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Business ethics - an oxymoron? No way!
By Lauren | January 8, 2008
While on vacation a few months ago, I stopped by the local library to use the Internet and check e-mail. There weren’t a lot of people in the library that day, so the librarians felt free to chat. (They only shush you if there’s a reason, believe it or not.) One of the librarians asked me what I did for a living. When I explained that I’m an attorney who specializes in business ethics, the two librarians started to laugh. One of them quipped, “business ethics? There’s no such thing!”
With due respect to the lady in question, I have to disagree. Americans have a strong sense of ethics, and they expect the businesses that serve them to act ethically when dealing with their customers. The recent uproar about lead paint in toys imported from China is just one example of the American public refusing to accept substandard merchandise provided by less-than-honest merchants. There are very specific regulations prohibiting the use of lead in children’s toys, and products that don’ t meet the standards are justifiably rejected by angry U.S. consumers. Marketing toys as being safe for kids when they clearly are not is unethical, and the American people know it. And so do American companies — when word got out that lead-contaminated toys were coming into the United States, the U.S. companies that imported those toys went public and recalled those toys immediately. It might have hurt their holiday sales, but those U.S. companies definitely boosted their credibility with their customers.
There will always be scandals in business, because businesses are always going to be run by people and there will always be people who are dishonest, lazy, or greedy enough to think they can beat any system the government can put into place. Thankfully, those people are in the minority. What keeps them in business, though, are the consumers who like the cut-rate prices and slipshod services unethical companies offer. Regulators can only do so much — it’s up to the American people to withhold their business from unethical businesses.
The good news is that most companies are run by honest people who make a sincere effort to offer products and services that are of high quality and fair value. Those people need all the support we can give them to keep up the good work. Instead of throwing up our hands and cynically declaring that “there’s no such thing as business ethics,” wouldn’t it be better for American consumers to make an active effort to support companies that act ethically by buying their products and services first? The more profitable it is for a company to act ethically, the less likely it will be for the idea of “business ethics” to be an oxymoron.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, corporate responsibility, customer relations |