Category: business ethics

The Legendary Oceangate

On By southwerkIn business ethics

In the annals of Business Ethics, Oceangate is likely to be part of the curriculum for next one hundred years.

The disastrous implosion of a carbon fiber submersible has all the elements of melodrama as well as a long, long list of issues found in business ethics.

We can start with Hubris, an epic and fatal grandiosity seldom equaled and generally when equaled only in fiction. Then we have lies, exaggerations and misleading claims. Then we have untested materials, unproven procedures and an almost comical lack of money to do things right.

And a truly epic number of documentaries not to mention public hearings where the testimony was often fascinating, challenging and sometimes hard to believe.

In the last few days, the Coast Guard released its final report. I link to a news article on that subject below.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/coast-guard-releases-final-report-121424630.html

(Quoted directly from the article above.) Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate, was among those killed in the June 2023 implosion. Had he survived, the Coast Guard’s investigative team would have recommended manslaughter charges to the DOJ, the report said.

“This marine casualty and the loss of five lives was preventable,” Jason Neubauer, Titan MBI chair, said in a statement about the report’s release. “The two-year investigation has identified multiple contributing factors that led to this tragedy, providing valuable lessons learned to prevent a future occurrence. There is a need for stronger oversight and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside of the existing regulatory framework.” (End of Quote.)

Indeed, manslaughter charges would have been appropriate. That he fooled others was not forgivable, that he fooled himself, merely ironic.

James Alan Pilant

The President and the Nobel Prize

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maddow-blog-white-house-lobbying-164641914.html

(From the Link above) Donald Trump’s desperate and yearslong desire for a Nobel prize is well documented. In fact, after his defeat in 2020, the Republican president released a weird, campaign-style video that suggested he’d already received a Nobel prize. But as pitiful as this has become, Trump isn’t lobbying by himself. Congressional Republicans have tried to please the president by nominating Trump for a Nobel prize, and foreign leaders eager to curry favor with the American leader have done the same thing.(End of quote.)

That the current leader of the United States is often delusional is readily apparent. He also craves praise and validation. His North Korean style cabinet meetings where his lickspittles thank him for his leadership and praise him to the skies are unprecedented in American history.

And he loves prizes and awards. His “amazing” string of club victories at his golf clubs are legendary. There is whole book about his golfing and what it says about him:

I have ordered a copy of the book for myself and it might be wise for you to do the same thing.

Returning to the subject of the Nobel Prize, I find it hard to believe that he would ever get one. If he did get one, how much value would any future Noble Prize have? Its value would be little more than a stuffed animal won at a carnival if that.

Newsweek Magazine commissioned a piece on Nobel Prize winners’ thoughts on the President’s chances. It’s a good piece of reporting. The hardest hitting and most acid drenched comments were those of William Nordhaus who won a Noble prize in 2018 in Economics. I have quoted him below.

https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winners-react-trump-economics-2107563

(Quoted directly from the link above.)“The way I understand Trump’s ‘successes’ is this: The United States has over the decades built up an enormous reservoir of soft and hard power as well as good will around most of the world—a vast amount of social capital,” said Nordhaus, who won the award in 2018 “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.”

“Trump has drawn upon that social capital and is using it like a spendthrift teenager to achieve virtually nothing of value and to destroy many critical parts of the global institutional infrastructure,” Nordhaus said.(End of quote.)

There is some useful business ethics observations can be made here. Certainly competing for a prize for the best workplace, most effective innovation and many other things have led to positive good. But this is just another attempted reinforcement for a personality that craves attention and can never be filled. He is empty inside now and he will be empty inside no matter what awards and prizes he gets.

That’s just the way it is and his desperate need for it is more than a little unsettling.

James Alan Pilant

Elon Musk, What Alpha Males Believe??

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I apologize for the title. My rationale for it it that it appears that this kind of thought is related to the men’s movement so often seen online. In all truth, I doubt that any humanly developed classification fits for this level of weirdness.

Here’s a link to an article reporting on what he said and a short quote. However, the full post by this corporate honcho is available in the article.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/elon-musk-amplifies-bizarre-claim-202614083.html

This time, Musk amplified a bizarre claim from an anonymous social media account that described women as meek objects “built to be traded to another tribe (or captured).”

