My assignment requires me to Critically evaluate and analyse the attached article with key arguments and strengths and weaknesses. We also need to discuss different point of views from stakeholders
Can Ethical Behaviour Really Exist in Business? Andrew Bartlett David Preston ABSTRACT. Our soft survey reveals that the assump- tion underlying much of the business ethics litera- ture — that the conduct of business can and ought to support the social good - is not accepted within the workplace. This paper considers an apparent dichotomy, with companies investing in ethical programs whose worth their employees and managers question. We examine the relationship between work, bureaucracy and "the market" and conclude that employees often question the existence of business ethics because there is no good and bad between which to choose. The choice is between success and failure. A common view of success and the "good life" is one determined by hard work in a well-organ- ised company operating in a free market. Analysing the three aspects of this view (the free market, hard work, bureaucracy) we suggest these are mere fictions. A major problem we identify in business is that organ- isations are designed as profit making mechanisms and have no interest in the good of society. The chal- lenge is to convince such organisations that a direct benefit accrues to them through their own ethical behaviour. In order to do this organisations must first be shown the importance of long termism. Executives, managers and other employees can be expected to attain high ethical standards only when they feel they are a integral part of an organisation and the organisation itself respects those standards. One of the keys to unravelling the undesirable situa- tion of a perceived absence of ethics in business is in encouraging a greater identity community, company and workforce. We provide some examples of ways companies can meet the challenge of encouraging more ethical, long-sighted behaviour. In addition, we highlight ways in which the expectations of the organisations of the organisation can be communi- Andrew Bartlett is Director of Knowledge Workers, London e a postgraduate Student at University of East London. David Preston is Reader in Information Management at University of East London. cated more strongly through corporate structures that foster ethical action that benefits the long term interests of the individual and the organisation. Overall implementing a successful ethical program is shown to parallel that of the implementation of a quality program. A soft survey on business ethics In discussion recently with friends and colleagues about our research in business ethics their almost uniform reaction was, "But there aren't any." We generally smile mysteriously as if knowing some- thing they do not but in truth their responses unsettled us. We had already read books and articles listing the benefits of codes of conduct, describing systems for ensuring distributive justice in organisations, weighing up the com- peting claims of deontological and utilitarian approaches to the subject and analysing any number of fine-tuning issues in business ethics. With internal programs of team-working and empowerment or public announcements of ethical initiatives, businesses themselves add to the burgeoning body of literature regarding organisational and commercial ethics. Our own experiences in business lead us to feel some dis- comfort with much of what we read because it somehow did not seem to address the real concerns of a person having to make their way in working life. However, it had not occurred to us that the whole subject may not refer to anything that actually exists in the real work. Worse still, our acquaintances - let's call them the BE Sceptics - do not even find it necessary to ask, "So what is business ethics", before despatching it to the land of the non-existent. Journal of Business Ethics 23: 199-209, 2{)()0. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 200 Andrew Bartlett and David Preston The common opinion among them seems to be that the term "business ethics" is an oxymoron. From this perspective, ethics is about being nice, controlled and altruistic whilst business is nasty, chaotic and self-interested. The assumption underlying much of the business ethics literature - that the conduct of business can and ought to support the common social good - is not accepted. So, can business ethics, as conceived in the literature, really exist in a social setting populated by BE Sceptics? And where do the BE Sceptics come from? The BE Sceptics of our acquaintance are not rampant "profit at any cost" capitalists; nor cynics hardened from spending too much time as small, unappreciated servants of large and uncaring organisations; nor college graduate with too little experience of work. In general, we hear these comments from relatively successful women and men with between five and twenty years of work in commercial firms or the professions behind them as directors, managers, technicians, doctors, lawyers or engineers. They are generally people to be expected to be sensitive to social and moral issues. We estimate that of the hundred or so people with whom we have had this conversion, 90% to 95% of them are BE Sceptic. We had anticipated disagreements about the extent to which ethics impinges on business or about the ethics that are relevant to business but we were not prepared for a complete denial of the applic- ability of ethics to business at all. Some of our friends work in large companies that we felt sure would have ethical programs or codes of conduct and this turned out to be the case. However, no-one could tell us anything about their contents and no-one believed that anyone else paid any attention to