Archive for the ‘decision-making’ Category
Four Myths About Business Ethics
Filed under: decision-making, definitions, economics, ethics, government |
Comments (2) Here are four important myths about business ethics. There are surely many myths about business ethics, but these 4 in particular cause trouble, and pose significant challenges for anyone trying to have a productive discussion about right and wrong in the world of business.
Myth #1. “Business ethics” is an oxymoron.
The idea that “business ethics” is somehow a contradiction in terms is based on a serious misunderstanding of what ethics is and what the world of commerce is like. Indeed, it’s much closer to the truth to say that the term “business ethics” expresses a redundancy, since commerce is quite literally impossible without ethics. Every single commercial transaction requires some level of trust, and without a shared commitment to some level ethical behaviour, you simply do not get trust. Indeed, economists are more than ready to point out the huge range of ethical norms that underpin the modern economy and make it run more efficiently.
Myth #2. Ethics is just a matter of opinion.
Again, false. While ethics does of course have something to do with having an opinion, it’s also about having opinions that you can defend to other people. While there certainly are a few really tough moral questions about which we might agree to disagree, we should also recognize that on many ethical issues there are better and worse answers. Poor answers to ethical dilemmas are typically rooted in factual mistakes and logical inconsistencies. We shouldn’t settle for those. We should talk them through. (And, as a I blogged recently, having an opinion doesn’t come to much if you can’t sell that opinion to others.)
Myth #3. There’s no such thing as “business ethics,” because ethics should be the same everywhere.
There are two main reasons why ethics, while essential to business, isn’t just exactly the same in business as it is in other domains of life.
First, business poses special challenges. The enormous productive capacity of corporations and other large organizations also brings the potential to do substantial harm, both to the lives of stakeholders and to the natural environment. So we face questions in the world of commerce that we just don’t face in other parts of our lives. Second, the special social role of business implies a tailor-made set of ethical principles. One of the defining characteristics of business is that it is competitive: companies are naturally driven to do better than others in their field. This kind of behaviour is socially beneficial — consumers benefit when companies compete vigorously to produce a better product, at a better price, than the other guy. In practice, we can really look at business ethics as having two importantly different components. One component consists of the rules needed to civilize a tough, competitive game. This part of business ethics essentially has to do with the norms-and-principles that ought to govern business’s behaviour with regard to outsiders. The other component of business ethics is about the ethical rules that ought to be embodied in relationships within the organization. Here, we do value cooperative behaviour; so managers work hard to shape corporate culture to enable employees to trust each other and to work together toward shared goals. Business is morally complex that way.
Myth #4. Business ethics is just a matter of laws and regulation.
This is not just false, but dangerous. The tendency to confuse ethics and law is tempting, especially in an age in which the business section of the newspaper increasingly refers to “ethics laws” and “ethics regulations.” But we shouldn’t be misled by that short-hand way of speaking. If you think about it for just a minute or two, there are in fact lots of ways in which law and ethics come apart. There are plenty of things that are legal but unethical; and there are also behaviours that are illegal, but arguably ethically OK. The short explanation for the fact that law & ethics don’t overlap perfectly is this: laws are made & enforced by government. But governments can’t be everywhere, and if they could, we wouldn’t want them to be!
These surely aren’t all the myths there are about business ethics. But these strike me as four that are particularly common, particularly troublesome, and particularly clearly wrong.
Ethics as Strategy and Marketing
Ethical decision-making can helpfully be thought of as a matter of strategy and of marketing. This way of framing ethics is, I think, likely to be particularly useful in talking about ethics with either MBA students or business executives.
First it is worth noting that there is of course a cynical sense in which ethics can be a matter of strategy and marketing, and that’s when companies adopt an ethical posture because they see it as a good strategic move or as a smart marketing maneuver. That’s a good topic, but it’s not what I’m talking about here.
What I’m talking about is the sense in which very often, in the world of business, acting on one’s ethical convictions requires that one think in terms of strategy and marketing. An example may help.
Picture yourself working in a team-based work environment. Now imagine that the team decides to adopt a particular course of action, but it is one that you, after careful consideration, sincerely believe to be ethically problematic. OK, so you’re pretty sure you’re right.
Now what?
Well, knowing that you’re right doesn’t do much to change things, at least not automatically.
First comes a strategic decision. You need to choose a strategy, a course of action tailored to the situation. At the most basic level, your first strategic decision is whether to act or not. Maybe you’ll decide that discretion is the better part of valour, and end up holding your tongue. Maybe the issue is too small to be worth rocking the boat. But if the issue is worth pursuing, you’ll need to decide on a strategy for doing so. The thing that makes strategic decision-making difficult is the thing that differentiates strategic decisions from other sorts of decisions, which is that strategic decisions are decisions that need to take into consideration the decision-making of other people or institutions. (The contrast, technically, is with what are called “parametric” decisions, decisions that need only take into account facts about the non-decision-making bits of the world, such as “what is the weather like today?” or “how much money is in my pocket?”) So, in making a strategic decision about whether and how to voice concerns, you will need to think carefully about how other people are behaving, and how they will react to you — in other words, you need to think about what their strategies are likely to be, which is no trivial problem. That is the essence of strategic decision-making.
