Business Ethics Through Rose-Colored Glasses

That business ethics scholars are as though children playing in the clouds in claiming that the vast majority of business practitioners are good-intentioned, or ethical, is an empirical statement that is in need of empirical verification. I suspect the scholars' typical utopian perspectives, curiously coincident with prescriptive ideological "Thou shalt nots," suffer from not touching ground from gazes atop ivory towers. That is to say, the scholars are factually incorrect. Let us, therefore, sweep away the fog so at least we have a realistic picture of what is actually going on "on the ground."

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available at Amazon.

Black Friday: An American Holiday

For a long time, I didn't understand why the Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S. would be called Black Friday. Why associate darkness with such a nice holiday whose humble purpose is to feel gratitude, even and especially if a person has little externally for which to feel grateful. Black Friday is so named because the shopping day is so bit it can bring retail businesses out of the red and into the black, as if profitability were dark rather than something worth rejoicing--in business, I might add--rather than for a whole society. For American society to so easily have come to call the day following Thanksgiving black just because that is how managements perceive it demonstrates just how commercialized, or business oriented, American society has become. What this means for that society, and even perhaps the majority of the people themselves, is very troublesome, even disturbing.

The full essay is at "Black Friday: An American Holiday."

Democracy and Over-Population in India: Foreign Direct Investment

How well can the democratic form of governance serve as a means by which a society is circumscribed, or restricted in some way? In other words, can self-government be used to enact self-discipline on the body politic itself? Adding another level to this question, can elected representatives be expected to go beyond fixes that are perceived societally as sufficient to redress the underlying causes of governmental, economic, or societal problems? Far from urging or implying the supremacy of non-democratic forms of government, such questions invite improvement in democracy itself. In this essay, I reflect on these questions using India’s industrial policy as a case study.

 

Singh and Gandhi at a rally. It is clear who's the boss.   AP

 

 The full essay is at "India's Industrial Policy."

 

 

Corporate Social Responsibility at Walmart

Is it not an outright oxymoron for a company such as Walmart to pinch pennies when it comes to its non-supervisory employees even as it is oriented to the social good of society through its "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) programs? Leslie Dach, a former executive at Walmart who had been behind several such initiatives liked to make the point that striving to make a dent in societal problems can dovetail with a company’s own financial interests. The two need not conflict. I submit that this is not good enough for a company's management authentically into "giving something back." Specifically, the social-good initiatives should be integrated with company operations. Walmart can indeed be criticized from this standpoint, particular since Sam Walton's sons cut non-supervisory employee sickness and vacation days. I suspect that the illusion foisted on the general public is likely to burst one day as the bones of the stores' operations are laid bare (i.e., the curtain is pulled back to reveal for the public the proverbial man behind the curtain). Let's hope that other companies can learn from, and thus improve on Walmart's dual strategies.

The full essay is at "Walmart: Beneath the Corporate Social Responsibility."

Wal-Mart: Political Contributions as Bribery

In September 2005, “a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country. . . . Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: ‘There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.’”[1]

The full essay is in The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.

1. David Barstow, “Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle,” The New York Times, April 21, 2012.

The Bicycle Principle of Business Ethics: Walmart as Mediocre

I once bought a bike at Walmart.  To my chagrin, the bike had very little coasting ability. After riding down into a valley, I looked forward to some momentum on the up side. However, there was very little upside. Shortly after passing the lowest point, I would have to begin pedaling again.  In fact, if the down-hill was not steep, I had to pedal so as not to de-accelerate while going down hill.  In regard to Walmart, it could be concluded that not every product fits into a low-cost strategy (to say “cost-leadership” would gild the lily, besides engage in fad-jargon). While pedaling from the bottom of a hill just after having come down another, I constructed a young theory of business ethics.  Namely, that it was unethical for Walmart to sell the bicycle-brand (which I do not recall) because I deserved some coasting credit. You might say that if I didn’t have to pedal going down hill, I don’t deserve any “credit” in going up hill; the ease going down is paid for by the effort going up. However, even if I had not had to pedal while going downhill, I still would have believed that I deserved some “credit” on the up side. Why should I be exempted from benefiting from the laws of nature?  It is not fair if I am excluded from the phenomenon of mometentum through no fault of my own. Walmart had unwittingly put a wrench between me and momentum by essentially “spending” it by releasing it. So I was left with the impression of an asymetry that was unnatural. Of course, gravity and friction take their toll, so one can not expect to go without any effort on the up side.  But where a product eviscerates the benefits ensuing from a natural law, the product can be reckoned as inferior from the standpoint not only of quality, but as undeserved by any buyer.  There is thus a bicycle principle of ethics, which is a sort of naturalistic ethical theory based on the principles of fairness and desert–namely, that it is unfair to deprive certain people of public goods such as momentum while others indulge. An inferior product can be reckoned in such terms.

The full essay is at Walmart: Bad Management as Unethical, available at Amazon.