I was telling one of my students on Friday how awful it is to write about business ethics. What’s wrong with it? It’s the sheer weight of the wrong doing. You get up in the morning and you scan any news channel and there is business ethical mis-conduct and a lot of it. It’s a daily sometimes hourly, evidence of an ethics catastrophe.
That’s exactly what we have, an ethics catastrophe, a disaster. How did we get here? Obviously there has been business crime in the past. From the Boeing bribery scandal of the mid-60’s to ITT’s offer to finance the Republican National Convention in 1972. But the scale, the continuous bombardment of wrong doing simply wasn’t there. But we have it now, a daily demoralizing drumbeat of ethical lapse.
The business world is trapped in a downward spiral of behavior. First, there is a relativistic view of ethics in which what is right or wrong is a point of view. There is also a similar view that is, that is if an action makes money, it must be good. Further, there is a tendency to think of morals and ethics as only a legal construct – if it’s not illegal, it’s okay to do it. Second, the ability to operate in nations all over the world has dissolved the ties of nationalism, patriotism and brotherhood that commonly tie individuals together in self interest. If you can’t do something legally in one country, you can look around and find a place that will let you do it.
There is no countervailing force. Even after a series of debacles in the financial industry that came a razor’s edge distance from collapsing the world economy, there is no soul searching. In fact, two years later, there is a common perception in the financial industry that there is no need to change anything, not regulations, not personnel, not business structures and definitely, not attitudes.
I, of course, cry out. But I’m pretty far out in the wilderness (way out). But you can rest assured, that the “malefactors of great wealth” are not reading this. (“Malefactors of great wealth” is Franklin Roosevelt’s name for the wall street barons.)
I’m proud that there are others who share my views. I write about them on this blog and on occasion exchange e-mails. It gives me a feeling of participating in a larger movement. I want you to be part of the movement to restore ethics and honor to the business sector.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
It pains me that we are more interested in what the principals in an industry are doing than we are in the principles that underpin companies and industry. While I remain pro-business in many ways, I am afraid we have become trapped in a corporatist world where profit is put above everything. Regulation, and the government that is tasked with implementing controls, is scorned as getting in the way of the all-too-patriotic job creation.
The reality is that a corporation has no soul and could care less about job creation. A quick glance at job creation by any corporation over the past 50 years will show that these unregulated companies have become a net job loss vehicle that has driven to other, cheaper destinations and all of our collective looking the other way on holding them to account for wages, the environment, and social justice has brought us what? More jobs? More prosperity? No, not even a thank you as the jobs have left, the environment has been ravaged, and the profits have flown to foreign investors or those in the know responsible for protecting us. I’m feeling pessimistic today but it seems that maybe we’ve killed the golden goose and that ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ may ring hollow for a long time.
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i guess i’m a bit naive, but i think most business people are pretty ethical. maybe it’s out of fear that they are ethical. but none the less it’s generally the few that screw it up for the rest of us. in my blog http://www.ethicalhouston.com my overall theme is to point out ethical shortcomings of we humans but also that there is hope and that part of the answer is looking at ourselves as flawed and trying to live in our own self interest on the one hand and on the other having great compassion and morality. those two sides of the human condition are always in tension and we can’t lose sight of either force. it’s kind of like 12 steps. we start by admitting we are not the center of the universe, taking a moral inventory, making amends and then trying to do better.
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I don’t think you’re naive at all. I fully agree that most business people are ethical. What I have in front of me is the greatest business calamity since the Great Depression and no accountability. Specifically looking at the Wall Street banking industry I see a group of people who have almost brought down the world economy. They aren’t going to jail. They made enormous amounts. They say they did nothing wrong and they make more money now than they did before. It doesn’t take a 100% of American businessmen to act unethically to cause a crisis. It only takes enough in the right places to create a culture. That culture that I discussed is not weakening even in the face of the monstrous harm they have done.
I don’t think I am that much different than you, in that I strongly believe in the inherent goodness (and greatness) of the people of this country. We both want to help people make the right decisions and do the right things. That’s why I found your blog so interesting and, of course, recommended it on my site. My regular e-mail is ngirsu@yahoo.com. Why don’t we chat more?
James Pilant
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