“That keeps them safe, even though they are physically weak,” the anonymous account continued, before launching into a longer screed about why women should conform to a culture dictated by white men “because the alternative is not so gentle.”

If the phrase “women should conform to a culture dictated by white men” doesn’t catch your attention, I can’t imagine any words that would. Isn’t this an alarm bell type statement? It does go with the Nazi salute rather well.

As a business ethics subject, let us pretend that you are a corporate manager in a company led by a CEO who reposted approvingly these kinds of remark. Much of your money is tied up in company stock. Are you comfortable with this stance and these words? And what if you are a corporate manage but not a white male? Does the level of offense change and the reasons that the words concern you vary from that of a white male manager?

And aside from stock price effects, do these words have implications for how the company will be run in terms of personnel and promotion. After all if women were meant to be traded and after twenty years of captivity to arise as the tribe’s cultural enforcers (Please forgive me, go read the article – I’m just quoting the reposted statements.) should you be hiring them before their twenty years of captivity are up?

It is hard to write about this. Truly this is a very high level of strangeness. But we must come to grips with the fact that a major corporate figure in the United States, a billionaire not only believes this but is willing to say it publicly.

It is truly frightening.

Any stakeholder as defined in business ethics should be concerned with these statements. Since, Musk has involved himself in American politics, that includes all citizens of the United States as as well as the more usual stakeholders of workers, stockholders and company officials.

We have had business leaders who beliefs led to endless trouble. I would point to Henry Ford and his admiration for fascist doctrines. But in this 21st century, this kind of talk is rare save on some media platforms.

James Alan Pilant

Theme Park Rides

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Over the years more and more information has become available on the dangers of theme parks. There have been some well publicized incidents and the latest one was just a couple of days ago. The article below tells the story and reports that there are a number of films of the incident available online.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/23-injured-theme-park-ride-135659093.html

The incident — which was captured on video and shared in multiple posts on X — occurred at Green Mountain Park in Taif on Thursday, July 31 (local time), according to CNN News 18, NDTV and the Hindustan Times. In the videos shared online, people could be seen riding the 360 Degrees, which normally has riders strapped to their chairs along a revolving platform that is flipped in the air from side to side while connected to a central pole. The ride appears to kick off as normal, showing the riders being flipped halfway through the air.

In the United States, it is often up to the individual states to regulate amusement park rides and as you might imagine that regulation can vary in effectiveness dramatically.

This subject would make for a good paper for a student and I would recommend the student begin with an internet search by the student of incidents in their home state. A local angle add impetus to your writing and often improves your grade not to mention the fact that you may be doing original research into under reported incidents.

I am providing a couple of YouTube Videos below. The first one is fairly generic. The second one is historical and most alarming. It’s a good watch.

This kind of subject matter lends itself to stakeholder analysis since safety and regulations concerns conflict (or can conflict) with local community initiatives for development and the simple fact that many people do not view amusement parks with the caution they deserve.

Many of these parks are chains owned by corporations, some of them family owned. This is a fruitful area of exploration.

J. Pilant

Thirty Dollars an Hour!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-passed-30-minimum-wage-085029075.html

Quoted directly from the link above.

Worker organizations, including hospitality union Unite Here Local 11, have been advocating for a citywide ordinance that would raise hospitality workers’ minimum wage to $30 by July 1, 2028, to accommodate rising costs of living as city hotels and airports serve an influx of tourists.

Though industry associations, including the American Hotel & Lodging Association, opposed it — claiming a higher wage could be disastrous for hotel owners and operators in the city — Mayor Karen Bass signed the Citywide Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance, sometimes called the Olympic Wage, into law May 27.

A minimum wage of thirty dollars an hour for many in the United States is unimaginable. And yet, we should be debating what is the right amount and should have been debating it for years. The current national level is seven dollars and twenty-five cents, a huge and incredible subsidy to businesses and corporations across the United States and an hourly insult to the American work force.

In normal times, this subject and ramifications would be the subject of business class discussions, written assignments and eventually published articles. But we don’t live in rational and intelligent times. We live in age of rampant stupidity, incompetence and corruption.

