The Business Ethics Blog

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.