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Article Tag: Business Ethics

Fortune
David A. Kaplan
Good article in Fortune about how business schools may be getting the message about the need for more ethics training. Read the article here.
Excerpt:

Rod Kramer thought it was going to be just another dinner at the Stanford Executive Program last summer.

An affable, popular professor at the business school, he had given his usual talks on influence and persuasion in the realms of politics and business.

Then came the wrap-up social event. But the wife of an important corporate executive — “with the help of some wine,” as Kramer recalls — lit into him “for not teaching morality to MBA students.”

That failure, she told him and then told him some more, was the cause of the global financial meltdown. It was an illustration, says Kramer, currently a visiting professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, of how much “disenchantment” there is about MBAs these days.

Indicting business schools and management education has become a blood sport. “If Robespierre were to ascend from hell and seek out today’s guillotine fodder,” wrote Philip Delves Broughton in a widely cited piece in the Sunday Times of London earlier this year, “he might start with a list of those with three incriminating initials beside their name: MBA.”

Read more…

Fred Pearce’s Greenwash – guardian.co.uk
Fred Pearce
Read the article here. H/t to Current.
Excerpt:

The agricultural giant Monsanto may well still be the world’s most hated company. The company that brought the world Agent Orange, the defoliant of choice in the Vietnam War, followed up a decade ago with a strident push to flood the world with genetically modified crops. It alienated millions – and even its friends and rivals among GM supporters blamed Monsanto’s belligerence for putting back the cause by many years. But I’m going to ignore GMs and talk about water. And belligerence.

In part, no doubt, to help salvage its GM-tarnished reputation, Monsanto now makes great play of its efforts to help engineer a second green revolution built around “sustainability”.

Sustainability is a much-abused term and it infiltrates almost every corner of the company’s website. But to be fair they do try and define what the word means for its business. The company promises that its “sustainable yield initiative” will “reduce by one-third per unit produced the aggregate amount of key resources such as land, water and energy, required to grow crops by 2030.”

Many analysts now see water, rather than land, as the key limitation on growing food to feed a future world population of nine billion in the coming decades. So a third more crop for the same amount of water is a valuable goal. The company trumpets especially its work to engineer more water-efficient maize.

Of course, despite the company’s public pledge to “share knowledge and technology” the company’s corporate aim is to make sure that farmers buy Monsanto-patented water-efficient seeds by the trillion.

But you would expect Monsanto to be especially sensitive about how it manages water in its own farming operations, and particularly to show concern for how neighbouring farmers are facing up to water shortages. Wouldn’t you?

Read more…

Green Inc. – NYT Blog
Kate Galbraith
Read the article here.
Excerpt:

In another sign of the widening divide in the business community over climate change action, Nike announced Wednesday that it would resign its position on the board of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Nike said, however, that it would maintain its membership in the chamber.

Three large utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources and Exelon — have announced their resignations from the chamber this month due to concerns about the chamber’s position on climate.

“We fundamentally disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change, and their recent action challenging the E.P.A. is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action,” Nike said in a statement that was posted today on the Web site of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Read more…

Tonic, The Huffington Post
Katherine Gustafson
Read the article here.
Excerpt:

Think slavery is over? Think our children are safe? A courageous corporate campaign tells us all to think again.

Growing up during The Body Shop’s heyday, I rarely entered a shopping mall without seeing the cosmetics retailer’s familiar “No Animal Testing” signs. And no youthful spree was complete without bagging one of the mango shampoos or pomegranate body lotions that lined the shop’s walls like shining, aromatic jewels.

Back then, the company was one of few touting ethical consumerism; under the direction of co-founder Anita Roddick, The Body Shop pioneered the idea that businesses can do well by doing good. The concept gained so much traction that angry customers just about stampeded when in 2006 Roddick sold her share of the company to French cosmetic giant L’Oréal, not known for an animal-kindness stance. But Roddick saw the move as a pragmatic one that would take the gospel of socially responsible business to new horizons.

