Excerpt:
Employee sources said that a significant percentage of workers live paycheck to paycheck; they are forced to frequent soup kitchens and charities to feed themselves and their families. The problem has been ongoing since at least fall 2008, when one employee estimated that between 65 and 70 percent of workers used charities to get food. Paul Kerns, general manager for Sodexo at BU, said he could not verify the statistics.

Sodexo partners with Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse (CHOW) to collect food donations on campus.

Photo by jurvetson

Excerpt:
The danger of letting corporations patent human genes is that they can use the monopoly created by patents to deny access to diagnostic and therapeutic treatments to those who can’t pay a premium. Patents on human genes also choke off a patient’s ability to get a second opinion (before, say, removing ovaries or a prostate) and close off scientific research by other corporations or academic institutions.

The decision — which is sure to be appealed — has raised dire warnings from some corners of the pharmaceutical and venture capitalist sectors, as well as from the patent bar. They argue that patents encourage research and innovation by making it profitable for corporations to engage in the financially risky business of developing new diagnostic tools and therapies, and warn that the Court’s decision will thus hinder innovation.

But this case is different. It’s not about denying corporations the right to patent specific tests, methods, or drugs. These are inventions that deserve and will continue to receive patent protection. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to award patents in order to promote the “progress of science and the useful arts, by securing, for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries.”

Read more…

Excerpt:
The Ben & Jerry’s story is but a small cautionary tale about the still-growing and already far-reaching field of “philanthrocapitalism.” This is the term that author Michael Edwards uses in his new book, Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World, to describe a wide range of activities. It includes Silicon Valley CEOs using “venture philanthropy” to fund new, business-minded nonprofits; stock market traders developing socially weighted investment funds; bankers extending microcredit loans to the poor; and “social entrepreneurs” aiming to simultaneously serve a “double bottom line” of positive public impact and shareholder return.

The activities covered under the umbrella of philanthrocapitalism are diverse enough to offer exceptions to any generalization about the category. But its practitioners would almost uniformly describe themselves as “results-oriented,” implicitly critiquing the ineffectiveness of existing nonprofits and voluntary organizations. Their unifying idea is that business is more efficient and outcome-driven than government and civil society, and that unleashing market forces is the best means of addressing entrenched problems such as poverty, malnutrition, preventable disease, and poor education.

In Edwards’ words, “the basic message of this movement is pretty clear: Traditional ways of solving social problems do not work, so business thinking and market forces should be added to the mix.” During his nine-year tenure as a director at the Ford Foundation, Edwards saw the popularity of this argument skyrocket. He writes, “if I had dollar for every time someone has lectured me on the virtues of business thinking for foundations and nonprofits, I’d be a philanthropist myself.”

Read more…

Photo by Limbo Poet

Excerpt:
When the going gets tough, costly good intentions can go out the window. Company spending has been squeezed by the global recession and budgets for corporate social responsibility have suffered disproportionately.

A survey of U.K. businesses by KPMG and Business In The Community found a third of companies cut their corporate social responsibility budgets in 2009. Corporate philanthropy has also been hit, with a study by the Giving USA Foundation revealing that charitable donations by U.S. companies fell by 8% in inflation-adjusted terms in 2008.

Perhaps this is not so great a loss. There is a growing feeling among company executives that marginal initiatives, which can so easily be dispensed, are not enough to alter corporate behavior. In a speech last year, Stephen Green, chairman of U.K. bank HSBC, said: “There has been a tendency to compartmentalize so-called corporate social responsibility activities as an adjunct to the mainstream business activities.” Mr. Green believes in replacing corporate social responsibility with a new focus on “corporate sustainability,” which, rather than being an add-on to a business. “is about the raison d’être of the company itself.”

Read more…

Excerpt:
For guidance — and perhaps inspiration — Toyota should do some research on the Johnson & Johnson Tylenol recall of 1982.

