November 21, 2005 at 4:43 pm
How much money is it worth to work with someone that kills and tortures people? Twenty five investment groups are working with Reporters Without Borders and looking to partner with, invest in, and help companies pursue a profit, but not at the cost of dealing with some governments.
Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and many non-tech companies have made investments in and done tremendous business with various governments around the world, often ignoring the social policies and issues of those governments. This is nothing new, however. When I was in college, there were many companies that did business with South Africa, regardless of apartheid, simply to turn a bigger profit.
Profit is not the only goal of a corporation. Or at least it should not be. Being a good citizen of the world should also be something that a corporation deals with. Most companies have theses noble and strong vision statements, but when profits are down or the "number" is threatened in a quarter, the leaders ignore the strong moral and ethical message to gather a few more pennies per share.
It's amazing. Read some of the statements: Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Wal-Mart). They all mention ethical conduct and corporate standards. But they have all done business with suspect governments. Google is especially interesting in their 10 things list: You can make money without doing evil. The description of this seems to be something written at Slashdot by engineers. Not analog citizens in the physical world.
Perhaps the problem is that we don't know what "ethics" are. Maybe everyone's ethics are sufficiently different that we don't agree on what is unethical and when a rule is bent v broken. You can justify almost everything that you do in some way. But that doesn't make it ethical, moral, or the right thing to do.
Maybe the first step is a global definition of ethics to follow.
Steve Jones
November 22, 2005 at 2:19 am
what is considered right and wrong (ethics) is and always should be down to the individual. If you try to standardise ethics you essentially impeach a persons right to freedom.
We already have laws, ethics should never be dictated. If microsoft or google decide that they think it is right to work with certain people/governments and you disagree with them, then you should stand by your ethics and not contribute to their business.
its about conscience, i think that if you just follow what other people think is ethical and dont make up your own mind then you are not really an ethical person at all.
November 22, 2005 at 3:22 am
Great editorial! It becomes difficult to fault companies who reside in a country who's very own government appears to be poised to "give the nod" to torture. Dick Cheney and GW Bush both want to provide for a legal means, even though they have sanctioned it already!
Austin
p.s.
I am a US Citizen, combat veteran, and a member of Veterans For Peace
November 22, 2005 at 6:48 am
You can never mandate ethics or for that matter legislate them. Companies are only about the bottom line. They are out there to make a profit and nothing else. A good corporate citizen makes a good profit. That being said the way to make a corporation a good citizen is to be one. If a company does business in a way that you do not like then don't buy products from that company and tell other people to not buy products from that company. Once enough people stop buying products from a company over an issue the company will examine if the issue is making them enough profit to compensate for them to continue business as usual or to comply with the costumers and do what they want to get their business back.
During Apartheid in South Africa a number of businesses stopped doing business in South Africa simply because a number of their customers protested over the fact that the company was doing business in South Africa. If you base your purchases on ethics and not just money then the company will do the same. If you base your purchases on only money then do not expect the companies you are supporting to be any more ethical than you are.
November 22, 2005 at 6:58 am
I enjoyed the editorial. It is an interesting subject and I look forward to more discussion on it. I believe corporate decisions are made by individuals, and professionals like us can make a difference by looking at our own behaviour. Do we take the bonus and look the other way? When we can honestly say to ourselves that compensation is not the only goal for us, then we can demand that our corporations be good citizens of the world.
November 22, 2005 at 7:00 am
You have hit the nail on the head. If there is no universal moral standard, then there is no such thing as morality. It is meaningless. Others have said that you cannot legislate ethics, but this is just not true. Laws are by their definition moral standards. It just sounds neat to say that you can't legislate morality. If that's true then we need to get rid of all the speed limit signs and all the laws on the books for murder and rape.
What we have to determine is what the universal standard? That is the question.
November 22, 2005 at 7:16 am
Don't forget that in some countries it is not against the law to rape or kill a woman that has shamed your family. In fact it is considered an "honor" killing and a moral imperative to return the families honor.
So which law is moral? I think that it is easy to pick in this case but it quickly becomes a problem when you talk about stem cell research, the morning after pill, separation of church and state and the list just goes on and on ...
If you lived in a country that allowed you to be discriminated against then how moral do you think the law would be then?
November 22, 2005 at 7:37 am
Google says that "You can make money without doing evil." That's only going half way though. Looking the other way while others to do evil is not acceptable either. The Globalists spin constant rhetoric saying that our support of these countries will help undermine oppressive governments but they have it backwards. If the people in those oppressive countries continue to improve their means they will continue to support those governments that allow them to improve their lot in life. Like a drug addict, the people need to hit rock bottom before they rise up and make a change. The communist regime run by the U.S.S.R. fell because those Communist governments would not allow us to help their people; finally, those people decided that they had enough of the oppression and did something about it.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog
November 22, 2005 at 7:38 am
So do companies stop doing business with the US government?
Atrocity List:
Slavery
Genocide of Native Americans
Dropping the bomb in Japan
Torture of prisoners in our current conflict
It is easy to say that companies shouldn't do business with corrupt regimes, but it really isn't that easy. Companies aren't good at that kind of delineation and quite frankly they have a fiducuiary duty to return a profit for share holders.
Just something to think about...
