Thinking Ethics

What is your social Q ?

Great quiz from McKinsey on Society on finding your socially conscious consumer quotient:

"Global consumers have been flexing their purchasing muscles for political purposes since at least the 18th century. From the Boston Tea Party to Gandhi’s Salt March to today’s campaigns against conflict diamonds and fast food, we present highlights in the history of consumer activism and ask you to decide how you would have responded to each campaign. Based on your answers, we’ll tell you what kind of consumer you are. - See more at: http://voices.mckinseyonsociety.com/the-socially-conscious-consumer/#sthash.gQnJeVHZ.dpuf"

Take the quiz and find out what is your social quotient. 

How sustainability ratings are being used

Sustainability has a study called Rate the Raters - and tries to understand how sustainability ratings are being used by stakeholders - mostly investors, sustainability analysts and the companies being rated. They partnered with Bloomberg to do the survey to see how investors were considering the environmental, social and governance ratings when making investments, and the results can be seen/heard in a 12 minute video here.

Related articles

'Epic Battle' Pits Investors Against What's Important - Bloomberg

Take the survey!

The UN wants to hear from YOU! On their survey website - MY WORLD. The global survey aims to capture people's voices, priorities and views. They ask you to choose 6 issues out of 16 which would make a difference in your life. The results will be used to prepare the next development agenda.

Sustainable consumption

There is a new report just out by BBMG, Globescan and Sustainability, the Regeneration Consumer Study:

Re: Thinking Consumption - Consumers and the Future of Sustainability

More people are buying less, but buying better. It will come as no surprise that the results show that consumers won't compromise on cost and performance. There is still a big issue with trust - about the producers' claims on packaging. So certification and labels will probably gain in importance. It's an easy and interesting read.

Teaching Business Ethics

New book out ! Global Survey in Business Ethics Teaching Training and Research - edited by Deon Rossouw and Christoph Stuckelberger. 400 page book available for free download on  globethics.net, or can be order in print for a small sum.

Science vs religion

Many scientists claim to be agnostic - they can't find the facts to base religion on. And now that CERN has found evidence of the Higgs bozon, which will shed light on the birth of the universe, a definitive split might be happening. However some scientists are trying to maintain a dialog between science and religion concerning the Big Bang. So CERN hosted a seminar between philosophers and physicists to debate the findings. The fact that the two sides are talking is interesting. More here on the BBC site on News- Science and the Environment - Big Bang: is there room for God - by Victoria Gill.

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...