Category: Business Ethics

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Innovation, Peace and War, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Someone posed this question on a discussion group, with a particular emphasis on which candidate would be better for innovation. This was my response:

One of the few promises Trump is likely to keep is to withdraw federal government support for innovation in the energy sector–the place that’s likely to be among the most job-creating new industries in the next two decades. Trump will deliberately choke off innovation in this very innovative sector. That will be bad for business.

Offshore oil platform. Photo by Freddie Hinajosa
Offshore oil platform. Photo by Freddie Hinajosa
Trump will be seen as untrustable by all other countries. That will be bad for business.
Trump has a record of skipping out on what he owes small businesses, then bragging about how he cheated them. That will be bad for business. I’ve been speaking and writing about business ethics as a key to success since 2002, and he is completely devoid of ethics.
Trump has made it abundantly clear that his policies will favor billionaires over others. That will help a few at the top, but overall, be bad for business.
Trumps bullying/name calling, thin skin, bad temper, open racism, mocking of those he perceives as enemies, etc. are the opposite of good management. Having that as a role model in the top management job in the country will not only be bad for business but could easily start wars.
I’m not real happy with Hillary Clinton as a candidate, but I’m in general agreement with the direction she would take the country–other than my worry that she will lead us into unnecessary wars. She at least is smart, stable, and caring. Her ethics are shaky and her tendency toward nontransparency worries me. But at least she HAS a moral compass even if it doesn’t point true north–and (I believe) a genuine desire to make the world better.
In other years, I might vote third-party. I’ve done it before. But this year, I want Trump’s margin of defeat to be so enormous that he never shows his face in politics again. A Trump presidency would be a disaster, not just for business, but for everyone who loves democracy, innovation, morality, or merit-based success. Trump represents the worst of American society: a racist, sexist, authoritarian bully. A liar and a cheat. A man who is only about himself and has no higher calling. A man who thinks his material wealth gives him the right to stomp on others. A man who panders to fear and has no vision. A man who doesn’t “play well with others.”
A man who must not be elected President.
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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Business-general, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics: General, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

False Promises

Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO labeling law went into effect this week. I consider that a very good thing, far superior to the kludged-together industry-giveaway federal version currently under discussion in Congress.

But it got me thinking about the promise the food industry made when GMOs were first surfacing about twenty years ago: genetic engineering would enable agriculture to reduce or eliminate pesticides and herbicides.

The unfortunate reality: most common GMO crops are specifically engineered to tolerate larger and more pervasive doses of agricultural chemicals. In particular, these crops are created to tolerate massive levels of Monsanto’s Roundup (glyphosphate) weedkiller, which would have killed the pre-GMO versions.

There probably are good uses for very careful deployment of thoroughly tested GMO experiments. Janine Benyus, in her wonderful book Biomimicry, discusses some of the possibilities. But so far, we’ve been sold a false bill of goods.

This is the latest lie in the chemicalization and commoditization of the world by some of the most powerful corporations in the world. And it’s been going on a long time.

 

Commercial farm. Photo by Jose Conejo Saenz.
Commercial farm. Photo by Jose Conejo Saenz.

I’m too young to remember Edward Bernays’ 1929 mock-feminist “Torches of Freedom” campaign to get tens of thousands of women smoking, or the claim in the 1950s that nuclear power—one of the nastiest technologies ever foisted on us—would generate electricity that was “too cheap to meter.”

But I do remember the promise that paying up front every month for cable TV would allow ad-free broadcasting. Ha!

In perhaps a different category is the claims of the “Green Revolution” advocates of the 1940, 50s and 60s that chemiculture was the only way to solve world hunger. This is different because…they probably believed their own message. It wasn’t a lie; it was the truth as they knew it then. Now we know that long-term chemiculture kills the soil, and thus reduces fertility overall. We also know a lot more about how to grow better quality, higher quantity organic foods.

Unnecessary Obsolescence

There’s a related but different type of false promise: the idea that a certain technology will make your life better, and will be there when you need it. Too often, however, the products are wrapped up in pressure to upgrade, and then upgrade again.

