On the Role of Business in a Societal or Global Catastrophe

While it is obvious that a business or industry can affect and be affected by its environment, such as by polluting a river and a hurricane, respectively, it is less well known that a business or an entire industry can cause or facilitate a societal or global crisis. Whereas polluting a river can be answered with government regulation, the very legitimacy (and thus ongoing operations) of a company or even an entire industry is arguably at risk in knowingly creating or significantly worsening a societal/global crisis. The latter role goes beyond the scope of government regulation and corporate social responsibility, although broadening or just enforcing anti-trust laws may be sufficient to deal with the lost legitimacy. That is to say, what I have in mind is another genre or type of problem.

The full essay is at "On the Role of Business in a Societal or Global Catastrophe."

Human Weakness Enables Market Bubbles: A Nietzschean Perspective

As a young idealist in business school, I believed in the efficient market hypothesis; an efficient market based on perfect competition would obviate excess profits (e.g., monopoly rents) while keeping prices as low as possible. I assisted a professor with his article on the NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) as a stellar example of industry self-regulation. The ideology cutting off the far left of my peripheral vision, I dismissed the possibility that an industry would look the other way on a miscreant firm as executives of other companies fear accountability from the industry association. Moreover, the business practitioners may profit, at least in the short term, from foisting on the general public the illusion of industry self-regulation, which can serve as a front protecting a squalid underbelly.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.