The Business Ethics Blog

According to MSNBC: Corporate ethics growing concern for workers

Unethical corporate managers contribute to lower worker productivity, drive away recruits and make some employees leave, a new survey says.

Ethics is a growing concern among American workers, according to the employee survey being formally released Thursday by LRN Corp., a Los Angeles based-company that works with corporations on ethics issues.

Among the study’s findings:

• A company’s ethics affects its ability to attract, retain and engage employees.
• Employees would trade additional pay to work for a company with ethical business practices.
• A large number of employees have left a job over ethical issues.
• American workers generally give their employers positive ratings for ethical conduct, yet one-in-four have witnessed unethical behavior.
• The vast majority of employees who experience unethical behavior on the job are affected by it.
• A large number of employees receive unethical e-mail at work.

A couple of thoughts:
1) This is one more data-point in favour of the still-controversial “ethics pays” thesis. Employee turnover (and more generally, lack of employee loyalty) is expensive. If poor corporate ethics tends to make employees less loyal, then poor corporate ethics can be expensive. As LRN puts it, “there are real financial benefits for employers to embrace ethics in the workplace.”
2) The survey seems to have left the definition of “unethical” up to respondants. So, one wonders how many of the reported “unethical” behaviours were actually simply behaviours that negatively affected the respondant (e.g., the “unethical” action of passing me over for a promotion). Similarly, one wonders how many of the respondants who say they changed jobs because they thought their employer treated them unethically, as opposed to thinking that their employer unethical in general. As someone who teaches classes on ethics, I’d be worried about asking people about unethical behaviour, without first establishing what they understood the word “unethical” to mean.
3) Here’s a good thought-experiment (and maybe a classroom exercise). How would various kinds of employees at Enron answered this survey?

You can see more details about the study if you register (for free) at LRN’s website.

For a good, balanced overview of the data for and against the “ethics pays” thesis,Value Shift by Lynn Sharp Paine.

(Thanks to blog.bioethics.net)

Rebecca Skloot at Culture Dish has been following hearings held by the U.S. Senate regarding at-home genetic testing kits. The conclusions of these hearings (based on a study conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office) are pretty alarming regarding the reliability of these products.

Here are Skloot’s two recent blog entries on the topic:
Aug. 2: Totally Nailed: Home DNA Tests Ruled a Scam
July 25: At Home DNA Tests: Marketing Scam or Medical Breakthrough?

In her August 2 posting, Skloot writes:

Since this investigation was done by a committee with no actual enforcement power, the end result of all this is a recommendation to the federal government that they require oversight of DNA testing, and a warning to consumers saying “a healthy dose of skepticism may be the best prescription,” when dealing with these test results. May be? They’ve essentially been caught falsifying DNA results — I’d say that warrants more than potential skepticism. I’m thinking that’s grounds for full-fledged rejection. Good to keep in mind, since the companies are still operating in full force.

Here’s the Washington Times article Skloot cites:
‘Beware’ online DNA testing
According to the article:

DNA tests that consumers buy online to find out whether they carry genes for certain diseases are misleading, lack predictive value and can exploit the public by recommending pricey dietary supplements based on the test results, an official for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told lawmakers….

For more resources on at-home genetic testing, see also Genethics.ca (Look under Topics >> Genetic Testing.)

Relevant Books:
Guiding Icarus: Merging Bioethics With Corporate Interests
Quality of Life and Human Difference: Genetic Testing, Health Care, and Disability
Genetic Testing: Care, Consent and Liability
Genetic Testing For Cancer: Psychological Approaches for Helping Patients and Families
More generally, see the books listed here: EthicsWeb Bookstore: Biotech Ethics

I asked for & received a review copy of the 2004 documentary, The Take (directed by Avi Lewis & written by Naomi Klein)

The Take tells the story of the growing number of factory workers in Argentina who, instead of acquiescing in unemployment when their factories are shut down, take matters into their own hands by occupying the factories and starting them up again, without the oversight, or permission, of their former bosses. The workers’ motto: “Occupy, Resist, Produce.” In particular, the film focuses on the efforts of 30 workers to re-start the bankrupt Buenos Aires auto-parts factory (“Forja San Martin”) that once employed them.

Film-makers Lewis & Klein begin the movie by telling us that their visit to Argentina was driven by the desire to demonstrate something their political leanings demand they believe, namely that there are alternatives to global capitalism. Klein narrates: “There’s only so much protesting can accomplish…at a certain point, you have to talk about what you’re fighting for.” To which Lewis adds, “So we decided to shut up for a while. Our opponents wanted alternatives…so did we.” And where better to look than a place where workers are casting off their chains, running their factories by direct democracy and (according to the workers) doing a better job of it than their former bosses?

As for various kinds of “bosses,” well, any good drama needs a bad guy, and The Take features 2 of them. One is former Argentinian President Carlos Menem, whose policies (implemented at the urging of the International Monetary Fund) are blamed for the countries serious economic woes. The other villain is Luis Zanon, owner of another factory — the Zanon Ceramics Factory — now also under worker control. If this weren’t a documentary — if you didn’t see Zanon with your own eyes — he wouldn’t be a plausible villain. He’s too perfect for the role…like a smoother, better-groomed version of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. He smiles into the camera and smugly states that, yes, of course, he will get his factory back. The government will give it back to him, he claims. The subtext: that’s how things work for rich Argentinians with connections in high places.

