verging_on_random

Corporate ethics

November 30, 2006 on 7:12 pm | In Uncategorized |

Imagine this situation. A (male) friend tells you that he came upon a hot young girl at a party, totally off her tree, and so he took advantage of her, knowing she would never remember who it was. When you protest that this was a pretty sleazy thing to do he gets very resentful. “Hey,” he says, “There were some nasty guys at the party. If I hadn’t raped her someone else might have and at least I didn’t really hurt her.”

So what do you say to your friend …. “Oh well that’s OK then?”

Or picture you and a friend walking along the street and there’s a house with the front door open. Inside the door there’s a table, with a shitload of money on it. Your friend walks up and pockets the money. You tell your friend to go put it back but s/he responds “Look the money was in full view of anybody walking past, sooner or later somebody else would have taken it. At least I didn’t crap on the carpet and you and I can use the money to have a good time, which is better than letting some other wankers do it.”

Do you nod agreement, saying “Oh yeah, I see now that you’re right.”

Hopefully most people would respond that no, rape or theft is wrong and you shouldn’t do it, even if someone else is likely to do it if you don’t. Wrong means wrong, and isn’t excused because other people might be prepared to do wrong.

Now read this from today’s Sydney Morning Herald (p 15):

If coal exports from the proposed Anvil Hill mine do not go ahead, not one molecule less carbon dioxide will be emitted to the atmosphere, because the overseas customers for the coal will simply buy it elsewhere … the investments, jobs, taxes and royalties that now benefit all Australians … will go elsewhere.

So there you go … we might as well do it because if we don’t, somebody else will. Kind of like “If we don’t sell cigarettes to the kids they’ll simply buy them elsewhere … if we don’t bribe Saddam to buy our wheat he’ll simply buy it elsewhere.”

What a pathetically bankrupt approach to corporate ethics, which unfortunately in my experience is all too common amongst Australian managers.

PS: the guy who wrote the Herald article is the executive director of the Australian Coal Association … but you already guessed that didn’t you.