Philosophy Now Forum

When you encounter a businessman, or businesswoman, an owner of an enterprise, or an officer of a corporation, here are some topics which you can discuss with him or her:

Many, if not most, employers believe that they should treat each employee alike. This is not the ethical thing to do: Each employee should be treated as unique, and be given a project and the responsibility for completing it successfully, with the authority to recruit the necessary means. This will help them grow, and make their work more meaningful and interesting to them. This may sound naive but it is what some very successful businessmen are already doing. We should ask the CEO or the small-business owner if it wouldn't be ideal to develop each member of your staff so that s/he shows some managerial capacity if at all capable of it.

Any business that does not give equal emphasis and attention to its customers, its profit (the shareholders), its employees, its environment, and to its community is not being fully ethical. If a business wants to live up to the standards of ethics, this is what it must do. If business owners, were clear about this and put it into practice they would find that maximum value would result.

Leaders, managers, foundations, and corporations should ask: How can we design competitions that have a positive effect on the evolution of excellence?

Also check out the videos and the columns at this link: http://www.dennisbakke.com/


The experience of this CEO suggests that work can be a joy for some workers. Learn how he managed to achieve it for so many of his employees as well as for himself.


Happy workers are productive workers and they tend to bring in more
customers.

The ethical path for businesses is to share gains. Robert L. Masternak
in a paper written in 2009 teaches that companies who decide to share their
gains with their workers (including managers, executives, and all the staff) are best advised
“to utilize narrow operational measures of true gains, such as productivity, quality, customer service, on-time delivery, and spending. Typically Gainsharing plans have multiple measures. In order for a gain to occur, the performance pie must improve.
As the pie expands, the greater the improvement (gain), and the more financial benefit for the company and employees. The key point is that there must be an improvement before any Gainsharing occurs.

A critical point is that since gains are typically measured in relationship to a historical baseline, employees and the organization must change in order to generate a gain.

{For further details see pp. 18-21 of Ethical Adventures. Here is a link to it:
http://wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ ... NTURES.pdf }

The meme that is widely-held, yet is an ignorant one, is that "the sole concern of a business is to make a profit". This needs to be replaced by a superior meme, namely, that if a business wants happy workers, and all the benefits that result, it is to "give equal attention to its employees, to the environment, to its community, to its customers, and thus to its shareholders, that is, to making a profit."
Giving attention to its employees, its staff, usually mean some form of profit sharing (or "Gain-sharing.)

This is Ethics applied to business


Comments? Questions?

By viewing the 8/23/15 GPS show - host Fareed Zacharia - I came upon an interview of Darek Thompson, the author of this article that appeared in this month's Atlantic Magazine: Here is a link to the column, the title of which is "A World Without Work." It is beautifully well-written, and you will not want to miss reading it.....
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... rk/395294/

It's prediction is that eventually machines, robots, will take over virtually every conventional job that people now do. [The one exception may be nursing and personal care.] At the end of the interview, Thompson suggested an answer: a guaranteed annual income that people will demand of their government. He admitted that today's Congress would not provide it, so the implication is that we need to vote for a different Congress. He believed in the power of the people to adapt to the no-jobs situation.


Here is a quote from the article: ".... what if the new tech, like 3-D-printing machines, can do customized things that are almost as cheap? It’s possible that information technology and robots eliminate traditional jobs and make possible a new artisanal economy … an economy geared around self-expression, where people would do artistic things with their time.”

I highly recommend that article.

prof. I tend to regard the notion of "business ethics" as an accidental by-product of successful business.

For the past ten years I've worked as a self-employed consultant to small business, although it's fair to say that nowadays I've almost completely retired from this rather easy little earner. Prior to this I owned and operated a number of small businesses of my own, all of which were very successful until I got sick of them. This is what I learnt and this is what people are willing to pay me to tell them, believe it or not.

1. The owners of a business are just passengers who come along for the ride. Business decisions should NEVER be made with the interests of the owners as the prime consideration.

2. The most important people in any business are the CUSTOMERS who buy the goods or services which the business has been set up to provide. It is the customers who have the money which you seek to transfer from their ownership into your own so the prime consideration at all times must be to ensure that the customer gets what he pays for. Customers beget more customers in a way which no marketing strategies can equal and one dissatisfied customer can undo an enormous amount of hard work. In any business the customer is GOD.

3. The next most important people in any business are the employees of the business because it is the responsibility of the employees to treat the customers with respect and ensure that they get what they pay for. In the treatment of any employee only one hard and fast rule is necessary. Always walk a mile in the other bloke's shoes. If you treat people like idiots they will behave accordingly. If you attempt to cheat your staff they will repay you in kind and your customers will be the ones to suffer. In order to judge your own conduct towards your employees all you need to do is ask yourself "How would I feel if our roles were reversed and I was spoken to in this way or treated in this way etc". It's not rocket science, prof. If you treat your people like you value them and care for their welfare they will in turn value your business and care for its welfare. I have NEVER known this policy to fail because it's a fundamental truth of human nature.

If the customers and employees of your business are happy then the owner/passengers along for the ride will prosper. You have behaved ethically simply by behaving in your own best interests.

If you want that meme to change, you have to change the law for publicly-traded companies, as they cannot legally do anything that detracts from shareholder profit. Other types of business models are only subject to the owner/partners, and can make those ethical decisions.

Greetings Obvious Leo

Thank you for an awesome contribution


You gave your valuable knowledge to the world, and you are to be commended for it.

