Tag: business ethics

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

I have been giving this Supreme Court decision some thought. Those of you with a legal bent will recall that this case ruled that corporations can give unlimited sums of money to political organizations seeking to influence elections. The court essentially recognizes corporations as persons under the law.

Is that a different animal than the previous creature? I mean if a corporation is more like a person than a contract, does it have citizen like responsibilities? Does it have a character, an ethos? … beyond earning money?

If a corporation is not a mutual agreement, a contract, between a number of individuals but an entity with rights, what does that imply?

It would seem to suggest that corporations are business and political organizations. What I mean to say is, this decision ratifies the idea of a corporation as essentially a small political party. Now, that may appear on its face to be no big deal. But let’s look more closely. Let’s say that a large corporation has 30,000 members counting stockholders and employees. There are many, many corporations with far larger numbers. Nevertheless, let’s use this as our example. The company has yearly profits of a little more than one billion dollars, again not particularly large considering the number and profitability of modern companies.

Thirty thousand members is not a large group compared to Democrats or Republicans or even Libertarians. However the Republicans and Democrats and other interest groups managed to spend about three and one-half billion dollars in the last election cycle’s presidential race. Our hypothetical company can play a major role in the presidential election with only a relatively small contribution of effort. If the company devoted 200 million dollars to the election they could have a major effect on the outcome. But what about the primaries? Well, let’s consider the Iowa primaries, a single state but often a make or break state for presidential candidates earlier on. What if our hypothetical company throws in a mere 20 million dollars to dispose of one candidate in a horse race of seven? How likely is that to be successful, particularly when the numbers are close in the first place?

Citizens United took corporations from a very significant though limited role in American politics and essentially created hundreds of small political parties unified under central leaderships with powerful legislative needs and freed them to use virtually unlimited funds to gain those ends.

I argue that some corporations will take on dual role, not just to make money but to forward pro business ideologies as well as traditional business needs and desires. Would shareholders be willing to tolerate a loss in profit during one quarter of a year every two years? And what if the company was able to prove that by its political advocacy it had made a return on the money of 50 or 100 percent?

Could you form an oil company or a manufacturing company whose sole purpose is to turn money into political power? Would there be people interested in doing this?

They would be investing in a political movement. Look at their advantages. Their money in the form of public shares would always be available. They could get it back provided the company was profitable. Yet, the continued investment in political action could get a far higher return than regular campaign contributions especially considering the unified leadership of a CEO and the other corporate officers who we may assume will have considerable political experience.

We might very well have a de facto multiparty state with all that that implies.

James Pilant

Business ‘Ethics’ Wrong Focus – Really?

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Thomas DiLorenzo writes an article in which he explains that those teaching business ethics tend to emphasize a few bad apples which implies that all businessmen are corrupt. What’s wrong with greed, he says. We’ve always had it. The real problem is with government.

Okay, I get tired of this. I never teach that all businessmen are corrupt but I strongly suggest that those that are do incredible damage to this country and I can prove my point.

There are a lot of things like greed and pride and avarice and sloth, but that they’ve been around a while doesn’t mean they are acceptable.

I have to notice that the American economy (and the world economy) were nearly destroyed by Mr. DiLorenzo’s “greed.” I do not believe that the government is the source of all evil and I have more faith in an organization in which the American People have some kind of input (not as much as I want) than a giant financial company with a proven record of manipulation, overpayment and use of government influence to protect itself from the actual economic consequences of its misbehavior.

I am a business ethics teacher. That’s a lot more than a apologist for corporate malfeasance and a radical who has discovered the source of evil as American self government.

