m actually kind of ambivalent about the company.) I’m anxious because I’m currently fascinated with documentary movies as a way of debating (or preaching about) corporate ethics. Movies have the dual advantages, in this regard, of a) being able to attract a broad audience, and b) being long enough to do a thorough job of explaining the issues. That is, if an understanding of the issues is what you’re trying to promote.

Here’s the low-down on the few I’ve seen recently:

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. This one was terrific. Lots of gory details. Not preachy, blissfully free of commentary from ethics experts. Here’s a review I wrote.

The Corporation
This one was awful. The kind of stuff you feed to undergraduate Critical Thinking classes to let them practice spotting fallacies. A friend of mine referred to this one as “the intellectual equivalent of snuff porn.”
Here’s a review of the movie, by Joe Heath.
Here’s a review by Andrew Potter of the book on which it was based.
Here’s a reasonably balanced story about the book, courtesy of CNN.

Watch this space for a review of the Wal-Mart movie, shortly after it arrives on my desk.

No, the irony of the term “Corporate Ethics” (or “Business Ethics”) is not the oh-so-tired joke about it being an oxymoron.

The irony of the modern usage of the term is that, most places you look, it’s become a synonym for “corporate law-breaking.” Check out the Washington Post’s Business Ethics Page. See anything that DOESN’T involve criminal charges?

Clue for the uninitiated: this is ironic because, on Day 1 of Business Ethics 101, the first thing you learn is that ethics is not the same as law. I have no idea whether anything can be done to rescue the term “ethics” from it’s current deflationary usage.

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Update, Nov. 16 2008:
I’ve updated the link to the WP’s business ethics page, above. They seem to have moved the page.

Maybe this blog was a mistake. Apparently, I may not be very well
qualified to write a blog on business ethics.

Forget the peer-reviewed publications. Forget being a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Business Ethics. I just took a Business Ethics Quiz and just barely passed. In particular, I scored just 3 out of 5 on this multiple-choice test.
I won’t bore you by explaining why I blew the questions I got wrong. (I long ago came to grips with the realization that my philosophical tendencies implied that I’m morally stunted on Kohlberg’s “Stages of Moral Development.” Stuck around Level 3 or something, as I recall.)
The interesting question here is whether there’s anything to learn from quizzes of this kind. Despite my initial reservations, I have to admit that I think there IS something to learn here. I’m not at all sure that this is any kind of way to gauge character.
But the explanations offered are at least a good starting point for discussion. Of course, constructing a *better* quiz (with better explanations of which answers are right & wrong) wouldn’t be hard.
Sounds like a good assignment for an undergrad course, actually.

A secondary issue is whether the “expert” deciding the correct answers for this quiz has any business claiming expertise. It would be churlish, I guess, to point out that his bio doesn’t mention any special qualification in this regard. But the question of expertise might well be parasitic on the previous question about pedagogical usefulness. So what if he’s not an expert? If the point is to get people thinking — even in a primitive way — about the justification for their choices, any half-way reasonable quiz will do.

Well, that does it. Never one to opt out of a good party, I’ve finally hopped aboard the blogging bandwagon. Better late than never, I guess. You be the judge.

I searched the web this morning for a decent Business Ethics blog, something comparable to the Bioethics Blog at the American Journal of Bioethics. Found a couple of offerings, but nothing that blew me away. So, I guess it’s up to me.