That year, seven people in the Chicago area died from taking Tylenol capsules poisoned with potassium cyanide. The case remains unsolved, and no suspects were ever charged.

But Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500) didn’t wait around for the authorities to act. It stopped production of Tylenol and issued a nationwide recall of 31 million bottles already in circulation with a retail value of over $100 million.

The murders stopped, and J&J’s actions led to changes in packaging — those annoying seals on everything from aspirin to milk — as well as federal anti-tampering laws. Through its prompt action, J&J was able to actually enhance the value of the Tylenol brand by making product safety one of its attributes.

Toyota has a much tougher job ahead of it. That’s because the problems in its cars are not the result of a crazed individual but are systemic to the product development process. Fixing the system that allowed the defects to occur will be complex and expensive.

Read more…

Photo by respres

Marketplace Money had an interesting piece, with Henry Blodget, CEO of the “Business Insider,” and Megan McArdle, of the “Atlantic” magazine debating the propriety of walking away. You can hear that piece and read the transcript here.

Excerpt from the Arizona Republic article:
Arizona law professor Brent White says the only thing standing between many “underwater” homeowners and a better financial future is a misguided sense that walking away from a loan commitment is morally wrong.

White, an associate professor at University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law, has spent the past few months presenting his argument to other lawyers, real-estate professionals and the national media.

It started with a 50-page discussion paper he published in October, in which White argues that underwater homeowners, those whose unpaid loan balance exceeds the value of their home, are being manipulated into picking up the tab for a real-estate crash that borrowers and lenders created equally.

“I’m all for a society where people must take personal responsibility, but that should also apply to the banks and financial institutions,” he said.

Read more…

Photo by dbking

Read the article here.

Excerpt:
News outlets and the blogosphere are abuzz with reactions to Thursday’s Supreme Court decision that will allow corporations to fund political campaigns. The ruling, which overturns decades of legal precedent and legislation limiting the ability of corporations to influence the outcome of elections, may have broad implications for the political process in the U.S. News of the decision has drawn criticism from both the right and the left, many voicing the opinion that dramatically increased rights for corporations will significantly diminish the ability for individual citizens to have their voices heard.

Read more…

You may also find this article of mine to be of interest: “Capital” Punishment: For Corporations That Violate the Public Trust

Excerpt:
As the bodies responsible for teaching so many of the “masters of the universe” who did so much to cause last year’s economic meltdown, it is perhaps not surprising that business schools have spent the past year doing some serious soul-searching about their culpability for the recession.

Go back to the 1980s and 1990s, when many of today’s corporate leaders were studying for their MBAs, and business ethics and sustainability – in other words, issues around corporate governance, social responsibility and long-term decision-making – played ­little part in business school curricula.

Pre-credit crunch, the need for MBAs to be “ethical” as well as show you how to fast-track your career and make a load of cash was not that high on the agenda, concedes Mark Stoddard, accreditation projects manager of the Association of MBAs (Amba).

“Schools have recognised there have been gaps and they have needed to make changes in the way MBAs are taught,” he says. “Three to four years ago you might have got students complaining about having to take ethics courses. You don’t now.”

Read more…

Photo by anshu_si

Read the article here.

Excerpt:
Last year, famed British chocolatier Cadbury made waves when it announced that 100% of the cocoa used in its popular Dairy Milk line would be sourced Fair Trade. With the news that Cadbury is being sold to American conglomerate Kraft, the question is: will the new owners will keep these policies intact?

Read more…

From the blog:
This blog is a result of my experience as both a business owner and as an employee during which I came across a wide variety of ethical and moral issues.

During a long career in international business including a number of e-commerce ventures – I’ve realized the importance of proper business ethics training to meet the growing challenges in the 21st century workplace.

Not only are these issues complex – many haven’t been seen before due to the rise of the internet, technology and the sweeping changes made to the way we work.

