I try to recommend no more than one site a day. Today, I make an exception. There is an intriguing web site I found called Ethical Houston. It deals with ethics, often business ethics, in the context of Christianity. I hold that business ethics as taught in the Protestant and Catholic faith are legitimate moral systems for making business decisions. I’m going to keep an eye on this site and see what happens.
James Pilant
via Ethical Houston
This is a brief meditation on the nature of those willing to work in firms or business that live to rip off. There’s a lot of compassion here. I admire that. I long ago decided I only had compassion for the victims. That’s pretty hardcore and not particularly ethical. This is probably a better person than me.
David Yamada’s blog, Minding the Workplace, has a great post about Dell computers and the company’s ethical problems as revealed in a current lawsuit. I could say a lot but I’ll let the article speak for itself.
James Pilant
Loren Steffy wonders if British Petroleum naming a drilling rig, Crazy Horse (not the smartest move), decided to misrepresent to the tribes in Colorado the amount of oil it was getting out of the ground.
Jon Talton explains how the loss of manufacturing jobs makes the recovery more difficult and may cause long term damage as our position as a manufacturer deteriorates as opposed to other powers such as China.
Keith Chrostowski writes about creative capitalism.
Jay Hancock discusses the importance in the electronics field of an excellent knowledgeable sales force (particularly if you fired the ones you had).
Edward Lotterman discusses “external costs” and “imperfect information.” These are important and basic economic concepts. He discusses them accurately, simply and in a straightforward manner. If you read any of these pieces, read this one.
David Moon explains scientific research into where in the brain investment decisions are made and why we like to agree with others.
Chris MacDonald has some insightful comments on what is meant by business ethics. He points out that you could also use the topic of corporate citizenship, stakeholder theory, the triple bottom line, corporate sustainability, etc. All of these cover part of the matter at hand: what is the right thing to do ethically? I believe that he wishes the subject title, business ethics, to be the primary one to simplify the field. I also use the phrase, business ethics, as the title and the subject of my blog. But what part of the field does mine cover? I aim heavily at corporate crime and let my indignation flourish at times.
This blog and what I want to do with it evolve over time. Keep watching.
MacDonald suggests that the Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics will provide some clarity to the field.
I hope he’s right. Ethical clarity is relatively rare and a tighter definition of our terms could at least move us in that direction.
James Pilant
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
I know that many of my readers are students. I don’t know of any way you can graduate from college without from time to time doing a presentation. Lee Andrew Hilyer, MLIS, M.Ed. has written a book about making presentations. This article contains two links to brief expositions of his ideas.
I looked at his stuff. It’s good. It’s easy to understand and use. (This is gold, guys! Most teachers do not know how to communicate. This guy is an exception.)
James Pilant
I found a pdf file of an interview with Lance Taylor. Structural economics is a form of macroeconomics that challenges the current orthodoxy. An orthodoxy, I might add, that has failed to explain or predict the current economic crisis.
Here is a quote where Taylor explains the reversion to classical economics after the second world war:
“It went through several stages, but in effect, what happened is
that by, say, the 1970s and certainly the 1980s, mainstream macroeconomics
had reverted to nineteenth-century economics. The major
figure in late-nineteenth–early-twentieth-century economics was Knut
Wicksell from Sweden, and basically what has come out in recent
decades is a less interesting version of his work.”
This is fascinating work. I recommend it.
James Pilant
This is a Lance Taylor lecture. He is quite good at making economics straightforward and understandable. (It makes me wish I was a student again!)
Here’s another:
Alan “Ace” Greenberg, a few days ago, gave an interview to Newsweek’s Nancy Cook. The former head of Bear-Stearns, took time from his busy schedule in order to enlighten and engage with us. It was everything that poor unlettered blogger like myself could have hoped for. The pearls of wisdom fell on me like a warm, summer rain.
When asked if he had any regrets about his time at Bear-Stearns, he had none. (During his tenure, the price of Bear Stearns stock went from a 52 week high of 133.20 to the ten dollars a share it finally sold for, although strangely enough, not as low as the two dollars that Bear Stearns originally agreed to.)