James Pilant

Jewish Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics


The rules of the Jewish faith do not begin and end at the door of the synagogue. In the Talmud, it is written that the first question you are asked by God on entry into heaven is, “Did you conduct your business affairs honestly?” The great commentator, Ramban, wrote that you can obey all the rules of the torah to the letter, and still be repulsive and pathetic human being. The spirit of the law must be followed not the letter.
Business ethics is the arena where the ethereal transcendent teachings of holiness and spirituality confront the often grubby business of making money and being engaged in the rat race that often comprises the marketplace. It is the acid test of whether religion is truly relevant or religion is simply relegated to an isolated sphere of human activity. It is business ethics, one could posit, above all, that shows God co-exists in the world rather than God and godliness being separate and apart. From Jewish Business Ethics: An Introductory Perspective by Rabbi Yitzchok Breitowitz

We Do Not Lie to Our Clients (via The Corporate Scribe: The Tembua CEO’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics

I try to read several times a week other word press blogs discussing business ethics. Here is an interesting post that I discovered. I think you will like it, too. I add this one to my favorites, so you’ll probably be seeing more of it. Without further ado please read the following. James Pilant

This post was originally posted on the Tembua website on _______________. Got your attention with that title, didn’t I? Last week I heard an executive say (with a great deal of cynicism) that business ethics is an oxymoron. She got the expected laugh, but as I looked around, the expressions that floated across the other faces at the table showed she’d hit a nerve. Everyone followed the recent corporate accounting scandals. It’s not something to b … Read More

via The Corporate Scribe: The Tembua CEO’s Blog

An Introduction To Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure, Teaching

This is my thoroughly acerbic intro to my business ethics class.

Business Ethics is the study of what is right or wrong in the world of business. We are going to explore your views of ethics. While you will learn about many ethical systems, the emphasis of the class is upon your ethical development.
It is possible that you live in a moral vacuum. You could have no beliefs whatever as to what should or should not be done. However, this possibility is so rare as to be almost impossible.

More likely is that you have been influenced by society and have accepted the viewpoints of those around you. You float in a sea of belief systems absorbing what is “normal” and usually what is comfortable.

Some, a good number, have been educated into a moral system. The most common system would be that of a religion although other systems of ethics which can be found in organizations as diverse as political parties, charities, and organizations such as Ala-non. These other systems vary dramatically in the depth and importance of ethics in them.
The few remaining individuals will have actively considered what is right or wrong. Some have reflected on these issues a great deal; others less.

The intent of this course is that you actively consider your ethics as they relate to issues in business.
You move from moral vacuum, society’s choices, religious systems, organizational beliefs and your own reflections to a highly active consideration of ethical choices.

There is no rejection here of any system of ethics. It is quite likely that individuals will find in our attempt at developing a moral framework a ratification of their previous beliefs. It is likely that the strongest choice for many will be a religious system and those that have worked to develop their own judgment will usually find their search to have been significant.

Hopefully, all students in the class will develop their system of ethics in some sense. However, if a student begins the class with a system of ethics or an absence of such a system and finishes with no change, which will have no effect on the grade received.

What we will study

We will begin by exploring religious codes of ethics. Many religions, in particular Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Judaism and Islam have created sets of rules that apply directly to morality in the business context.

From there we will journey through the often confusing field of philosophy. We will discuss the impact of the major schools of thought on business ethics.

We will look at legal obligations of duty, fair dealing and care.

After this comes current thought, in particular American philosophies of business ethics.

We then investigate the issues of crime and ethical issues concerning business. A focus on particular moral issues concerning individual business fields like accounting.

Ethics programs and their implementation are next followed by human rights concerns and the last chapter concerns social responsibility.

Business ethics is a relevant and vital subject, but this field of ethics had been full of difficulty.

Business involves large sums of money, interactions between humans at different levels of power, interactions between one business and others, and interactions between business and government.

Some businesses have stolen incredible amounts of money, caused or contributed to the death of millions of people, damaged the fabric of the world economy, colluded with other businesses to set prices or drive other businesses out of existence, bribed government officials, evaded taxes and by giving an impression of constant criminality and dishonesty damaged the social fabric of many nations and poisoned their relationships with other countries.
Business ethics has been taught in the United States for about forty years. It has been a disaster. Corporate scandals so huge as to threaten the world’s financial systems have occurred several times. The more mundane corporate crimes ranging from tax evasion to the participation in causing injury and death are so commonplace they require little discussion.