Next comes a marketing decision. (For practical purposes, the marketing decision might not be separable from the strategic one, but I’ll separate them for discussion purposes here.) Once you’ve decided that your strategy will indeed be to voice your concerns, how will you actually broach the topic? At a team meeting, or by means of quiet discussion with one or more key team members? If you need to seek like-minded allies, who will they be? And what will your sales pitch be? Will you cautiously express moral doubt, or will you pound your fist on a desk and declare the current course of action “unacceptable”? And just what will you be trying to sell the team — a small-but-meaningful shift in course, or a total about-face? The point is that you have not just to arrive at an opinion, but to sell it, too.
What we see here is that ethics is more complicated than simply knowing (or figuring out) the right thing to do.
But what I think we also see here is one more way to connect ethics with issues that managers and MBA students already take seriously. It’s a way of pointing out that ethics is far from the “soft” topic it is often accused of being. As someone with a Ph.D. in philosophy, I know that ethics is far from “soft” because I know a fair bit about the incredibly technical theoretical literature on the topic. But to many in the world of business, ethics is considered soft (while accounting, for example, is hard — firmly rooted in concrete realities). Pointing out that solving practical problems in ethics requires, among other things, solving challenging problems in strategy and marketing is yet another way to attempt rescue ethics from unfortunate perceptions of the topic.
No Cake for Little Hitler: Ethics in the Bakery
Filed under: decision-making, discrimination, ethics, retail, values |
Comments (4) 
Freedom is a wonderful thing; freedom of speech is particularly important. But speech can also be a potent weapon. Your way of expressing yourself might prove horrific to me. Given that lot of businesses make all or part of their livelihood from helping people express themselves, challenges are bound to arise. Case in point, from The Lehigh Valley Express-Times: Holland Township family angry that supermarket won’t personalize cake for their son
JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell and Adolf Hitler Campbell.
Good names for a trio of toddlers? Heath and Deborah Campbell think so. The Holland Township couple has picked those names and the oldest child, Adolf Hitler Campbell, turns 3 today.
This has given rise to a problem, because the ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich Township has refused to make a cake for young Adolf’s birthday.
“We believe the request … to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate,” said Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman.
The Campbells turned down the market’s offer to make a cake with enough room for them to write their own inscription and can’t understand what all of the fuss is about.
Here’s an earlier, longer version of the story: Holland Township man names son after Adolf Hitler
ShopRite is within its rights to refuse to make the cake. They certainly have no obligation to help the Campbells live out their probably-hateful or at-least-misguided lifestyle. (Note: I’m willing to soften the case against these parents because, based on reading the longer version of the story — they seem dim-witted, not evil. Whatever.)
So, it was at least OK, and perhaps ethically a good thing, to refuse to make the cake. Of course, it’s easy to imagine all kinds of tacky, tasteless things someone would want to have written on a cake (“Happy Birthday, Assh*le!” or “Show Me Your T*ts!). I can imagine borderline cases that would give bakery managers headaches. But a cake paying apparent homage to the 20th Century’s literal poster boy for evil is probably not a borderline case.
Not surprisingly, different stores have different standards. Apparently the local Wal-Mart made little Adolf’s first two birthday cakes:
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said the store won’t put anything illegal or profane on a cake but thinks it’s important to respect the views of customers and employees.
The Wal-Mart spokesperson’s premise is a little off, here: you don’t need to respect all views of your customers and employees. A healthy degree of respect for cultural and religious differences is a good thing, but not all views are worthy of respect. So I don’t think a store needs to be willing to make Nazi cakes in order to show its support for diversity. But while I think what ShopRight did in refusing to make that cake was perfectly fine, I’m not sure there’s anything badly wrong with another store going ahead and making the cake. It is, after all, the kid’s name, and by making the cake the store would be pretty far from promoting Nazism. In a free society — and a free market — we probably want to allow merchants a reasonable degree of leeway in the customer preferences they are willing to tolerate.
Google on Google in China
Filed under: accountability, corporations, decision-making, ethics, government, international, privacy, technology |
Comments (3) Here’s an amazing story about a company (well, a founder & senior executive) ruminating — publicly — about the ethics of a recent corporate decision. In particular, it’s Google co-founder Sergey Brin, talking about Google’s activities in China:
From the Detroit Free Press: Brin Says Google Compromised Principles (by By Ted Bridis, writing for the Associated Press)
We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference,” Brin said.
…
“It’s perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, ‘Look, we’re going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won’t actually operate there.’ That’s an alternate path,” Brin said. “It’s not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing.”
Most of you already know about Google’s controversial move to offer version of its search engine in China that meets the censorship requirements of the Chinese government. (If not, see the blog entries listed below.) What amazes (and impresses) me most about the latest installment in this story is the casual transparency of (some aspects of) Google’s decision-making. Here’s the co-founder and co-president of one of the most powerful companies in the world chatting with reporters about ethics. Like, not reading a prepared statement, but thinking it through, out loud, and admitting that he’s not sure the company is on-track. Some would read this as a sign of weakness. I take it as the opposite. Who wouldn’t be uncertain about a path as clearly fraught with ethical peril as Google’s current path in China? Say what you will about the substance of Google’s strategy, you have to admire a company with the moral courage to be open about its own doubts.
Earlier Business Ethics Blog entries on this topic:
- Does Google’s “Dont Be Evil” Apply in China? (January 27, 2006)
- Update: Google in China (January 29, 2006)
- Becker & Posner Blog on Google in China (February 22, 2006)
The Business Ethics Blog 