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Journal of Business Ethics

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26.06.2018 | Original Paper

Mind the Gap! The Challenges and Limits of (Global) Business Ethics

verfasst von: George G. Brenkert

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 4/2019

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Abstract

Though this paper acknowledges the progress made in business ethics over the past several decades, it focuses on the challenges and limits of global business ethics. It maintains that business ethicists have provided important contributions regarding the Evaluative, Embodiment, and Enforcement aspects of business ethics. Nevertheless, they have not sufficiently considered a fourth part of a theory of moral change, an Enactment theory, whereby the principles and values business ethicists have identified might actually be followed. Enactment theory argues that appeals to ethical leadership, moral imagination, and communicative participation have been insufficient to the task of closing the gap between what businesses do and what they ought to be doing. To address this problem, a theory of moral change focusing on the relations of power within which individuals and businesses operate needs to be developed. Drawing on the work of John Gaventa, the paper sketches some directions in which business ethics should proceed to help diminish this gap. The upshot is that business ethics needs greater connection with economic, social, and political theories. It also suggests that there are important limits to fostering the ethics of global business.

Vorheriger Artikel Special Issue: Global Perspectives on Business Ethics from the 40th Anniversary Conference of the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University, 2016

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The normative component would enable us to distinguish between moral change that is progressive and that which is regressive (see Harris).

Hence practitioners may appeal to such “pop” maxims or guidelines as: “Do those actions you would be prepared to see on the front page of the newspaper”; or “Don’t act in ways that you would not be prepared to tell your mother.”

Normative ethicists (and legal scholars) continue to develop international (ethical/legal) standards regarding human rights responsibilities for business. John Ruggie has played an important role here (see Ruggie 2008a). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have also made contributions here. Business ethicists (in a broad sense) continue to work in this area. One might also point to universal laws against bribery as another example of a developing global ethics. John T. Noonan comments that there is “[n]ot a country in the world. .. [that] does not treat bribery as criminal on its law books” (Noonan, 702). I support such global work in business ethics.

See the work of Haidt (2001).

I owe this objection to one of the paper’s reviewers. It is an important objection but one that I believe can be responded to without altering the thrust of this paper.

Scherer and Palazzo (among many others) also point out the limitations of the business case for CSR (and business ethics) (Scherer and Palazzo 2007, p. 1100).

Donaldson and Dunfee say that “at the level most individual managers confront it, bribery has no satisfactory solution” (Donaldson and Dunfee 1999, p. 230).

Other measures I have not mentioned include various laws in the US such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Sarbanes–Oxley, etc. They too mandate various mechanisms to reduce an ethical gap in business behaviors.

However, in the international realm, DeGeorge maintains, such background institutions may be missing (DeGeorge 1993, pp. 27–29). He holds that “The power and scope of international business have outstripped the power and scope of international background institutions” (DeGeorge 1993, p. 195).

On George Wallace, see the following: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&p=george+wallace+segregation+now+segregation+tomorrow+segregation+forever&type=aff_0_pa_cr&param1=20160412&param2=827ea12b-d68f-4f6c-b916-d092e98578a4&param3=package_now_1.6~US~&param4=-bb8~chrome. Accessed June 13, 2016.

On Blankenship see: http://abcnews.go.com/US/downfall-king-coal/story?id=26902484. Accessed June 13, 2016.

Regarding Mozilo, see http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-02/angelo-mozilo-speaks-no-villainy-at-countrywide. Accessed June 20, 2016. See also: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/23/bank-of-america-countrywide-guilty-fraud. Accessed June 22, 2016.

Although I concentrate on Scherer and Palazzo’s 2006 article, there is a great deal of overlap with their 2007 article.

Socially responsible ones do this. But others run prisons, schools, hospitals, provide security, and transportation networks. They play a role in writing laws governments consider, in providing indirect funding for political candidates and parties, etc. They pay—or avoid—taxes that impact the implementation of public programs.

Palazzo and Scherer say that by “political” “we mean activities ‘in which people organize collectively to regulate or transform some aspects of their shared social conditions, along with the communicative activities in which they try to persuade one another to join such collective actions or decide what direction they wish to take’ (Young 2004, p. 377)” (Palazzo an Scherer, 2006: 75). Later they say that they understand that “political” is defined as those issues that “provoke public concern resulting from power” (Palazzo and Scherer: 78).