But the segments about political corruption and corporate greed are really just backdrops. The real story of The Take is the story of the 30 workers trying to restart the Forja San Martin. These are good men, hard-working men, who just want to be earn a living to support their families. Hence their motto: “Occupy, Resist, Produce.” In the end, it’s a heart-warming story. We want the factory to work the way the workers say it will: managed through democratic decision-making, equal pay for all, etc. We want to believe that, under the workers’ cooperative, Forja San Martin will be run ethically and efficiently. We want to believe the optimistic words of the cooperative’s charismatic leader, Freddy, whose movie-star looks and strong, honest face make him both an obvious leader and an obvious focal point for the movie:

In the cooperative, we’ll all be administrators. I’ll check on what he does, and he’ll check on me. Of course, we’re going to have to be more conscientious, and not be too bourgeois, like before under the boss…when you would duck around the corner for a break whenever you could. Now, no. If a light is on, turn it off if it’s not necessary. There won’t be exaggerated salaries like there were before, which is one of the things that caused all thiss…the salaries will be equal.

Of course, it’s not so clear that what Freddy envisions is really the “alternative” to global capitalism that Lewis and Klein are seeking. It’s just a different management structure. Under control of the Cooperative, Forja San Martin will still buy raw materials and sell finished products, while consuming energy and producing pollution and waste along the way. The decision-making process will be different, but the fundamentals of commerce will not.

One final note: the context — one that includes financial desperation and political upheaval — makes it hard to evaluate, ethically, what goes on in this movie. Everyone seems wrong, in some way or another. The Argentinian government is portrayed as corrupt, and corporate bosses as evil. On the other hand, what the members of the cooperative have done is illegal. They’ve stolen control of the factory. And in any sane world, no amount of corporate malfeasance could justify unilateral appropriation of a multi-million dollar piece of property. But if the story told by the film-makers is even close to accurate, the world the workers live in is anything but sane, and they’re struggling, after all, to feed their families without the help of the power-brokers who see them as mere pawns in a very high-stakes game.

The cynic in me, of course, doesn’t believe Freddy’s claim that under the Cooperative, everything will be better. Why would anyone shirk their responsibilities, when they’re part-owners of the factory? See the enormous literature on collective action problems. How could things not go well, given that all workers have equal input through a democratic decision process? See the literature, and history more generally, on the limits of direct democracy. And so on. But despite these academic worries, the film is well worth watching, as is the experiment — however naive — in alternatives forms of commerce currently under way in Argentina’s worker-managed factories.

Relevant Links:
IMDB’s page for The Take
The Take (official website)
Watch the trailer
Review of the move, by Roger Ebert (thumbs up!)

Relevant Books:
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, by Naomi Klein
Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives, by Leslie Sklair
Here’s a link to buy the DVD from Amazon: The Take (DVD)

See more movie reviews from this Blog.

From the Washington Post: Warner Bros. To Cut Link With Adware Firm Zango: ‘Inappropriate Material’ Could Reach Children

Warner Bros. Studios, home to Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo and Harry Potter, said yesterday that it plans to terminate a business relationship with Zango Inc., an adware company that has been offering free games on the Warner Bros. Web site in exchange for permission to install a computer program that could push advertisements and pornography.

Zango is offering free downloads of games on a Warner Bros. Web page called “Fun Stuff” that appears to be for children. But when users click on the game, they’re directed to a page that asks for permission to install on the computer a program called Zango Search Assistant. Hidden in the terms of agreement is the disclosure that users may receive adult-oriented ads through it.

Basically, Zango is in the “Adware” business, which means that they’re in the business of installing — or rather, trying to get YOU to let them install — software that brings ads (pop-ups) to your computer desktop. Adware companies probably ought not be lumped together in one seedy pile. Some of them quite literally deceive computer users into installing their software, software which can then spawn dozens of pop-up ads, whereas others merely offer users the option of accepting ads as the quid pro quo for some legitimate service. The problem, here, is that Zango was giving visitors to the Warner Bros website the “option” of installing their software. In particular, the problem was that lots of visitors to Warner Bros’ website are kids, and at least some of the ads served up by Zango’s adware are ads for adult services & websites.

Now, under U.S. law…

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act bars Web site operators from collecting personal information about children under age 14 without parental consent. Zango notes that the person who agrees to install the software must be over 18. But the box that confirms the user’s age on the Warner Bros. site is already checked, by default.

Here’s a screen-cap of one of Zango’s “agreements”:

So it certainly looks like Warner Bros did the wise (i.e., both prudent and ethical) thing by breaking its deal with Zango. But it’s also important to see just how easily this sort of thing can happen. In the rush to flood corporate websites with the all-important content that all the web-gurus say websites need, companies liker Warner Bros can end up in situations like this all too easily. Caveat emptor.

Relevant Links:
Wikipedia entry on Adware[Wiki-warning]
Warner Bros.
Zango
Zango, per Wikipedia [Wiki-warning]

Relevant Books:
Malware: Fighting Malicious Code, by Ed Skoudis and Lenny Zeltser
Computer Viruses and Malware (Advances in Information Security), by John Aycock