So, these kinds of academic discussion rarely take place. But we should try. The fact that expertise and science are derided and persecuted by the current proto-fascist administration does not mean that we who think and reason will obligingly disappear. I, for one, intend to put up a fight for wisdom, for intelligence and critical thinking. You can join me.

The issue of a thirty dollar minimum wage for hospitality workers is fascinating. The city of Los Angeles is hosting international events and the hotels and similar facilities make enormous profits. The city government thinks this largess should be shared with those doing the work. I find that argument very persuasive. The hotels argue that such a burden would be excessive and (I quote) cause an “economic tsunami”

I want you to understand that the “economic tsunami” line is a bit of attention getter and I might have wondered if they had a case. Except for already enacted twenty dollar minimum wage established for fast food workers. I regularly check on the right wing media portrayal of this act to amuse myself. If you believe their rhetoric, California is now a desert wasteland with ten dollar hamburgers and masses of unemployed wandering the streets in the form of hungry mobs.

Now, in California human beings are making decent salaries and can have good lives with recreation and housing even if they work in fast food and that is wonderful for everyone except the ideological warriors of the internet and the various conservative think tanks and astroturfed organizations they finance.

Anyone interested in trying to get rid of tips or get working Americans decent wages should wade through these hysterical screams of business agony. You’d think business owner were being set upon with hot irons inquisition style instead of facing a requirement to pay living wages. For the wealthy in the United States, the idea that they should pay people what they are worth is anathema.

Nevertheless, I say to business ethics and students that this would be a good class discussion topic and should be explored. There may come a time when we once again think and act intelligently as a nation. (It may take a bit.)

James Alan Pilant

Writing about Business Ethics!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Since I have returned to writing regularly on my business ethics site, it is important to reflect on what has changed since I first began this project.

I started this blog in 2006 and often published several times a day. I was very enthusiastic. Each morning I would go over the major news sites carefully reading their “Business” sections (sometimes the sites called it “Money” or some other euphemism) and there were always one of two things worthy of a business ethics writer’s attention.

Well, now it is 2025 and we are just at the end of first six months of this lawless administration. I went through the news and came up with 25 solid business ethics topics to discuss — and that is when I stopped counting. The regular business ethics issues I saw when I began have been replaced by a flood of business ethics failures and obscenities. One day’s news output could keep a man writing for weeks.

Wanton, incompetent and often downright evil behavior is a constant in the news, in particular when discussing the actions of our current President. But many business leaders, the wealthy and other politicians have leaped on the immorality bandwagon. Never before in American history has being cruel, self serving and vile been so celebrated and publicized. I never thought to live to see such times and it is painful to see such evil and so little push back.

Let me give you an example. And I didn’t have to look for an example, it was on today’s news.

Stupid and Immoral — And Proud of it!

Take a look at the article linked to below. This CEO’s hatred and disdain for human beings who I might add he is paid to lead and manage is self evident. He is outwardly, nakedly and proudly empty of moral values and human decency. Not to mention, astonishingly unaware, for if AI makes workers obsolete, it does the same for CEO’s. I promise that while I weep for the suffering of workers, I will celebrate with good food and friends every CEO replaced by a machine.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ceo-brags-that-he-gets-extremely-excited-firing-people-and-replacing-them-with-ai/ar-AA1JsRr4

“CEOs are extremely excited about the opportunities that AI brings,” Elijah Clark, a chief executive who advises other head honchos on using AI at their companies, told Gizmodo in an interview. “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI.”

“AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise,” he added, parroting cliched talking points, much like a certain over-hyped technology. “These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”

I used to teach in a business college of the type that this cretin almost certainly graduated from one does not fill me with pride. We should have done better with our students than turning out morally challenged money-grubbers. I certainly tried and many faculty I knew also tried hard to give some semblance of moral, ethical and traditionally American values teaching but we were up against the corruption and evil of our current business and political leadership. All the money and power now seems to go to the psychopath and the sycophants. It is not an edifying spectacle.

It may be in a few years that we will once again live in a democracy that this proto-fascist feast of the gluttonous pigs will be over. Be we may very well lose this and all the things a whole human being should hold dear will pass away to subsumed in a morass of greed and self interest.

We’re going to find out.