these codes either. Others work in professions such as medicine or law and hence are aware that they are bound by strict codes of conduct. The preva- lent attitude here seemed to be that whatever is allowed by the code is acceptable (although we have to say that this is more noticeable among lawyers than medics). There is no requirement for any additional responsibility. Of course, this is not to say that every person we know is unethical or amoral. It is just that they cannot see that any ethics are active in business other than the view of Friedman that the only "social responsibility of business is to increase its profits" [lj. The fact is however, that we all have moral standards, whether we recog- nise them or not. We do not personally know anyone who would really be prepared to do anything at all to attain success in business. Even the lawyers insisting that their code of conduct is all they recognise are at least applying some level or moral reasoning (and one suspects that, although they will not admit it, their personal ethics would place additional restrictions on them in reality). The opinion being expressed by our acquaintances is not that they themselves wish to be absolved of responsibility for their actions at work but that they do not believe they or anyone else in business is required to be morally responsible. Bird and Waters have written about the phenomenon of managers refusing to acknowledge the moral content of their thought and behaviour, preferring to explain apparently altruistic acts in terms of utility to the company. The Moral Muteness of Managers is the term they use to describe the phenomenon [2]. These observations become especially puzzling when one looks at other types of evidence regarding the behaviour of business organisations. In the U.K., the Business In The Community (BITC) organisation is made up of 400 of the largest British companies, 300 of which con- tribute 0.5% of pre-tax profits to charitable projects. The purpose of BITC is to get compa- nies involved in social and economic problems in the communities in which they operate. Further, whilst it may be true that there is little aware- ness of ethical issues among managerial and clerical staff, there does seem to be an increasing readiness of companies to attempt to change this situation. Between 1987 and 1991 a quarter of companies surveyed internationally had spon- sored new ethics programs and there was a 40% increase in the number of European company CEOs making ethical pronouncements [15]. Why do companies seem to becoming more ethical (or least seem to be trying to do so) whilst their employees appear to believe that the organ- isations for which they work and the people with whom they work are interested only in profits? Can Ethical Behaviour Really Exist in Business 201 Ethical values communicated by the organisation The answer may lie with the values implicitly communicated by the organisation itself. The majority of large corporations may have estab- lished codes of ethics but it seems to be the case that they have failed to reinforce the message they contain. The presence of a sidelined code of ethics could actually have a more deleterious efFect on the ethical mindset of workers and managers than the absence of a code altogether. Organisations spend a great deal of time and effort in implementing new initiatives for profit making and cost cutting. The same commitment of resources is often lacking from the imple- mentation of ethical programs. By publishing and failing to reinforce a code of ethics organisations may be sending the message that talk of ethics is - to use Friedman's phrase - "hypocritical window dressing" and incidental to the real business activity that takes place. Alternative, the impression may be given that adherence to the letter of the code is sufficient rather than under- standing and embracing its spirit. Either way, by emphasising the need for rneasurable financial success above the methods used to achieve it, many companies have created environments in which ethical considerations are regarded as no more significant than the choice of plants in the office. The fact is that the methods used by organi- sations to communicate and reinforce the values of efficiency and profitability to their employees are far more advanced and sophisticated than those used to promote ethical awareness. Messages encouraging ethical neutrality in decision making are generally far stronger than those imposing ethical constraints. In the words of Saul Gellerman, "Ethics must be managed. . . . Setting a high moral tone at the top levels of management is necessary, but not sufficient" [16]. Techniques must be employed to balance the potentially conflicting goals of financial success and high moral standards. The volume of the "anything goes" message must be attenuated at the expense of a stronger exhorta- tion towards good ethics. When this does not happen, and as we shall see, the difference in attitudes between corporate oflficers and those of their managers suggests that it is rare that it does, then the individuals in the organisation are likely to believe that the only goal of the corporation is profit maximisation. In turn, if it is true that the only goal o the organisation is to maximise profits then the only responsibihty of the individual in that organisa- tion is to contribute towards higher profits. It is normal for the contribution an individual makes to an organisation to be measured in this way with no consideration given to the morality of the methods used to achieve results. The Protestant Ethic tells us that to be a good person we must work hard to achieve success and the business organisation tells us that success means profits and nothing else. Against this background, even