An anonymous reviewer commented at this point: “there is still a significant gap between how we get from our current, not-terribly deliberative status quo to their deliberative corporation.” Sabadoz and Singer have an interesting analysis as to why Palazzo and Scherer’s deliberative management approach to corporate social responsibility is ill-suited (Sabadoz and Singer 2017).

Hussain and Moriarty also see the work of Palazzo and Scherer as being normative in nature: “The model is normative in the sense that it is meant to tell us how to reform and revise existing governance arrangements so that these arrangements can perform their appropriate social function” (Hussain and Moriarty 2016).

This objection was pointed out to me by one of the anonymous reviewers of this paper.

I would argue the same limitations I note here apply to Scherer and Palazzo’s earlier article where they speak of embedding “a deliberative concept of CSR. .. in processes of democratic will formation” (Scherer and Palazzo 2007, p. 1109).

Niebuhr held that “It may be possible, though it is never easy, to establish just relations between individuals within a group purely by moral and rational suasion and accommodation. In inter-group relations, this is practically an impossibility. The relations between groups must therefore always be predominantly political rather than ethical, that is, they will be determined by the proportion of power which each group possesses at least as much as by any rational and moral appraisal of the comparative needs and claims of each group.” (Niebuhr: xxii-xxiii).

A reviewer pointed out that Frederick Douglass also believed in the importance of moral suasion and imagination for his critique of slavery and society. My appeal to this famous quote from Douglass is not intended to deny or underplay Douglass’s wider views. Indeed, the argument I make in this section is presented as one component of a theory of moral change. I have earlier noted the importance of a Normative or Evaluative component to such a theory.

Although Scherer and Palazzo place corporate responsibility in a political context, their account does not emphasize, let alone focus on, questions of the role of power in supporting different views, the power imbalances between them, and how to redress this situation (Palazzo and Scherer 2006; Scherer and Palazzo 2007, 2011). Hussain and Moriarty take Palazzo and Scherer to task for including corporations within multi-stakeholder organizations as a means of achieving democratic governance. But again, they neither emphasize nor focus on questions of power in seeking to enhance ethical behavior by businesses (Hussain and Moriarty 2016). Similarly, my paper differs from the thrust of Sabadoz and Singer (2017), who focus on the possibilities of deliberative management as an approach to corporate social responsibility. This involves brief mention of the issue of power imbalances (largely on pages 188, 200), but little exploration of this topic or what to do about the role of power that lies behind unethical views.

Werhane’s mental models might fit in here nicely.

One of the reviewers of this paper noted that the point I make here (and in these pages) is not a particularly new one since how the forms of power within organizations can be changed or modified is “the essence of a critical theory of organization,” which others have developed. I don’t deny that (critical) organization theorists have looked to various (power) structures of business and how they might be altered. But they have not, as far as I know, done so within the context of developing a theory of moral change for business. Given my argument, I think that business ethicists should examine to what extent such organizational theorist accounts of power can be adapted for their own use.

Think of the effect that protesting Chinese citizens, linked by smart phones, are beginning to have on Chinese business and government. However, their government is also pushing back considerably by expanding its control over the Internet, social media, and civil society groups.

See: https://thinkprogress.org/the-oily-operators-behind-the-religious-climate-change-disinformation-front-group-cornwall-alliance-536175fe5e04/. Accessed September 18, 2017.

One reviewer of this paper correctly points out that I do not here review the large literature on NGOs. Unfortunately, I do not have the space here to discuss that literature. The importance of the role of NGOs, civil society movements, etc. plays an important role in Scherer and Palazzo’s account of political CSR (Scherer and Palazzo 2007).

Recall that Camus, in his account of Sisyphus, left him at the bottom of the mountain but happy all the same. “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart” (Camus 1955, p. 91).

I thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. It is better for their reviews. This paper was originally presented at the 40th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University.

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Titel: Mind the Gap! The Challenges and Limits of (Global) Business Ethics
verfasst von: George G. Brenkert
Publikationsdatum: 26.06.2018
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 4/2019
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3902-6

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