Most of the individuals in these crimes were educated in business schools with business degrees probably the most common, the MBA. They had business ethics as a course. The fruit of that teaching is evident. There is no fruit. There is no positive result.

It can be claimed that business ethics has had some immeasurable effect that cannot be calculated. If that is a justification for having this course why don’t we teach a wide variety of other classes that might be effective. Is that how a business school is to be run: in the hope of a course being useful? Perhaps we should seek business success with Ouija boards, séances, and voodoo curses?

If we admit that current business ethical teaching is a failure. What can be done?

First, let’s have a look at our current textbooks. They contain many fascinating elements. First there are thought problems at regular intervals. A student is told in this thought problem that he is in position of having dire financial problems and at the same time he is confronted with an ethical problem involving a superior. If he does the morally correct thing, it could result in dismissal and the end of a career. If he does the wrong thing, he will keep his job and the risks are quite low that he will be caught. The student will of course give the proper response to the teacher. But he has already digested the principal lesson of the example. Don’t make waves. Don’t risk your career. When you get out into the real world you are going to have real financial pressure and if you lose your job, there will be consequences for the rest of your life.

How about that section on ethical systems, a vital part of the text? After all most of us attempt to work out our problems through with ethics code we already have and this is usually one common in our society. In most textbooks, there will be several pages perhaps even a large part of a chapter explaining the base elements of philosophy. This is so the eager business student has a good grasp on normative as opposed to descriptive ethics. You see that normative ethics is a system in which you try to figure out what is right or wrong. Descriptive ethics involves studying the current systems of belief or lack thereof. You see if we taught what was right or wrong we might offer students moral choices. But we give it a quick pass and offer students the choice of doing whatever is being done now, a convenient way of avoiding any moral choices at all. You see telling students what is right or wrong means forcing our ideas on them rather than allowing them the total freedom to act without any direction at all.

Then there comes the heart of the matter, a discussion of ethical systems that can range over as much as two to three pages. In one textbook which will remain nameless, Christianity is give two entire paragraphs, although there are reliable reports that a considerable number of Americans claim to live by its tenets. We then discuss utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Occasionally to amuse myself at the beginning of the semester, I ask the class how many of them live by utilitarian ethics. After a long period of silence, I try out Kant and the categorical imperative. Would you believe that our students don’t seem to make any of their moral decisions based on this thought? They don’t even seem to know what these things are! But if you ask about that Christianity thing, the one with two paragraphs, many of them react. Then you will find several students who are trying to figure out what is right or wrong in their own minds developing their own philosophy. And last you will always find two or three students who believe that money is the only measure of morality in this world, a descriptive ethic.

Our intent here is to explore the world of business in view of the many ethical systems that deal directly with business moral issues and there are more than a few. We also intend to look at your own moral development over the course of your life span.

Most importantly we will learn to consider morality and ethics as an active endeavor. You don’t put judgment in the back of your head as to what is right or wrong, you think about it actively. You have to think about what is right before the issue comes up or many times you will simply not realize the moral implications of your actions. You have a world to win, fight for it.

James Alan Pilant

What Do I Stand For?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure1 Comment

First and foremost, I believe that a human being can be a businessman and still maintain that precious humanity. That would be my first principle.

I hope it is obvious that flowing from this basic belief is the second, that is, there are many, many reasons to do things and money is not the only one or the most important one.

Third, I am a firm advocate of leadership. Change does not happen naturally or inevitably, and many, many times in history, we have gone backwards. A successful effort toward human values is often destroyed or turned back by the forces of greed and evil. When someone plays that song from Les Misérable, “Do you hear the people sing?,” I always disgusted. No, they’re not. They aren’t reaching for anything. It’s like one of those empty disney films where one more time they tell us to be all we can be but not really. The people like everybody throughout history get tied up and focused on the mundane, the useless, the copying and pretending that passes for life. If people change, for there to be social change, someone has to lead; someone has to point out that change is possible.

