Thinking Ethics

Hope faith and charity

As 2006 draws to a close and 2007 is starting in another time zone, I look forward with a certain amount of hope. The subject is giving back... The Melinda and Bill Gates foundation is trying to innovate in a new kind of giving - charity with effectiveness, and support of all kinds of projects. Warren Buffet made a muli-billion dollar donation to the Gates founddation, believing that it would make a difference. And as many people copy the glitteratti, we will be seeing all kinds of strip-down versions of creating your own charitable trust. As an example, Peter Wuffli of UBS Bank in Switzerland, has just launched the Elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalisation with a donation of 20 million Swiss francs (his salary is 22 million).  He is trying to encourage an ethical approach to globalization and to fight the poverty that might arise therefrom. Other Swiss philanthropists - Stephan Schmidheiny's foundation covers development projects in South America; Klaus Jacobs's foundation gives about 20 million Swiss francs to youth projects, and the Landolt family finances scientific projects. So philanthropy is alive and well, and I have hope that it will expand, faith that the charity given will be increasingly effective  to solve some of humanity's problems. My wish for 2007 - that as the success stories roll in, more people will emulate these philanthropists and the whole thing will snowball.

Executive compensation

The SEC has just back-tracked on the rules of reporting stock option grants, which means the amounts of executive compensation disclosed will go down. The new rule will not force companies to disclose the total amount granted, as this might not be the amount that the executive will actually receive several years down the line. I can understand the reasoning, but it works both ways, up and down.  Somewhere we should be able to see both - the real amount paid each year, as well as the potential allocated, individually, line by line. And maybe the potential could fluctuate each year in the reporting, so people could track executive earnings. Stock options are tricky to account for in the best of cases, and we need some hard rules so that transparency can be maintained. more in the Washington Post.

Green Christmas

If you are looking for tips on how to have a green Christmas, the ethical living page of The Guardian has articles on hosting a great green party, cooking and menu selections, and ethical party gear that combines style with conscience.

More ethical shopping sites

Check out www.ethiscore.org, the ethical consumer magazine's online shoppers' guide

Canada has www.planetfriendly.net

And of course - fair trade chocolate on www.divinechocolate.com - the heavenly chocolate with a heart !

Ethical gifts

Yikes ! I have been running out of time since before Thanksgiving, and I supposed you have noticed....

Well for those of us with still quite a lot of Christmas shopping to do, I can point to the following sites:

food in Switzerland: www.biodelice.ch

fair trade gifts (mostly UK): www.one-world-is-enough.net (clothes and homeware); www.ethicalgifts.co.uk; www.ethicalsuperstore.com (my favorite - energy saving eco-gadgets); www.alotoforganics.co.uk (UK organic search engine); www.soorganic.com (on-line dept. store); www.allthingsgreen.net; www.tree2mydoor.com (holly anybody?).

Or you can give an acre of the Amazon rainforest on www.staro.org . Apparently, they give you a certificate and you can post a message on the satellite picture.

Corruption rankings

The latest Gallup worldwide corruption index ranks 101 countries according to perceptions of corruption in business and government. The top corrupt countries are Lithuania, Poland, Lebanon, Thailand, Morocco, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and Cameroon. The least corrupt countires are Finland (way ahead - maybe there is a statistically significant link between green and clean procedures), Denmark, New Zealand, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, UK, Norway, Switzerland, Australia and Sweden.

For comparison purposes, the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index can be found here, and shows the link between corruption and poverty. Finland still heads the ranking - but Iceland made it in the top five.

Gender equality

The UN has just released a report by arab researchers that freedom for women is critical for progress and prosperity in the arab world. They attribute the situation of women to political inflexibility, male dominance and war.  This seems fairly obvious to us westerners, but for any implementation of a solution to be effective, it is going to have to come from the arabs themselves.

Ethics and performance

A lot of noise is being made of the incidence of cheating at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. In case you missed the story - article in the Washington Post here. The details of the case are not out yet, but this raises a lot of questions.

Firstly - the cheating on an exam - despicable in itself, is something we  are used to. It seems as soon as there is measurement of performance - some people will cheat. For those who believe that the importance is not being caught, there is not much we can do. Naming and shaming only goes so far.

On the institution level however, the damage is larger. The reputation of the Columbia School of Journalism will suffer, and by association, that of the students and graduates themselves. With the cost of tuition above 40'000 $ some students are worried about the value of their degree. When the actions of one individual reflect on the whole community, then each individual is responsible to the whole. Whistleblowing as a form of self- quality control is a good solution. As long as it does not degenerate into frivolous tale bearing.

For the media at large it is a very bad sign. In a globalized world where all kinds of authority have lost credibility, the media plays an important role. Granted the media community is only human, and that in the total population of journalists there is bound to be a few bad eggs, but we need to believe in journalistic standards and impartiality.

Bad things happen. Bad press follows. What will count now is how the crisis is managed, and what is learned from this. People change under pressure. A crisis can help bring things forward. Let's hope that Columbia University will come out of this with integrity, and a stronger commitment to ethics in journalism.

The business of business ?

Should the business of business be more than just business ? To look at the Corporate Social Responsibility reports - several companies are making a real difference. Not only to the causes that they support, but to the engagement of their employees. Yes, some are just following the trend, but many have meaningful programs in place. This article on the BBC website talks about the salesforce.com program: they give 1% of profits (in the form of products), 1% of their employee time (amounts to about 6 days) and 1% of their equity to charity. Not a bad example to follow...

Robin Cosgove Prize

The Observatoire de la Finance just sent in the description of their new prize - under innovative ideas for ethics in finance.

"The new international prize aims to promote greater awareness among young people in the banking and related financial industries of the benefits of ethics in finance. The Robin Cosgrove Prize is open to young people, aged 35 years or younger, from throughout the world. It will be awarded for creative papers setting out projects or proposals for innovative ways to promote ethics in finance and banking, especially in emerging markets.

The Robin Cosgrove Prize honours the vision of Robin, who was a bright young investment banker who died at age 31. He believed passionately that a major barrier to economic development was the absence of integrity and often the lack of ethical practice in banking and financial systems. “How can a country prosper”, he would ask, “if people cannot trust their banks or financial institutions?”

The management of the Prize is under the supervision of the Observatoire de la Finance, which is a Swiss not-for-profit foundation based in Geneva (www.obsfin.ch)

The Observatoire, working in cooperation with Dr Carol Cosgrove-Sacks, Robin’s mother and a former director in the United Nations in Geneva, has set up a distinguished international Jury to evaluate the papers submitted for the Prize. The Jury will allocate the prize money of USD20,000.

Entries for the competition for the Prize are invited to address the subject of Innovative Ideas for Ethics in Finance. The papers must be submitted electronically to the Observatoire before the deadline of midnight, 28^th February 2007 (CET). The entries may be written in English or in French, or in another language with a translation into English or French.

Further details regarding the Prize, Robin’s vision, the international Jury, and the terms and conditions for submitting papers for the 2006-7 Prize will be found at the website: www.robincosgroveprize.org."