Meanderings on the subject of corporate ethics II

OK, so I asked Adam Garfunkel whether my fictional boardroom exists anywhere, and he was diplomatic in his response. His answer went something like, sure people are well motivated, even in boardrooms, but ultimately CSR initiatives have to make business sense. This, I suppose should be self evident, unless obviously you're a tambourine weilding idealist like myself.

Luckily he was pretty good at convincing me that at least a lot of the time CSR initiatives do make business sense. CSR, he explained, is about risk management. Increasingly, companies are conducting their business in public, improved means of communication making it easier to notice poor practice. Companies should avoid future scandal by looking long and hard at what they are doing, and putting it right if it offers any cause for concern.


Although this seemed to make fine sense (it always does at the time), I've been considering the extent to which the logic tied to market conditions. What if people don't care where their slacks are being manufactured? What if people who patronise your business are indifferent to ethics? What if people are distracted from ethical considerations by other imperatives? The current financial environment seems less conducive to ethical scrutiny than the boom which preceeded it. Businesses have also dropped the amount they're donating to charity.

I suppose the failsafe should be the law, which we imagine is creeping (very slowly) in the direction of making business acknowledge and seek to limit its impacts. In principle, a business would do well to make a gradual transition to more sustainable operations, rather than getting into some ruckus with a regulator. Unfortunately, law makers (at least in this country) seem to be doing very little to make things uncomfortable for unsustainable businesses, and this has also been compounded by the economy. It would be a great shame to see emergent business values like transparency and social responsibility going under before they've had a chance to make an impact.

Meanderings on the subject of corporate ethics

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a class debate. Our team opposed the motion that you could only practise ethical PR in the not for profit sector, not with little difficulty. Especially ferocious was the attack from my classmate Saema, who argued that business simply can't be ethical, on the basis that they must, first and formost, cater to their shareholders. This view holds that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a sham, and that ethics simply cannot exist in the boardroom.


Sadly I've never sat in a boardroom, at least not with board of directors, so I can only imagine (see above for my rather tragic graphical rendering of ethics in the boardroom). However, I 'm lothe to belive that every single one of them would be operating without a moral compass of any description. Presumedly these leaders of business would all be pariahs by now had they not, in general, abided by the ethical codes which define individual ethical conduct. Why should they as broadly moral people, who have probably wrestled with a dilemma or two, not be allowed to take a step back to examine and adjust the ethical direction of their organisation - the way that its vision and strategy work towards the (admittedly fairly vague) ideal of a good society?

Maybe people are right that as long as shareholders are there to be sated, and a profit seeking imperative remains enshrined in law, this ideal will never be acheived.

Or maybe it is in fact the case that for certain kinds of company, not only are conditions like sustainability and ethical agreeability becoming bound to profit, but also shareholders can be persuaded of this with greater ease. I reckon you can have a company that is both financially strong and actively ethical. What do you think?