Thinking Ethics

Angela Hale - remarkable woman

Songkram sent me this interesting obituary published in The Guardian on Angela Hale , a remarkable woman. She was co-founder of Women Working Worldwide, and lobbied the Ethical Trading Initiative for better working conditions for workers in the flower industry. Publicity which arose from the protest was bad news for the supermarkets, so they sent a delegation to Kenya to meet the workers on the farms, and the result was the setting up of the Kenyan Horticultural Ethical Business Initiative. In the late 1990's Angela also helped set up Labor Behind the Label, which campaigns in the global garment industry. Her latest book, Threads of Labor, is just being published.

Whistleblowing in France

Sarbanes-Oxley requires that companies listed on the US stock market provide a hotline for whistleblowers, so that the company can know about these concerns.  This causes difficulties when applied in other countries than the US. For instance McDonalds and Exide Technologies tried to have a company wide hotline, with the data base in the US. A French juge with the CNIL (Commision National de l'Informatique et des Libertes) condemned the practice in both cases for the following 3 reasons: transfer of private information across boarders; could incite to denounce unfairly; and lack of possibility of defense for incriminated party. The only one that really holds up in court would be the transfer of private information across boarders, the rest is just filler and can be refuted, as well as providing the French with an opportunity to criticize the US. However it does pose problems for US subsidiaries abroad. The unions in France are also not too hot on ethical codes - they claim it can put the employee in a position where he knows something is wrong, but cannot do anything about it. Article in french on the subject on novethic.fr.

Ethical funds are more popular

An article in Times and Transcript by Mary Moszynski published also on canadaeast.com  claims more investors are asking for money to be put in ethical funds. According to Social Investment Organisation in Canada, over 65 billion Canadian dollars of assets were invested according to soical responsibility guidelines in 2004.

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

Reporters Without Borders has released The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents. Funded partially by the French government, it aims to protect bloggers from recrimination and sensors. Also gives tips for tricky countries like China. Downloadable at www.rsf.org.

Accountability Rating 2005

AccountAbility and CSRnetwork have come out with the Accountability Rating 2005 of the Fortune Global 100 best companies (will be published in Fortune Magazine on Oct. 3). The top ten companies in the survey are BP, Royal Dutch Shell Group, Vodafone, HSBC, Carrefour, Ford Motor, Tokyo Electric Power, Electricité de France, Peugeot and Chevron. Points are awarded for stakeholder engagement, governance and business strategy. Other criteria include performance measurement, non-financial reporting and independent assurance.

Reference

Interesting bibliography on whistleblowing (all categories with documents referenced until 1995) created by William de Maria can be accessed through this site.

Whistleblowing protection

A new article from William Fisher on Inter Press Service News Agency entitled Corruption-US: Halliburton Whistleblower Demoted gives examples of problems with government whistleblowing. Those who go public with allegations of waste, fraud, abuse and favoritism - or even just reporting that rules were not followed (like quotes from several suppliers before giving out a contract) - continue to have a tough time. Despite a law protecting whistleblowers and repeated assurances from the White House, many government agencies and Congress that they maintain a policy of zero tolerance for retaliation, it continues to happen. lAlthough sensitive to the need for employee loyalty, I wonder sometimes where is the limit  between rule bound bureaucrats and defenders of the public trust ? It would be great to see the issuing of guidelines for whistleblowers rights in the security, intelligence and military agencies, so that "state secret priviliges" are more clearly defined.

Selection to University on ethical grounds

From a posting on CSRwire I found out that StartingBloc and the Sloan School at MIT have created a new MBA program for Young Leaders and Social Entrepreneurs. About 6 Class of 2005 StartingBloc fellows have been accepted for deferred admission (they get to work a year or two first) at the MIT Sloan School of Management 2 year MBA program. Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University is also accepting 6 students for the coming year. Besides being a great initiative, this should help with the image and research that claims that MBA students are statistically less ethical than students who choose other subjects.

StartingBloc is a social venture dedicated to recruiting, training, placing and supporting a generation of young leaders and entrepreneurs that redefine entrepreneurship as a force for creating both profit and social change.

Ethical choice when flying

British Airways will ask passengers to pay a voluntary "green fee" to offset the environmental impact of flying. This donation will be invested in energy-saving projects, and to do this BA has joined forces with Climate Care, an Oxford-based environmental trust. The amount of the fee varies depending on the distance travelled: London to Paris is 5£, London to LA 13£ and London to Sydney 25£. More in article by Ben Webster in today's TimesOnline

Governance in China

Everybody knows that China has a problem with transparency, corruption, clarity in ownership, etc... the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook for 2005 rated Chine 54 out of 60 (54/60) for ethical practices; 56/60 for credibility of managers; 54/60 for Corporate Boards; 45/60 for social responsibility; 59/60 for auditing and accounting practices; 42/60 for health, safety and environment; and 60/60 for shareholder value. This means a big issue of trust: trust by employees, by the public, by investors... Will China face up to its governance problem ? The  issues are described in an interesting article by William Fischer, IMD proffessor, published in the June 2, 2005 issue of the Financial Times. So who will be able to pressure China into changing ? Probalby many people - investors divesting (Harvard University just dumped its stakeholding in a large quoted company), people complaining on the ground. Good employees looking for employment elsewhere... The pressure will be on, but who knows how long it will take for China to change.