We do not live in an era of leadership.

Fourth, I believe in capitalism. I like the idea of people developing and selling goods. I like the idea of competition. But history is clear, it is a lot easier, extremely easier to make money by theft, by lies, by monopoly, by adulterating goods and by bribing or gaining favors from the government. This is so obvious to me, so clear a lesson of history repeated over and over again ad nauseum, that when someone says all we have to do is unleash the power of the market place by getting rid of law and regulation I still find myself shocked.

I have lived during the age of Milton Friedman. I believe that the free market and capitalism are tools to be used in building a healthy society not ends in themselves and certainly not a principle to held with religious fervor. I do not believe in the utopia of communism. I do not believe in a utopia based on race, or education, or religion. And I absolutely reject the idea that all decisions will be made in the best way possible economically if we only let it function without interference. The idea that you can build an ideal society on the basis of greed because it will channel decision making into the best choices to make the most capital or money or value which will produce the best outcomes is no more practical than pure libertarianism where if we have no laws everyone will behave.

I am told that what I believe is called limited capitalism. That’s probably about right. I want to buy eggs at a reasonable or good price but I don’t want to risk death for the low price. I am willing to suffer an additional cost for the government to regulate eggs. (I know I went a little long on number four but it’s important to explain that particular issue.)

Fifth, I believe in personal freedom and privacy. I think those two items are linked. I am very opposed to the surveillance society, and the lack of secrecy and security for our internet communications. I believe an e-mail should be just as legally protected as a letter sent in the mail.

Sixth, I am a patriot. I believe America is a special place because of its people and its history. Because of that, I believe this vibrant, energetic and amazing people deserve government policies to protect jobs and insure economic security. I reject, fundamentally and utterly, the charge that Americans are lazy, over paid and unwilling to accept responsibility. There is constant refrain in the media about lazy, overweight, non-saving, etc. etc, Americans. Any examination of these issues will lead to the discovery that they are far more complex than any simple moral failing.

Those are the ideas I want to put in my columns. If you think I do please tell me and if you think I don’t I need to know that even more.

James Pilant

Hardship Withdrawals Reach Ten Year High

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure

These kinds of withdrawals indicate sever financial distress. They are an absolute last resort in most households.

Quoting from the article – To be eligible for a 401(k) hardship withdrawal, individuals must demonstrate an immediate and heavy financial need, according to IRS regulations. Certain medical expenses; costs relating to the purchase of a primary home; tuition and education expenses; payments to prevent eviction or foreclosure on a primary home; burial or funeral expenses; and repair of damage to a primary home meet the IRS definition and are permitted by most 401(k) plans.

Forty five percent of those seeking a hardship withdrawal this year got one last year.

It’s another sign that his economy is not getting better. It’s getting worse.

During the last great depression, the government created jobs and increased spending, developing enormous projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam.

America will not recover until there are jobs for every American who wants one.

James Pilant

“The Apartment” And Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching

In 1959, the Apartment, was filmed. It starred Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. It was nominated for ten academy awards and won five.

They filmed some scenes in New York and intended to make much of the film there but Jack Lemon became very ill after at all night shoot in Central Park. So, they filmed most of it on the lot in Hollywood.

It’s beautifully filmed (I like black and white) and there is a great deal of subtlety in the details of the background that add to the message of the film

Why do I use it in class? First, it’s a view of an America that has ceased to be. An America whose history has tremendous resonance for our own.

Lessons from the film. (Not in order of importance.)

1. There is no normal in America. Every year we think this is normal, that everyone should do this. It’s how it is and you can’t change it. Well, it’s changing anyway. The only normal is constant motion in the direction of a new normal. It’s an important lesson because some of my students feel like they can have no effect in this world and thus should retreat to a private world of friends kept at a distance and media individualized to kill time and give a brief, fraudulent feeling of fulfillment.

