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”.