Beyond the bottom line is the story of a large, and growing, group of corporate citizens who take their ethical responsibilities seriously-and make a good deal of money by doing so. Far from being a burden on corporations.
How business leaders are turning principles into profits
Principles and Premises
Business ethics contradiction in terms?
" Do other man, for they would do you." That's the true business precept. - Charles Dicknes
Ethics is good business
A Recent Wall Street Journal article asked whether the term " Business Ethics" should be considered, like "jumbo shrimp," an oxymoron.
First, The outcry indicates ironically that morality does matter in business-that, to answer the question posed by the little of this "Business ethics" is not contradiction in terms. Cynics quote the proverb " you've got to have a little thief in you to get ahead," and say that success is impossible in business unless you are willing to lie, cheat, and steal. University of Kansas ethics professor Richard De George call this opinion part of the " Myth of Amoral Business," and he notes succinctly how the public outcry over commercial immortality gives this myth the lie :
If it were true that business is viewed as amoral, that it is not expected to behave according to moral rules, and that it is appropriate for it to do whatever is necessary in order to increase its profit, then there would be no surprise, shock, or uproar when a business acted immorally. The uncovering of bribes and kickbacks would not be news.
The fact that such revelations are news indicates to De George that, in spite of what the Myth suggest, business is expected to be moral. The disruption of standards gives offense only because those standards are generally accepted valid.
Ethical Models
" What is the highest of all realisable goods? As to its name there is pretty general agreement: The majority of men, as well as the cultured few, speak of it as happiness; and they would maintain that to live well and to do well are the same things as to be happy. They differ, however, as to what happiness is, and the mass of mankind gives a different account of it from philosophers." - Aristotle
Jesus comment to the people of Jerusalem - " Let him without sin cast the first stone" - would not have its peculiar pungency. Nor would elaborate legal codes have had to be devised as crutches for the confused.
Plato made the case in a famous parable over two millennia age. He imaged the condition of human beings as that of bound prisoners move objects whose shadows are cast on the far wall. The prisoners see the shadows alone, and what we see and know - The objects of thought, the impression of our senses, and our opinions about them - are ( Plato said) like those shadows on the cave wall, indistinct and ephemeral copies of a formal, ideal reality we can never know. We behave as if we understood what was real, and true, and good. But even the most enlightened among us - those whom Plato called " Philosopher kings" - are in the end only guessing. " In the world of knowledge," Plato says," the last thing to be perceived and only with great difficulty is the essential From of Goodness."
Firs, Ethical Absolutism or, as it is commonly known today, ethical fundamentalism. if you are an ethical fundamentalist, you decipher the shadows in a relatively straightforward manner. The most serious objection to fundamentalist morality is that it permits a true believer to avoid responsibility for action, by allowing either the book or one of the book's authorised readers ( minister, mullah, or judge ) to dictate his or her moral choices. Such us a surrender of personal accountability segues tragically into the Good German defence : I was only following orders; I did as the commanded.
This Second popular approach to ethics, which derives from anthropological liberalism, has grown in favour as the world has become more cosmopolitan and is our own cultural prejudices have been revealed. It's harder to chide the heathen than it used to be. A hundred years ago the British Army, quite rightly, outlawed the traditional Indian practice of sutte, or window-burning, on the grounds of immorality. Today it is posibble for rate-tipsy anthropologist to call this " cultural imperialism."
At its extreme the relativist view leads the True Unbeliever into quicksands of illogic, Richard De George maps these clearly. He points out that if you believe that every opinion is a defensible as every other one, you must also accept the following:
- First, your judgement about an action is not really a judgement at all, but merely an expression of our personal feelings about it. The implication is that nothing external really exists, only your view ( of the nonexistent).
- Second, you are not allowed to disagree with anyone about the morality of an action. if you do disagree, you must admit that you are expressing only a baseless conjecture, unconnected to reality.
- Third, neither you nor anyone else can ever be mistaken in a judgement, since you're making no claim on the facts, only on your "view" of them. Therefore, you can say on thing today, the opposite tomorrow, and be right both times.
- Finally, you are empowered to alter the morality of an action by expressing a different opinion on it. "if a moral judgement is only the report of an emotion or the expressing of an emotion, then by changing his emotion a person changes the morality of the action."
IImmanuel Kant devise three version of the Categorial Imperative, each one stressing one of three iinterrelated characteristics by which a moral action could be recognised. The clearly moral action would:
- Be universalizable. That is, it would make sense, consistently, for everybody in a similar situation to take the same action.
- Demonstrate respect for individual human beings. It would treat others not as means, but as ends in themselves.
- Be acceptable to all rational beings. If the action were made the basis of universal law, receivers as well as initiators of the action would agree that it was just.
The Broadening Base
"A corporation is the best picture... as having a full gamut of stakeholders with each of whom a constructive relationship must be established or negotiated." - Henry B. Scant
"We think our giving program should be accountable to the same stakeholders as the rest of our company-our customers, employees, communities, and stockowners... Serving society is not optional to our business. It is the foundation upon which our business rests." - Peter Hutchinson
Five stakeholders groups that important by most firms, across industry lines and in spite of business location or size are shareholders, employess, customers, local communities, and society at large.
I believe, if we keep a rudimentary moral philosophy in mind. One that is both logically reliable and applicable to business is that of " checked utilitarianism" - A utilitarianism whose essential focus on the greatest goods for the greatest number continually tested, in individual cases, against the requirements of a formal moral law.
Phared in this manner, the Cummins philosophy is one that even the opponents of "social responsibility" should recognise as common sense. For a company that is unresponsive to someone's claim that he or she is being hurt is unlikely to be responsive to other claims. in an "informative economy" inhabited by increasingly sophisticated and demanding consumers, an attitude so disrespectful of basic human needs will not carry you far.
Resoure: Beyond the bottom line 1985 by Thaddeus F. Tuleja