Now, I don’t object to upgrading a product so it only runs on new hardware, as long as the old computer will continue to run the new version. As an example, the 2011 version of Microsoft Office has a much better version of PowerPoint than the 2004 version I run on my nine-year-old desktop Mac. That’s OK; I’m willing to do all my slide creation on my newer laptop.

But I do object—I consider it immoral—that Skype, Dropbox, and GoToMeeting (to name three) have yanked away the ability of perfectly good older machines to even run their product. GoToMeeting, which long ago stopped running on OS 10.5 and older Macs, now requires either the Yosemite or El Capitan operating systems. There are very good reasons not to upgrade an older, slower Mac to these versions; I only did it a few weeks ago after upgrading my hardware with an 1000 gigabyte drive and extra RAM. Luckily, the upgrade was completed before I was leading a webinar over that platform. But I was pretty shocked when I needed to test a microphone with that platform and determine if the problem was in my computer or in the new mic. I tried to run a GoToMeeting test with my wife’s OS 10.8 laptop. No go.

If we don’t have all the features, so what! We didn’t have them when we bought our machines, but we had a working program. If they won’t provide technical support, oh, well. By this time, we should have figured out how to do what we need to do. Why should something that runs perfectly well on older hardware be sabotaged by its manufacturer to force a hardware upgrade?

As an environmentalist and a frugalist, I want any product I buy to last as long as possible. It’s better for the earth and for my budget. When companies stop allowing perfectly functional software to work on older platforms, they kick themselves out of a warm and sunny spot in my heart.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Branding, Business Ethics, Democracy, Entrepreneurship, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Donald Trump and the late Muhammad Ali had at least three things in common: personal wealth, a love of bragging and a willingness to speak their mind even if others were offended. But there’s a big difference: Ali actually had something to brag about. He really was the greatest at what he did, racking up an amazing 55 victories over 61 fights in his career, and going undefeated in his first 30 bouts.

Muhammad Ai probably wore gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.
Muhammad Ai probably wore boxing gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.

He was also a man of deep principle, foregoing his career for three years after refusing to fight in Vietnam.

This is what he said about that choice:

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Agree or disagree with him , you knew where he stood.

Ali was also a humanitarian and philanthropist, using his fortune—a fortune amassed not through inherited wealth and speculative business ventures, but by coming up out of poverty and putting himself in the ring to be slugged again and again by some of the strongest people in the world—for social good.

By contrast, Trump brags about screwing people over, is very quick to unleash insults on others, and yet is very thin-skinned when anyone criticizes him. He even revoked the Washington Post’s media credentials to cover the Trump campaign because he didn’t like the things he said about them.

Let’s listen to Trump in his own words:

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” –Donald Trump

Of course, it helps that he inherited a fortune from his father, a large-scale NYC landlord whose racist policies were so bad that Woody Guthrie (his tenant, briefly) wrote scathing songs about him. Trump’s own record includes lots of failure—including four bankruptcies. It’s hard to imagine him getting rich if he hadn’t had the springboard of his father’s wealth. And he brags about using bankruptcy as a tool to screw the public to further his personal fortune. This quote is on the same 2011 ABC news report on the bankruptcies:

I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt. … We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a chapter. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on ‘The Apprentice.’ It’s not personal. It’s just business.

Two more very telling quotes from The Donald:

“If you can’t get rich dealing with politicians, there’s something wrong with you.”

“I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed’, but I screwed him.”–Donald Trump

Has he reformed? No. Just look at the recent flurry of news stories quoting everyone from the conservative National Review to the New York State Attorney General calling his Trump University “a scam.”

Results for search for "trump university scam" from Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia, and National Review
Results for search for “trump university scam” from Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia, and National Review

This is the continuation of a long history of unethical business dealings, as this story in US News and World Report notes.