2. I want my students to see the changes in how women are treated and how they adapted. Women were relegated to certain jobs and they realized their only avenue to improving their lot in life was to marry well. Many of the women in the film are just temporary forms of entertainment for all intents and purposes.

3. One of the strangest qualities of the film, and the director himself pointed this out, the Jack Lemon character, for the most part, is the architect of his problems and yet we feel sympathy for him and identify with him. And again, the Shirley MacLaine character largely chooses her own fate and we feel sorry for her.

There’s a big lesson here – we often feel sympathy, often a sense of identification and sometimes, even envy, with the unethical. I tell my students about the time one of my students came to me with this story of woe that virtually demanded sympathy. And I felt that way, until I noticed a sentence in this long story of suffering. So, I stopped him and said, “You did what?” There then followed a not very effective explanation. You see, he was a criminal. He broke the law. He was in the mess because of his own decision making. He did not deserve my sympathy. Yet, I was confident that every student he regaled with his tale of suffering felt bad for him.

If we are going to practice ethics, we are going to have to be tougher than that. People who do bad things, who treat other people cruelly, who act without honor or scruples, deserve moral condemnation. That will not change because you’re related to them, because they are friends, really attractive or you like their story. Practicing ethics is tough and it means being tough on other people who do wrong.

If you know what should be done and let it have no effect on your actions, you are acting unethically. You have failed to act ethically.

4. The role of minorities in the film is important. I believe that if film goers in 1960 believed that the film was inaccurate in its portrayal of women and minorities, it would not have been a success. Blacks in the film appear twice in the film, once a shoeshine boy and then, a group waiting to clean the offices at the end of the business day. My eagle eye students found a black man working among the mistreated proles in the huge office background and, once again, at the Christmas party (same guy). It just goes to proves that when lecturing it’s safer not to let them talk!

If my students ability to find a minority in the background when I couldn’t was bad enough, they really got me on the Eastern Europeans. I missed the fact that his neighbors and landlady were of the same ethnicity His landlady and his neighbors are all immigrants and recent ones. (The film is only fifteen years after the close of the Second World War.) They were warm and kind to the Jack Lemon character although judgmental about his ethical failings. (I did not realize the importance of this until it was pointed to out to me. Now, in my defense, I did realize the importance of his neighbor, the doctor, but I didn’t get the big picture.)

I was never able to figure out whether the restaurant hideaway was Chinese or Japanese. It seemed like one of those ethnic groups running a restaurant with some kind of Tahitian background. But basically we can conclude from the film that orientals are okay as long as they are serving food.

Generally, how did the film portray the different groups. The white corporate types were greedy, licentious, petty, and lacked any self perception whatever. Blacks are in the background, soulless workers who pretty things up. Chinese (possibly Japanese) are allowed certain profession but corporate life isn’t one of them. The Eastern Europeans are authentic human beings. They are tolerant and kind but willing not just to make moral pronouncements but willing to call attention to them. They openly criticize the Jack Lemon character for his (not real) sexual adventures. They have a moral center. Aside from our two main characters, they are the only real human beings in the film. And to be blunt, our two major characters only arrive at human hood in the last few minutes of the film.

If there is no other reason to show the film, the movement of the main characters from caricature to humanity makes it all worthwhile.

The doctor is the moral center of the film. He issues the call to personhood to the sinner in the next apartment.

As in instructor, it’s a good choice because there is no difficulty in getting students to watch and remember the film. They enjoy it and it leaves its mark on them. That makes it more useful than many more “on point” films.

If you are going to teach, misdirection, implification and appeals to unconscious motivations are legitimate tools.

James Pilant

Using Film To Teach Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching

I use three films in teaching business ethics, The Apartment, Cinema Paradiso, and Sabrina (the original with Bogart) (What! You think I’m crazy enough to use the Harrison Ford version?).

A thoroughly excellent question might be raised by this. “Why, Mr. Pilant, do you use commercial films instead of documentaries or teaching films from your school’s underused library?”