November 22, 2005 at 7:52 am
It is so true what you say. It is so true about the USA! Individual is everything! There is never a greater group, greater goal or principal but an individual one. I...I...I... I is everything! When I was looking for a job a recruiter called me telling about this wonderful company. So I checked their web site. They have a statement of ethics on it. There they explicitly demand every employee to squeel on each other. Of course it is called "reporting" this and that activity that may be not in line with company's ethics. Codes of ethics written by people who don't have internalized understanding of right and wrong, can be called Golden Standards but they will still stink. People writing those codes may say: "stealing is bad, except where permitted by us (law)", "killing is bad except where permitted by us". Some people writing codes of ethics in present day were probably raised by hippies who denied not only the existance of ethics and morals but even their right to be mentioned.
The fact that governments loose their moral guide is almost expected. But that the whole nation does - is dramatic. It seems to me that the whole nation (USA) lost its moral guide, lost the sense and understanding of what is and is not moral, ethical, kind, right, wrong. The result is imperialstic wars, exploitation of other countries in various (well disguised) forms, torture (and strong denial of wrong doing), training te..ists who later turn on their trainers, selling weapons to other countries then going after those weapons and countries. The list goes on and on.
Codes of ethics will not solve any problem (it may put somebody in jail, if that's the goal here). If understanding of morality, ethics, right, and wrong is lost, it cannot be restored by any codes, laws, or legislation. When all that guides a company or an individual or a country is bottom line (profit), moral degradation WILL follow. Moral degradation is the reason why other empires fell apart. The same will happen to the American Empire. I don't see how this can be prevented especially when one amoral government replaces another and nobody wants to talk about being honest human being first and business people only second.
November 22, 2005 at 7:57 am
People of the USSR did not do anything about their "communist" government untill that government (Gorbachyev) allowed them to do so. If it was not for the permission from the government, the USSR would have been still in existence. Don't repeat propaganda unless you can verify it from/through independent sources.
November 22, 2005 at 8:03 am
We may not admit it, but there is a universal code of ethics. It's called a conscience. We all know basic right and wrong, but make choices as to whether we will follow the right or the wrong. Deep down, if we really look at each situation we are in, we know what should or should not be done; it's just more convenient to ignore it at times so we can get something we want.
The problem with stating that there is no universal standard is what was mentioned earlier: everyone is free to do what they want. If you don't feel it is wrong (or more accurately, if you can assuage your conscience to the point that something feels right), you are at liberty to do it. It reminds me of the story of the ethics professor who espoused the same line of reasoning in her class and was then surprised when a majority of the students cheated on the exam. If you are going to say there is no objective standard, don't be surprised when others don't have the same standard you do.
We know deep down that certain things are just plain wrong, but the very nature of people is not necessarily to do what's right, but what's best for them. If we don't legislate some things, people will do things that are wrong as long as they can gain some advantage for themselves regardless of whether it is morally right or wrong. We've tried to make it sound all nice by saying that we don't want to enforce our views on other people. The problem is that without a higher authority to which we can compare our actions, we will never agree on the standard to which we are to be held.
More to think about.
November 22, 2005 at 8:04 am
People that say you can't legislate morality are ignoring a glaring fact - all law is a legislation of morality.
If you put on the law books that murder is wrong in the state of Pennsylvania then you have just legislated morality (at least in Pennsylvania).
It is the duty of the state, and by inference in a democracy the duty of the people, to collectively legislate morality.
Another comment was posted that you can't legislate morality without costing someone their freedom. Again, this is done all the time and with good reason. You do not have the freedom to commit crime, no matter how much you may want to. There are limits to your freedom and always will be.
As to the global definition of ethics if you leave it to the individual or your personal conscience then you allow for tyrants and unthinking, uncaring individuals.
Morality needs to be defined at a higher level than the individual and unless there happens to be a perfect state then I submit that the highest authority should be God.
The United States of America was founded and based on Godly principles as is seen in the writings and life styles of the founding fathers. They used as a foundation the morals and ethics shown in the Bible and I think that this experiment in democracy shows that as long as a country or a company follows God's laws they will prosper.
November 22, 2005 at 8:19 am
We are all prostitutes, trading our bodies, (as well as our mind/knowledge) for money.
In America, We are the government. To fault the 'government' is to fault ourselves. To expect the government is to expect yourself to take care of...
Have you been out of work, low on funds? You may not want to comment unless you have, because you may do what it takes to feed and support yourself and your family. AND that is what a business/corporation is and should be. To treat work as work instead of family is shameful. If we would all do this, America would be much greater than it is today, (with people not working because it is beneath them or surviving off of taxpayers since it is as good as minimum wage and not having to work for it).
Judge not and do not cut off your nose to spite your face, (i.e. just try not purchasing from the corporations you specifically mention or use their products and see if you are able to feed yourself or family).
[font="Arial"]Clifton G. Collins III[/font]
November 22, 2005 at 8:51 am
Ethics is a paradox, and that is why it confuses many people. We want to find satisfaction (pleasure, joy, happiness) in this world, but that desire has a tendency to lead to selfishness (greed, pride, hatred, cruelty). The truth (the paradox) is that the more self-less we are, the more joy, peace, and love we find in living.
All laws and all morality can be summed up in a single law, against which there can be no other laws. In other words, if everyone obeyed this one law, the spirit of all other laws (rules) would be automatically fulfilled. Businesses are made up of people. When the people who oversee a business obey this law, and when they promote this law among their employees, there is no public outcry against the company, because the public finds no moral deficiency. So what is that law?
“Love your neighbor as your self.”
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