James Alan Pilant

The Lessons of this Administration

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The environment both natural and artificial shapes us.

I write about business ethics and I am deeply concerned about our current students in colleges and universities across the United States. Right now they are witnessing the highest and most powerful people in the United States government behaving in often illegal and continuously unethical ways. I am pointing specifically at the Cabinet members of the current administration although they are not the only ones.

They were selected on the basis of the most craven, servile loyalty and very often without any actual qualifications for their positions. And we see often on a daily basis, that to keep these jobs they must over and over again express their fealty to the current leadership. It is a degrading spectacle. Humans were meant to walk upright like free men and women not like some kind of whipped dog.

So, the current students here in this country witness a group of people getting ahead by sacrificing their honor, their self-respect, and abdicating their obedience and oath to the Constitution and laws of the United States. These people appear on television. They get good salaries and excellent benefits. There is an implication of after office service in think tanks and foundations at even more money. (However, the future of those from this openly corrupt administration is in some doubt.) Their lives are clear evidence that giving up your principles and abject loyalty to the most monstrous of individuals can be a successful strategy, if money and position are your only goals.

We do not live purely for money and position. I believe that is a truth. However, when I was teaching my students often told me that would seek a high paying position and do that job for twenty some years and then retire and live the life they wanted. I tried to explain to them that twenty years at a degrading and morally corrupt job would change them permanently, not to mention that a long life is not something that can be depended on. I am not sure they listened. After all, the lure of the opposite sex, nice cars, social position and economic security are very persuasive.

Explaining that a life you can look back on with pride is the only one worth living is difficult when your students are so young and want so many things so badly. And that is why we who teach are under a special and vital responsibility to point out the flaws in the “success at any personal cost” model.

We must be inspirational leaders not just teachers. We will have failed in a substantial and historically significant way if the current generation learns as a life lesson that servility and dishonor are proven paths to success. How will we be able to enjoy our retirements and our latter years when we see our students entering middle age in jobs they hate and despise because we were unable to communicate the important of moral and socially responsible conduct? And what of our nation? Can you imagine an entire generation admiring the antics of Pete Hegseth or Pam Bondi or any other of the cast of this ongoing federal reality show, a form of Wrestlemania writ large across our civic landscape?

If there was a time in your life to stand up for the values of the United States of America, this is it.

If you value your students’ futures, you must act to influence them to act in the interests of their nation, their posterity and their honor.

If not now, then when?

There is no convenient time to take a stand against evil.

Act now.

Your students and your nation are worth fighting for.

James Alan Pilant

Extortion as Policy

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Business ethics in the United States is taking some hard hits right now. In the last few days, one of the hardest hits that ethics in business has taken has come from what many people thought was a great university. They were mistaken.

Columbia University having agreed to a 200 million dollar payout has become the model for more Mafia style shakedowns of higher education in the United States.

Like Al Capone in Chicago, once you have one business paying protection you just roll up the rest of the block. So it is for American higher education. Columbia is the first in the dominoes.

Here – read the article about how Columbia will be the model.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-expects-other-schools-pay-164519393.html

“The deal didn’t just include a payout. Columbia also agreed to the appointment of an independent monitor who will determine if the school is abiding by the agreement, which includes provisions related to admissions, faculty hiring, and antisemitism on campus.”

Oh and look!! With an independent monitor, the shakedowns can continue indefinitely! You can bet real, hard money that a parade of demands for more money and power will come on a regular basis because once you’ve shown moral cowardice and the absence of any backbone, the extortion never, ever stops.

Perhaps, as in Florida, cronies of our “government” will find themselves well paying positions with lots of free perks in the now morally challenged atmosphere of the cowering leadership of a once great university.

The spectacle of a great university folding like a gambler with a busted flush sounds like a story from a bad novel. Who would have thought that a great independent bastion of thought would be kneeling before the great orange Cheeto?

This is a blog on business ethics so let us do our moral analysis!!

When your research grants are stopped on spurious grounds and you are given a list of nonsensical loony demands including giving up your independence and ability to do things like choose your own faculty, you should:

A. Deploy your lawyers and summon support from alumni to fight this assault.

B. Seek political support seeking input from your stakeholders while taking a principled stand for the political independence of a major university.

