Month: March 2017

While I wouldn’t quite define the term Business Ethics as an oxymoron, what passes for ethics in business these days would hardly be recognizable to Aristotle or Plato as principled, honorable conduct.

Back when I was in graduate school, I talked my adviser into letting me take a class in Business Ethics for Engineers, believing I should understand the topic before I moved into the business world after earning my degree.  To my disappointment the class was essentially a list rules and regulations, with a few: “engineers should do this” or “never do that’s” thrown in for good measure, most of which had to do with billing and contract practices and seemingly nothing to do with “ethics”.

After having been in the business world for a number of years, it is apparent why the course was taught the way it was, the term Business Ethics is really a description of business law.

Consequently, today’s Business Ethics boil down to two main schools of thought; one – if it’s not illegal, it’s ethical (or perhaps more cynically- if you don’t get caught it’s not unethical) and two – as long as you’re aligned with maximizing profits you’re good.

Now I am not naive nor am I a “democratic socialist”.  I believe capitalism is the world’s best and only chance to lift itself to a better standard of living.  Further I believe men and women need their efforts and extra-efforts to be recognized and rewarded.  More pragmatically, a business needs to be profitable (a.k.a. make money) to be sustainable and in the most concrete terms validate its usefulness.  Unfortunately our current system has degenerated into; to quote Pope Francis, “Savage Capitalism”.

Many a questionable act is proudly justified as “maximizing shareholder value” or as simply being “legal”.  Think Donald Trump bragging about not paying his taxes, or the NFL being paid by the Pentagon to promote patriotism and soldier heroes.

As we have come to recognize however, there exist universal truths that drive human motivation and conscience.  Universal actions that we inherently know to be good; Fairness, Kindness, Respect, Honesty, Contribution, or conversely, to be harmful; Cruelty, Dishonesty and Neglect.  Therefore and for example, an act that takes advantage of a weaker or unknowing party is not made ethical or in alignment with these universal truths, simply because it generates a profit or is legal.

The fallout is a common refrain we here today from people who have a successful job, earn a comfortable living, support their families and yet are unhappy and unfulfilled.  In fact this condition is so pervasive; an entire industry has sprung up to assist people in getting out of their current job to earn a living doing something they enjoy.  I don’t disparage this notion, just the opposite; the more you enjoy what you do; the more engaged you are, the better you will be at it and the more you will contribute to those around you.  Unfortunately it seems being unhappy in your job has become an epidemic.

I offer this simple hypothesis; perhaps it’s not what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it that’s the problem.  If we are working at a job whose sole purpose is to maximize shareholder return, with the only caveat being it be “legal” – the likely result will be a lack of intrinsic value in the performance of that job.  If you agree with the precept that a fundamental human need is to contribute to the collective good, then how do we get this sense of contribution from a job not in alignment with these principles?  Quite simply we can’t, and there-in lies a large part of the problem.

If however we are engaged in a form of work that has an ethical basis of conduct in addition to being economically sustaining, there is a better chance we will satisfy our essential human need to contribute.  This is not the easy path, it will on occasion test us, requiring; honesty, discipline, sacrifice and courage, and perhaps at times a change of jobs – but it is, the Honorable path.

Expressed much more eloquently and succinctly by my father, an extremely astute and successful business man; “I’d rather be the man that bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the guy who sold it”.

Wikipedia defines Post Fact as follows:

Post-fact politics (also called post-truth politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of truth by rendering it of “secondary” importance. While this has been described as a contemporary problem, there is a possibility that it has long been a part of political life, but was less notable before the advent of the Internet.

In simpler terms, Post Fact is Bulls..t  (B.S.)  Keep in mind this is not referring to someone telling a tall tale, a teenager lying about where he or she was until 1:00 AM, or even an accountant cooking the books.  This term has been coined because of the continual B.S. streaming from our elected officials and political appointees at the highest levels of government.

To Live Honorably in a Post-Fact World, there are two questions we must ask ourselves.  First, do we ourselves practice Post Fact reality, and second, assuming we do not, how do we honorably function in a world that has not only accepted Post Fact conduct (B.S.) but actually given it a legitimate designation.

Disregard for facts is a dangerous exercise.  Facts are a saving grace, they give us direction and form the foundation on which we conduct our daily rational lives.

There are indisputable facts; such as gravity, the inevitability of death, or that the earth is round.  Then there are generally accepted truths; those things that while cannot be scientifically proven to an absolute degree, most believe to be true; George Washington is the Father of our country, man landed on the moon in 1969, and Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, or President Obama was born in the United States.

Any society, certainly a democratic society relies upon facts, just as surely as it depends on laws.  When there is intentional or even casual disregard for the facts, or worse when there are those who purposely seek to re-state the facts to suit their own ends, there results a major impact on society’s ability to function justly.

Just imagine if someone who for some reason didn’t like you, showed up at the police station one day to claim you stole their car.  You would certainly rely on the facts to prove your innocence.  A world where facts can be invented to suit our needs would be frightening indeed.

To a greater or lesser degree each of us is subject to the human weaknesses of ego and vanity.  To only hearing what we want to hear, to only listening to those who agree with us.  Advertisers, Marketers, Con-Men and Charlatans have been taking advantage of this aspect of human nature since the dawn of recorded history and probably well before.

While technological advances represent some of the greatest achievements in human history, they are also leading to a society that is becoming increasingly insulated and indifferent to events and views going on outside our own sphere of daily life.

It seems that Political “leaders” can offer any Post-Fact claims or “alternative facts” they wish, and in today’s digitally wired world they are given instant legitimacy.  But Post-Facts cannot exist, they have no merit, unless we allow them to take root.  Therefore, we must have the courage, the discipline, and the Honor, to acknowledge what is true and reject Post Facts (Bulls..t). Our indifference to this moral degradation leaves us just as guilty as those who seek to practice it.

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”  …Plato