When asked if he had learned anything from the financial collapse, he said, “Nothing that I didn’t know before.” (Could the concept that maybe your company shouldn’t acquire notional contract amounts of approximately $13.40 trillion in derivative financial instruments, of which $1.85 trillion were listed futures and option contracts, be something new to you?)
When asked about a remark in his new book that the presidents of companies never really know what’s going on, he said, “I don’t care how much you watch things or how acutely involved you are, there are probably bad things that happen.” (Is this the same thing as saying that the president of a company is never really at fault?)
The interview continued in this manner. Let me sum up for Mr. Greenberg. “I did nothing wrong. I did not exercise poor judgment. Banking institutions are already regulated enough. No new regulations are needed. Derivatives are good. Derivatives make money; how then can they be bad? People don’t understand derivatives. Bad loans made to people who couldn’t pay for the homes they bought are responsible for the crisis. Bear Stearns was in no way whatsoever at fault.”
It is interesting to contrast the interview with reports of what happened at Bear Stearns. They seem to be two different versions of reality. I remember reading in philosophy that attitude is a key element in happiness. Mr. Greenberg has an excellent attitude in regard to his personal happiness.
Unfortunately, reality is not easily mocked.
Karl Jaspers wrote in his book, General Psychopathology that a delusion has three central characteristics. The first is certainty. The belief is held with absolute conviction. The second is incorrigibility. That is, the belief is not subject to change by argument or facts. The third is the impossibility of the content. Bizarre, implausible or patently untrue.
Let’s go through the elements. Let’s begin with certainty. Was there any self doubt or questioning at any point in the interview? Let me quote Greenberg from the article: “Certainly at Bear Stearns, I think that I didn’t make many mistakes. But, you know, you have to keep in mind that the only people who don’t make mistakes are the ones who don’t do anything.” That’s as close as we’re going to get to self doubt in the interview.
The second element is that the belief is not subject to change by counter argument or facts. In the excerpt from the full interview, we don’t see Nancy Cook press very hard. However, I would point out that Greenberg says clearly that he learned nothing from what happened” Let’s look at the exchange –
(Nancy Cook) Do you feel like you, as a businessman, learned anything following the financial collapse?
(Alan “Ace” Greenberg) Nothing that I didn’t know before.
His belief system did not change under enormous pressure from contrary events. This is a good argument for incorrigiblity but not conclusive argument, I would like to see him challenged with facts in a tough interview. That may very well happen in the larger Newsweek article.
The third element is impossibility or falsity of content. Well, the idea that Bear Stearn’s only error was too much trust in other banks is a difficult concept considering the massive evidence of poor judgment, poor management and poor leadership.
Greenberg lives in a world where he is faultless, the economic system works fine and whether or not you make money is the only measure of human accomplishment. I tend to believe that a great many of those leading both the government of the United States and, more in particular, the “titans” of industry, believe these things. There is a problem with hubris here.
Once again quoting from wiki: Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one’s own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power.
Believing in your own infallibility has only limited potential for damage in isolated settlements, in a giant metropolis or a great nation, the possibilities of overreach and massive damage are far more likely. The worst and deadliest of the characteristics we see here is that even after financial catastrophe unrivaled since the Great Depression, there is no feeling of guilt or mistake. If you don’t acknowledge a mistake, you cannot change your behavior.
What will the next acts of these individuals be and where will they take us?
James Pilant
This blog is about business ethics and business crime. But sometimes something happens that catches your attention. This is it.
I laughed when I first heard this. Why the fuss, I thought, calling a fancy burger, a lion burger is hardly crime. Then I read the article. The burgers are 80% lion meat. I didn’t know you could get it. I can’t figure out why you would want to get it.
So, my second thought was, well maybe, a lion killed his sister and this is revenge. Not a good reason to eat lion, but better than nothing. Nope, no family losses to lions. What does that leave? Is he allergic to cats?
This is just a bad idea. Get a regular burger, call it a lion kill burger, a lion victory over some beefy animal. We have lots of beefy animals and very few lions.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.