C. Ally with other universities like Harvard and demand fair treatment and justice.

D. Pay 200 million dollars and give into every demand the administration makes.

My analysis would be that A, B and C are all viable paths of social responsibility and justice seeking. They did D, the path of cowardice and compliance. That was wrong.

The moral bankruptcy of American businesses faced with threats from the administration offers clear parallels to the end of the Wiemar Republic and the end of democracy in that country. This is a national tragedy with dramatic implications.

Since, I have taught business ethics, I must find that Columbia has erred on the side of wrong doing and moral failure.

They have just sacrificed not just two hundred million dollars but their moral reputation and their sacred honor.

They will not be getting them back.

And their failure makes it easier for this evil administration to shake down other schools.

It will never be the same institution that it once was and may safely be discarded as having any principles besides keeping federal funding flowing at all costs.

My long term prediction is as follows. They will find in the long term that they will lose the money as well. This isn’t a just one battle, the long term goal is annihilation. As a defender of civilization and thought, Columbia is to be destroyed. And that is what is going to happen unless braver people with actual spines come to their rescue. A rescue I might add, they in no way deserve.

James Alan Pilant

    “Pure Cowardice”

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    This is what David Letterman had to say about the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

    While the network and its owners claim that the cancellation was purely motivated by financial decision making, one would have to be clueless, thoughtless and endlessly naive to accept that as a fact.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-letterman-reacts-cbs-cancels-late-show-stephen-colbert_n_68842f5ee4b02a19bf1f8bde

    (Direct Quote form the link above.)

    “I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this are going to be embarrassed because this is gutless,” he told former “Late Show” producers Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay in a Zoom chat uploaded to his YouTube page.

    From the quote above one gets the impression that Letterman believes that there will be a future without the stain of the current administration upon us.

    It is to be hoped that this current regime’s catalogue of horrors will some day end but that is not at this time clear. We are faced with the possibility of these wicked monied interests and their debauched and greedy lickspittles may have permanently impaired our democracy and perverted our future into a Putin like totalitarian regime.

    Should democracy survive we will have to come to terms with the cowardice of CBS and many other businesses who gave up any shred of decency to serve the regime. But above all, we must turn our attention to the six Justices of the Supreme Court who during this time of crisis have served as the President’s abject servants in disregard of their oaths, their duty and their status as citizens of the United States. Their decisions opened the pathway to the end of our democracy and if it is saved it will be in spite of these six. They must be dealt with – impeached or the court packed — but these proto-fascist, pseudo judicial decisions must end. We must have actual judges who follow the law.

    I have been away from this my web site, Pilant’s Business Ethics, for a long time. I retired from teaching and only wished to sit quietly, read my books and maybe write a mystery novel or even a Western. At one time, I had around seventy thousand followers. Right now there are a little more than two hundred who subscribe. It has been a long time.

    But I cannot be silent. A horrifying evil infests our nation and while my voice may be small and ineffectual, it is still my voice and I am American – and I have a duty to speak and speak as loudly as I can against the current regime.

    And so, I’m back. Daily posting and much outrage. May God bless us all.

    James Alan Pilant

    The Onion Speaks the Truth

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    We live in strange times. Fools, charlatans and Fox News refugees run our government. Yet, this is all normalized by cowering and cowardly “news” organizations desperate to curry favor with the current regime.

    So, who will stand up and tell us the king is naked?

    The Onion.

    Yes, the satirical online magazine is the last bulwark of truth, justice and the American way in this nation.

    They write truthfully and forcefully about the legion of cowards and bought lackeys that inhabit the halls of the two houses of the federal legislature. We have on one hand the fellow travelers of the Republican Party willing and happy to overlook any crime or power over reach by the President and on the other hand we have the Democrats, a party (with a handful of brave exceptions) so beholden to its donors that it is unable to actually represent any average American at any time although they occasionally hold a focus group to see what they should be saying since they have no message of their own save the continuous begging for more contributions.

    The Onions speaks the truth and it is cruel … and funny.

    And sad.

    (A quote from the Onion’s essay is below:)

    “Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice,” the editorial states. “We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing. Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and groveling.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/onion-mocks-congress-cowardice-york-161111538.html