And indeed, two years after her death, the company is taking its advocacy work to a whole new level with the launch of the three-year “Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People” campaign, kicked off eight weeks ago in partnership with the organization ECPAT International (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). The campaign aims to make sure that children’s rights are secure, and that governments are held accountable for their contributions toward that goal.

Read more…

Read the article here.

Excerpt:
LOS ANGELES — Four decades after he stunned the nation by leaking the top-secret Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg walks the halls of the past in his dreams.

In his sleep, he imagines that he still works as a researcher at the Rand Corp., advising Pentagon officials on policy, handling classified documents, studying the science of war.

“Being at Rand was the ideal life for me,” Ellsberg says, almost as an afterthought. “In my dreams, I am doing classified work, trying to solve social problems.”

Over the decades, Ellsberg, 78, hasn’t been welcome at Rand. He committed the most startling breach of security in the company’s history, walking out on Oct. 1, 1969, with the first briefcase full of classified documents destined for public release.

That bold move — and the actions that followed to get them published — are the subject of a new documentary film, “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”

Read more…

The New York Times
Editorial
The NYT editorializes on where the Supreme Court might be heading, regarding the constitutional rights of corporations. Read the article here.
Excerpt:

The question at the heart of one of the biggest Supreme Court cases this year is simple: What constitutional rights should corporations have? To us, as well as many legal scholars, former justices and, indeed, drafters of the Constitution, the answer is that their rights should be quite limited — far less than those of people.

This Supreme Court, the John Roberts court, seems to be having trouble with that. It has been on a campaign to increase corporations’ legal rights — based on the conviction of some conservative justices that businesses are, at least legally, not much different than people.

Read more…

On the issue of corporate personhood, you may also find this article to be of interest: Capital Punishment: For Corporations that Violate the Public Trust.

This is good news. It’s about time that companies take a close look at the implications of their associations. If the values don’t match, it’s a good idea to leave and to do so publicly.

Excerpt:
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- PG&E Corp. (PCG) said Tuesday it is leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over objections to what its top executive called the chamber’s “extreme position on climate change.”

In a letter to the U.S. Chamber published on PG&E’s blog, www next100.com, PG& E Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Darbee wrote that company employees “find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored.”

Read more…

The Times of India

CSR week? You’ve got to be kidding. Read the article here.
Excerpt:

AHMEDABAD: When a management course teaches all the skills and techniques that wannabe managers could need, why should the corporate social responsibility (CSR) be left out? Students’ council of BK School of Business Management believe so and have organized the CSR week that commenced from Friday.

Read more…

As seen on Reuters website
PRNewswire
Read the article here.
Excerpt:

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ — Are we, as a nation, becoming more or
less ethical in the workplace? The Ethics Resource Center is working to find out, using its extensive biannual National Business Ethics Survey (NBES) – the only workplace survey of its kind. Results are used widely by leaders in business and government to spot trends and focus resources.

The 2009 survey – ERC’s sixth in a series – is complete and results are scheduled for release in mid-October.

This year’s survey gauges the effects of the recession, the financial crisis and Washington’s response to both on ethics and compliance in the workplace. It also will track trends in ethical conduct and culture. ERC has polled more than 16,600 American employees since 1994.

Read more…

The Wall Street Journal
Sarah E. Needleman
What happens when you take the high road and offer your employees health benefits? You get higher productivity and a lower rate of employee turnover. Read the article here.
Excerpt:

Four years ago, executives of Burgerville, a regional restaurant chain, agreed to pay at least 90% of health-care premiums for hourly employees who work at least 20 hours a week. Today, the executives say the unusual move has saved money by cutting turnover, boosting sales and improving productivity.

Burgerville’s experience is notable for the food-service industry, where turnover is high and fewer than half of chains offer health insurance for part-time hourly employees, according to People Report, a research firm. The chains that do offer benefits pay on average 49% of the cost for employees working at least 30 hours a week, People Report says.

Read more…

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