Thinking Ethics

Social expectation for universities

Individual responsibilities have declined and society expects more from organisation, which has generated the whole move towards corporate social responsibility. For the private sesctor, the business of business can no longer be just "business". It is expected that corporations also do something for the common good, before passing the profits to their shareholders. Now the  movement seems to be touching universities. Education has traditionnally been seen as part of the public sector, or already in the actions for the common good, even if some institutions have a private structure. But some people believe that the huge endowments and fundraising capabilities of some of the great American universities should be used to help less favored countries or causes. An article in the New York Times entitled "Alumni Group Tries to Elicit Social Action from Harvard" describes such an endeavor by  group of Harvard alumni to get the university to use some of its money to help education in Africa.

So, is it the Robin Hood mentality again, where anybody who has money is a target for people who have other uses for it? Or are we seeing  a shift that all organisations, whether working for the common good or not, will have to have a program of social action? The interesting thing here is the participatory aspect of this endeavor, as it goes beyond the traditionnal earmarking. Is this the beginning of "donor activism" ? Whereby the donors try to redefine the objectives of a well known institution. And if this is so, how long before government will be subjected to this kind of pressure? The definition of common good will not be left to the elected officials, parlamentarians and other senators, but will actually be chosen by all constitutants, probably on a peer-to-peer popularity model. It will be well worth watching this development.

UN tries for accountability without transparency

The UN has announced that 26 senior managers have signed "compacts" on priorities. These documents, which I would assume set out their objectives, are supposed to reinforce performance, compliance and integrity. The priorities are laid out by the member states.  Description on UN site here.

Now I am all for "service type" agreements - everybody knows what to expect. The problem here is that they do not intend to make them public. When asked the UN replied that they would first make them known to the staff. You really can't have accountability without transparency. And this is really stupid - anybody care to wager how long it will take before some staffer leaks one of these compacts to the press? I think it would have been better to publish the compacts and be in control of the communication.

A step in the right direction

As read on the UN news centre, in the article "Ban Ki-moon to focus on better business practices at meeting of top UN officials", the UN is trying to improve procurement, human resources, audits, accounting and reduce transportation costs in order to render the whole UN organization more effective and harmonize internal audit practices. They are also working on transparency across the system - what gets released from the internal audits and from the ethics office.

Aligning culture with ethical conduct

Interesting list of 10 questions to ask on theCRO.com under "building an ethical framework". If you believe that leadership defines ethical behavior, and not necessarily the rules (think Enron), then these questions (or rather answering these questions) will help match company culture to the desired ethical conduct.

Peacebuilding resource

If you are interested in peacebuilding, then this site of the Geneva Center for Security Police , entitled "International Geneva Peacebuilding Guide" is a great resource. It makes an inventory of the peacebuilding efforts out of Geneva, and given the historical and current conflict resolution initiatives, there is a lot happening here. It was set up with the Quaker UN office (deals mostly with disarmament), the Graduate Institute for International Studies and the Geneva Center for Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Management of charities

I am seeing more convergence of the private sector model, based on performance evaluation in the form of financial results, and the public model or non-profit organizations, who toil for the common good. Corporations no longer can only focus on business, as society expects them to be good corporate citizens and show social responsibility. A lot of companies are now publishing social responsibility reports, and their shareholders and stakeholders are now holding them accountable. On the government side we have seen more emphasis on efficiency and measurement of deliverables, and working for the common good no longers exempts government or worthy organizations from scrutiny and measurement. Further evidence of this is the new appointment at the Ford Foundation, as seen in the article by Stephanie Strom in the New York Times entitled "Ford Foundation Selects Its New Leader From Outside The Philanthropic World". The Ford Foundation's goal is to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement. Their new leader, Luis A. Ubinas, is coming from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co

The greening of the UN

The UN Headquarters in New York, built in 1949-1950 is going to be renovated in the period 2008-2014 for a cost of 1.9 billion dollars following a capital master plan, and the buildings will then meet or exceed the "green standards". That is, if they do not move the goal post by 2014...

Full article in the New York Times under "UN Headquarters Refurbishment Aims to Meet "Green Standards"."

Ethics in the US workplace

We always knew that corporate ethics was a key factor in attracting, retaining and ensuring productivity of employees, and a  new study by LRN shows that of the persons sampled in the US,

94% of full-time employees say it is critical to work for a company that is ethical

82% are willing to be paid less but work for an ethical company

30% say they left prior jobs for ethical reasons

21% say they have felt pressure to engage in illegal activity

only 11% claim not to be affected by unethical behaviour.

I supposed it would all depend on how the questions were phrased, because in most cases people would respond along the ethical lines. I tend to question the "I would accept less pay" answer... In any case it shows a growing awareness and sentivity to the ethical issues.

Blogging about work

For many young people, who have been used to keeping online diairies so that their family and friends can keep track of their activities, going into the workforce after graduation might have some traumatic consequences - and then maybe not.

Many of these graduates do not realise that posting information about what goes on inside a company is not allowed. Many companies have not yet put policies in place about blogging at work or blogging about work. And so when the confrontation comes, it can be something of a shock. Some new employees see the company's point of view, and become more discrete in their blogs, and some believe that they are not identified by their job and that their personal lives come first. And then they get fired. But several of these "tell all" types have actually gone on to write books or become independent, and there is beginning to be a recognition that this might be a way to fame (and fortune ?). I see a culture clash coming with corporations' human resource policies and young people's expectations...  More on the subject in this article from the New York Times.

Increasing social responsibility of organizations

There is a growing trend in society towards the reduction of individual responsibility, and the expectation of increasing social responsibility of institutions. A case in point: somebody gets burned by hot coffee - it is not their responsibility, but the responsibility of the place that sold the coffee.  And now we are looking to corporations not only for cultural sponsorship, but for support of humanitarian efforts. It is going beyond a matching contribution to employees donations for disaster relief, into the creation of their own charity foundations. Here is a good example: UBS (the Swiss bank) is launching the UBS Optimus Foundation Charity Card: to help help. They will give to the foundation part of the annual fee of this credit card, as well as match 0.5% of your purchases. They intend to cover all of the administrative costs of the UBS Optimus Foundation, so all the money goes to help. More...