My response, “They don’t work, that’s why.”

Watch the reaction of your class when you announce the title of the latest exciting documentary you have found. You will note that a proportion of the class have immediately decided that the CIA had found some new interesting way of failing to extract useful information but you’re going to try it out on them anyway. The rest of the class is glad they don’t have to do any work. Strangely enough, watching films is very difficult once you realize it is an active form of study requiring training and experience, but they don’t know that and wouldn’t believe you if you told them.

So, you have lost half the battle right there.

If the film is any way (down to the microscopic) controversial, a good part of your students will ignore or marginalize the message. But what if you have a great success, what if the class cries in unison, demands action and stops after class to tell you how great it all was. You didn’t do to well on that one either. People are embarassed about their shows of emotion, their passion dies away and that letter they were going to write isn’t going to be written. You gave them the same heart tingling experience of good cone of ice cream.

So, it is time for you to argue that if documentaries don’t work, that people tune them out, etc., why can’t they do the same thing with your academy award winning crap? Because they can’t.

They can’t tune them out. The wonderful thing about great films (and when I mean great, I mean the top of the top, the top 100, the absolute best) is you can’t ignore them. They get you down where you live. When your classroom watches a documentary, you can always pick out students who are going through it objecting to this, disregarding that. They are not going to let that film just do its work. They feel obligated by their politics or whatever to make sure that it doesn’t affect them.

A great film captivates. It pulls in the attention. I’ve seen it multiple times. All the students in the class with the same expression watching the same film.

Sometimes, it’s surprising. One of my most difficult decisions was whether or not to use Cinema Paradiso. The film has two choices of spoken language, French or Italian, so I have to use a subtitled film in class. In America, the phrase “foreign film” or the even deadlier phrase “not in English'” are usually enough to stop people from watching the film in the first place.  Because the class is used to my strange ways, when I tell them I am going to use a subtitled film, any objections are quickly murmured in the back of the class. (They have gotten to used to situations in which I explain something they know couldn’t possible be true or make any sense and then I make it work. It disturbs them.)

So, I show the film. At first, there is not the strong attention I get when I show one of my English speaking films but after  the scene where the Catholic Priest is removing all the kissing scenes from the town’s movies, they are caught and they never escape.

Film is not a logical medium. It goes around the frontal lobes and lodges its message in the emotional parts of our thinking like a cleverly thrown curve ball. So, my use of outrage producing or factual documentary material throws a few facts their way which will quickly be disregarded or forgotten. I have noted in my own life that if I read a book about the Spartans, I retain far more information and make far more observations than I do from the History Channel’s documentary.

Besides I want to change my student’s way of thinking and improve their methods of observation when watching films and television.

What’s more, I want to introduce controversial subject to them without running into the immediate rejection ideas usually get.

So, how to do it? Films. No just any films, but masterpieces, films that have resonated with audiences for many years. Why those? Because these films have demonstrated a staying power which indicates they have connected with our unconscious in some manner. Now generally speaking, we believe we like certain films because of the actors, the kind of film (Western, etc.) and because our friends told us we had to see it. Those are most of the films we see. But the ones we remember, the ones that play with our heads, the ones we think about, often years later, have an appeal to our whole mind, not just the conscious stuff (which for many people isn’t that a big a deal anyway) (Okay, look, if you spend your life slavishly duplicating the actions of your neighbors, doing all the things you are supposed to do and avoiding any difficult decisions especially moral and ethical ones, the only difference between you and a corpse is that your status is not properly defined.) I use those films.

The unconscious is where the action is. Consciousness is nice, don’t get me wrong. I try to spend a lot of time there. Nevertheless, many of my decisions (more than I like to think) and most of my emotions emerge from the depths of the mind, not the top.

So, to change my students way of thinking as painlessly as possible for them and me, I use films. Now don’t think for a moment that we do not discuss the logical, moral implications of the film. We do. There is a cerebral frontal cortex appealing part of the class. But reaching behind that is more important.