Globalization and the necessity to deal across cultures – what may be okay and permissible in one culture being taboo in another. Today even many small businesses outsource – and there are issues in that as well.

Hopefully this blog will seek to address many of these issues and more.

Excerpt:
TRENTON, N.J. — Federal prosecutors said Friday that health care giant Johnson & Johnson paid tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks so nursing homes would put more patients on its blockbuster schizophrenia medicine and other drugs.

In a complaint filed Friday, prosecutors said J&J paid rebates and other forms of kickbacks to Omnicare Inc., the country’s biggest dispenser of prescription drugs in nursing homes. Prosecutors allege Omnicare pharmacists then recommended that nursing home patients with signs of Alzheimer’s disease be put on the powerful schizophrenia drug Risperdal, which was later found to increase risk of death in the elderly.

The allegations are in a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney in Boston, whose office has joined two whistle-blower cases. One was filed in 2003 by a former Omnicare pharmacist in Chicago, Bernard Lisitza, who alleges he was fired after he challenged the Risperdal kickbacks and other improper practices at the company. The other was filed by former Omnicare financial analyst David Kammerer in 2005, after he resigned from the company.

Read more… The New York Times also has an article here.

Excerpt:
In a moment of startling corporate clarity, Johnson & Johnson recalled all its Tylenol from US store shelves in 1982 after capsules tampered with in Chicago were linked to six fatalities.

The move cost the company $100 million and threatened to decimate its leading share of the market. Instead, consumers applauded the company’s openness and sales rebounded within a year. Three decades later, the move is still regarded as a shining example of corporate social responsibility.

The time it took the company’s CEO to make that gutsy call? Six days.

On Friday, a unit of Johnson & Johnson expanded a recall of Tylenol products to other over-the-counter medicines, including Benadryl, Motrin, and Rolaids, because of reports of nausea and other symptoms. The time from those initial reports to Friday’s action? Twenty months – and only after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had finished an investigation that found multiple problems at the Johnson & Johnson factory.

Read more…

Excerpt:
In a repeat scenario from last January, Apple Inc. is contesting two petitions from shareholder groups to increase the company’s environmental efforts, according to Apple’s proxy statement, reports EE Times. Two of the proposals call on Apple to establish a board-level sustainability committee, and to report how the consumer electronics company will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental and social issues such as toxics, recycling and employee and product safety, according to the article.

In January last year, Apple opposed a shareholder resolution that would require the company to publish a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, despite unveiling a number of new green products.

Apple’s board is rejecting both petitions this year, stating the company has taken appropriate steps to protect the environment including posting information at its Web site since August about its carbon footprint and recently released products, reports EE Times.

Read more…

Photo by adria.richards

Excerpt:
Google launched its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, in January 2006. The company said at the time that it did so in the belief that a search engine would help open access to information for Chinese residents. To obtain permission to operate in China, however, the company had agreed to censor search results that the Chinese government deemed objectionable. Google was harshly criticized by civil liberties groups for its concession to Chinese authorities.

The company now appears to be regretting that decision.

“We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech,” Drummond wrote Tuesday about the company’s reversal of its position in China. “The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences.”

Read more…

A trip down memory lane. Listen to the story or read the transcript here.

Excerpt:
The business world has been rocked by one scandal after another in the past decade. From Bernie Ebbers to Bernie Madoff, it’s been a confusing and angry time for investors.

In particular, the past 18 months have resembled a horror movie, with flaws exposed at Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. All of that was accompanied by a 777-point one-day plunge in the Dow (plus plenty of dismal trading days that followed) and more than 7 million job losses.

Read more…

Excerpt:
Why does it seem that it’s always Christmas in corporate boardrooms? And how can investors tell whether those glittering pay packages are worth the cost?

The answer sounds obvious: Pay the boss more for good results now, and you should get even better results later. But the evidence for that is surprisingly weak, and two new studies even suggest that when chief executive officers get paid more, shareholders end up earning less.

Read more…