May we assume that you won't mind if others use your ideas, for your formulation is right in line with what I have teaching is true about ethics? You state it so well and so concisely that it can only be described as 'elegant.'


Dalek appears to miss the point that the initiation of ethical practices IS the path to profitability. CEOs of publicly-traded companies consult business coaches very often, and then make changes in the company (corporate) procedures, for these officers have the power to do this.

To do what you or I have suggested does NOT detract from corporate profits!
.

prof. In many ways I feel like a fraud for passing off such simple common-sense ideas as profound wisdom and then charging people money for the privilege. Naturally I dress it up in the appropriate corporate jargon which makes me look like a genius but this shit is bloody obvious. Running a business is no different from any other aspect of our social and community lives. We want people to like us, trust us and respect us and all we need to do to make it so is to extend them the same courtesy. What could be simpler?

prof wrote:Greetings Obvious Leo

Thank you for an awesome contribution


You gave your valuable knowledge to the world, and you are to be commended for it.

May we assume that you won't mind if others use your ideas, for your formulation is right in line with what I have teaching is true about ethics? You state it so well and so concisely that it can only be described as 'elegant.'


Dalek appears to miss the point that the initiation of ethical practices IS the path to profitability. CEOs of publicly-traded companies consult business coaches very often, and then make changes in the company (corporate) procedures, for these officers have the power to do this.

To do what you or I have suggested does NOT detract from corporate profits!
.

No. Dalek just understands human nature, and business. And Dalek knows you'll die a frustrated man for pushing what won't be adopted. Dalek knows that you'll have to change deeply ingrained laws in order to get what you want, and guess who influences those laws? Big business. You spend too much time in an ivory tower to see reality, I'm afraid, prof. Time will show you who is right, and I have patience.

EVERYONE:

Be sure to read this article which reports on an actual ethical breakthrough in the business world:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-raisi ... kAPvUnnIlQ

and then find out more about this CEO, Dan Price, by checking out this report:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ceo-dram ... any-2015-4

....And do some research. Are there more enlightened CEOs out there? Inform the rest of us about it. Are there businesses that actually do practice Ethics?

Financial advisers in the area of ethical investment choices have certainly gone ahead in leaps and bounds in recent years and investors are reaping the rewards as well. Their business models are mostly focused on retirees who want some say in where their life savings are invested and don't want their money being put into companies engaged in activities which they don't approve of. This is already a very big deal and it's getting even bigger. Just recently the Rockefeller foundation as well as the Norwegian Sovereign fund announced that they will no longer invest in any energy companies which continue to burn coal as a fuel. This sort of shit will make a lot more difference than any nonsense the politicians might opt to spout. Money talks, as they say.

Yes, Leo, you are right.

Thank you for a constructive contribution !!

In today's world, money does talk. The problems arise when it is worshiped as a god.

I once wrote a blog entitled "Seven Steps to make the world work for all." One of the steps was the writing of a grant proposal to some foundation like the Rockefeller Foundation. It would propose a 'peace race' of a sort for nations to pursue. ...in contrast to the arms race that was then going on between the Soviet Union and the United States.

I deliberately omitted one of the steps to encourage readers to use their imaginations; sure enough, someone noticed that that step was missing, and asked about it. I told him: "I wanted to leave something for you to do."

I am encouraged by how many internet sites today are working on reforms that I would classify as "ethical" concerns. New ones proliferate every day.
Ethics is catching on

New Ethical technologies are being developed - such as Artificial Intelligence and Infinite Computing - which could provide answers accepted by the majority as authoritative to the question: How solve the unemployment problems? Or: how do we effectively finance and manage a guaranteed basic income for each and every citizen?

By some such way as that consumers would then have the disposable money in their pockets to keep the wheels of the economy turning. For it is the case that a vigorous economy lifts (nearly) all boats.

...And then there are the brilliant ideas of the Zeitgeist Movement. More power to those revolutionaries !!!! They would have us hasten the introduction of automation and robots that displace human drudge labor; they would have a largely moneyless society: a Priceless Society.

Comments?

I think overall that you are right and that we're moving into a more ethics-focused world. I have no doubt that the impetus for change as always will come from the bottom up and that the internet has enormous power to facilitate the right sort of change. We all tend to have our own particular ethical principles which we favour over others and mine tend to be focused on such issues as the environment, animal welfare, worker's rights, racial equality etc. I support businesses which I regard as being in tune with my values system and avoid those that aren't. Grassroots movements can have immense power, as a businessman in Sydney discovered to his cost a few years ago. He had about half a dozen retail clothing stores and then was foolish enough to make some sexist comment in a television interview. The sisterhood were outraged and immediately launched an online campaign against his stores through the social media. Within six months his business was in receivership. People power can topple political dictatorships and it can topple corporations just as easily. Nike took a very big hit when the employment conditions of the workers within its Asian subsidiaries was revealed to the world and I reckon this is a GOOD example of where market forces and ethical conduct meet in the social domain. The Nike shareholders were not amused and the Nike management got one hell of a shake-up. The Indonesian factory workers got a better deal.

Some businesses seem to be aware of how quickly social change can come about and some aren't. The ones that aren't sufficiently adaptable and flexible will be left by the wayside very quickly in the coming decades. What does this mean? It means if you've still got shares in fossil fuel companies you should sell them.

Here are some items to read that seem relevant to recent discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Canada_2

What do you think?

Do the issues raised deserve our further attention? How would you improve upon these efforts??