Look at the three films. What are the messages? The one message they have in common is that humanity is more important than business success. But in particular –

The Apartment – Love is more important than success.

Cinema Paradiso – Film can fill your life with wonder that morphs into action.

Sabrina – We can change.

Now, take a look at my students. (Obviously, this is a majority of my students, not all, but see how many you think reject all three of these.) 1. I’m going to have a meaningful emotional life just as soon as I have enough money(or I get the right job or after my education or after I move). 2. Films and television are just films and televisions. I am too smart, too clever, too worldly wise for my actions to be influenced. (The unexamined life.) 3. I can totally completely change my life anytime I feel like it. I have total free will. Now, salary wise and where I live, I’m stuck but my point of view and how I live, if I want to change, I can. (And on number 3, let me point out that I get to stand at the top of the classroom and observe them and their bullet and bombproof self concepts day after day.) Continuing point 3, when they watch Sabrina they just can’t understand why Bogart hasn’t already changed or they spend a great deal of time telling themselves that if only they were in his shoes, they’d know what was important, when the fact is that if they were in Bogart’s position you couldn’t blast them out with a tactical nuke.

Now, it’s time for the main question. What do you teach them with these movies?

The Apartment gives examples of the changing status of women, the treatment of minorities and the often petty nature of corporate life.

The unconscious lessons are that authority can be wrong, that individual action is important and that you can live as hero or heroine even in small matters. I could teach these as part of the conscious part of the class but what for? The ideas are now planted. I might water them a little but time and inclination are more important in determining the effect. (There are also thousands of tiny lessons relating to verbal matters, environment, emotional stances and ways of thinking.)

Cinema Paradiso shows how a business can become embedded in the life of a community and how that influence changes over time. I also find it useful for demonstrating small business decision making as opposed to corporate decision making.

The unconscious lessons are the effect of entertainment particularly movies and, most precisely, on children. The film recreates and recaptures the films of our childhood but much, much more important, it captures the emotional content of those films, the emotional content that redirected our lives.

Sabrina shows the upside and downside of self transformation, an American preoccupation. The film’s observations on class differences are delightful not to mention the interrelationship between the personal and the professional.

The unconscious lesson of the film is that we do not live our lives logically or reasonably. Far more interesting is the idea that even if you are short, fairly ugly, depressed and (in the film) unemotional, beautiful young ladies will still find you attractive. (Whoops! Sorry, that’s my lesson from the film.)

The big lesson from the film is this. You are not what you think you are. You never will fully get a grip on the mystery of you. You are a great unknown. You may look for meaning all your life in books, in experience, in profession or normality, and one day, one moment, it will hit you in the form of a child, a friend, an observation, or in the case of this movie, a young female. And if you fail to grab it, to realize the importance of it, to see what it means, you will walk, talk and eat and still be as dead as a stone.

That’s what I want my students to know.

James Pilant

Personal Change Doesn’t Equal Social Change

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics3 Comments

Kendra Langdon Juskus writes this in the website, Evangelicals for Social Action. In an article called “The Danger of Small Steps,” she questions the notion that individual action by itself can produce meaningful change. In fact, she says that it gives a false feeling of doing something successful and significant whereas the larger problems go unaddressed.

The degradation of the environment and the degradation of business morality happen over long periods of time, thus, our perspective is limited. It gives individual action a veneer of success when the problems are long term and not easily understood by individuals.

There is a section I recommend where they discuss “shifting base syndrome.” This is when you measure progress based on your earlier perception not the actual baseline. In other words, you consider normal to be inside your experience when in fact normal is based before or outside your view of the situation.

Small, incremental personal changer is good but not good enough. The forces that confront us ,with their lack of care for the environment and their pervasive lack of moral judgment, are enormous. Those forces can damage society permanently whether we change our own lives or not.

I have no doubt in the wisdom and importance of personal change. But without a larger vision it is inadequate to defend us against moral vacuums and wrongdoing.

James Pilant