Thinking Ethics

Permissiveness

There is a saying in French that one's freedom stops where somebody else's freedom starts. And so the debate going on about freedom of speech vs protection of values is particularly interesting. The outrage caused by the crummy video insulting the Prophet is hard for us in the West to understand. How can we explain that this is not a political statement or a wide held belief but just some strange person's interpretation that he is allowed to air?

Interesting article by Ed Collins on the subject on Ethics Newsline entitled Limiting Permissiveness.

And good article on the dilemma faced by internet companies on what and how to censor by Somini Sengupta in The New York Times entitled "Free speech in the age of YouTube".

Without trivializing the events - I would like to suggest that we have limits for bad taste - which the video was a clear example of.

Oxytocin - the moral molecule

Apparently, Paul Zak ,a neuro-economist who is a professor at Claremont Graduate University of Southern California, has evidence that Oxytocin makes us more trustworthy. Watch his TED talk here.

Benefit corporations

About a year ago I found this article by Kyle W on Care2 about how California was creating 2 new classes of corporations to empower social entrepreneurs: Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations. Well I am all for empowering social entrepreneurs, so now that several months have passed I began trolling around to see how successful these forms of corporations have become. Apparently, 7 States have adopted legislation to register B corporations and to date 603 companies have gone for it!

There seems to be one major organization that promotes them called, what else, B Corporation. From their website, here is the definition of B Corporations:

1. Meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards; 


2. Meet higher legal accountability standards;


3. Build business constituency for public policies that support sustainable business. 

California also passed legislation for the Flexible Purpose Corporation which allows companies to state one other purpose besides maximizing shareholder value. This mean that directors can maximize stakeholder value and can't be sued for not maximizing profit. I believe California is the only State which has adopted this type.

For more information on the subject, the continuing education of the bar - California wiki has the best and most detailed information I have found.

 

Whistle-blowers or bounty hunters ?

Bradley C. Birkenfeld, the UBS whistle-blower who just received 104 million US dollars from the IRS, must be rather pleased with himself. If you missed the beginning of the story - here is a recap in The New York Time article.

I really believe that whistle-blowing is important, and that people who raise the alarm need to be protected. I am just concerned that the financial reward will create a stampede - which will have nothing to do with right or wrong - but will be based on trying to cash in what the IRS is offering: i.e. up to 30% of the fines or unpaid taxes recovered.

The US has a long tradition with bounty hunters going back to the wild west days. Other cultures less so. In some countries whistle-blowers are not always right - but are doing it to settle scores or create unpleasantness for colleagues they don't like. Even if these colleagues survive the audit - they remain somehow tainted (the no smoke without fire maxim). 

My other issue with the financial reward for whistle-blowing is that employees will skip internal communication to go immediately for the money. An employee who spots something wrong should first try to correct things from the inside - by talking to their boss, the human resource department or even their boss's boss. And only if no one is listening, only then go into whistle-blowing mode. Exaggerated a bit - no one will care about doing the right thing - only reporting the wrong thing. Could be a worrying side effect...

Expressive game - changing places

A while ago I received a message from Professor Sebastian Genvo, a Professor of communication sciences at the University of Metz, France (Centre de REcherche sur les Médiations - CREM). He develops research and Master courses on the aesthetic, cultural and economic aspects of video games (and has written several books in French about these topics and some articles in English).

He is also a game designer and has developed "Keys of a Gamespace", where you can dive into someone else's life and explore his psychological/cultural/social problems. You will be able to experience his/her ethical and moral dilemmas and face the consequences that occur in such a situation. The game only works on PC - and as a Mac user - I have not yet tried it - but it sounds intriguing.