As it happens, I’ve heard both Muhammad Ali and Donald Trump speak in person—Ali at an Aretha Franklin concert in Harlem, in 1971, and Trump delivering the keynote for a conference where I was also speaking, in 2004. Ali’s speech left me feeling empowered. Trump’s left me feeling I’d been slimed by an exhibitionist in a public place.

This bullying, thin-skinned, name-calling racist and sexist who brags about how he gets rich on the backs of others has no grasp of the issues, and apparently no ethics. He  doesn’t belong in the White House.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business Ethics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

A friend of mine, a very successful author and marketer, a deep student of the human psyche, asked on Facebook, “Why do you love/hate Trump? (Disclaimer: I’m indifferent.)”

It was the disclaimer that got me worried. This is part of my response to him:

I have enormous respect for your analytical skills, M.______, but I question deeply your indifference…

M.______, I hope you’re pulling our legs. You of all people understand human motivations and psychology. Trump is a master marketer and manipulator. I don’t know if he’s studied NLP [Neurolinguistic Programming] (or maybe you) or if he’s actually a natural.

I do know that if he wins, I will be looking seriously at what other country I might live in for the next 4 to 8 years. I have family who died in Nazi concentration camps. I don’t want to be part of an America where ordinary citizens are rounded up because they’re Muslim or Mexican, just as my parents’ cousins were for being Jewish.

I don’t say this lightly. I consider him extremely dangerous, and it scares me that enough people in the US take him seriously enough that he’s doing well in the polls (we’ll see if this translates to actual votes).

 Some things I didn’t say to my friend:
In the courtyard of the new Reich Chancellery, the Fuhrer partakes of the "one-pot" communal stew meal in the company of invited fellow citizens. Photo by Heinrich Hoffman, courtesy New York Public Library
In the courtyard of the new Reich Chancellery, the Fuhrer partakes of the “one-pot” communal stew meal in the company of invited fellow citizens. Photo by Heinrich Hoffman, courtesy New York Public Library
 But my deep message to my friend is that we cannot afford indifference. Let’s remember that Hitler was democratically elected, and that Berlin in the 20s was a liberal, arts-centered city. We must not get complacent. We must not think “it can’t happen here.” And we must not be swallowed by indifference.
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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/

This 1979 profile of Donald Trump in the Village Voice should be mandatory reading–in the Know Your Enemy department. The corruption, refusal to acknowledge responsibility, self-aggrandizement, and use of other people’s money are not at all surprising. Only two things surprised me: 1) the racism goes back so far in time. I’d always thought that was a “party dress” he put on in order to run a demagogue campaign for president–but he was apparently the enforcer keeping blacks out of his father’s apartments.

2) The notorious McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn, one of the sleaziest figures in 20th-century US politics, was one of the family’s lawyers.

If Donald Trump becomes the nominee (or runs 3rd-party), we need to distill some of the central points into a highly readable one-page flier and get it absolutely everywhere. If Trump is the nominee, I will personally do that flier. And I want a legion of volunteers to distribute it.

Side note: I’m proud to say my mom was one of those white Urban League volunteers mentioned in the article, who determined if an apartment was *really* “already rented” after a family of color was refused. I have no idea if she was involved in the Trump Village investigation–probably not, since she lived far away in the Bronx.

I do find it deeply ironic that he has managed to build a meme that as a “self-made man,” he has so much money, he can’t be bought. He and his father got their money in the first place by leveraging political connections and doing deals with little or no skin in the game, if the article is accurate (and I have high confidence that it is).  What is self-made is not his wealth, but his image.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Advertising, Branding, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Innovation, language, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,
Screenshot of KPMG's internal "higher purpose" video captioned "We Shape History"
Screenshot of KPMG’s internal “higher purpose” video

This Harvard Business Review article and accompanying video are too good not to share. The video is less than two minutes and well-worth watching. Watch it with your marketer hat on. Pay attention both to the direct message and to the outcomes.

KPMG is positioning itself as an agent of social change, a social entrepreneurship giant involved in everything from keeping the Nazis at bay during World War II to certifying the election results that allowed Nelson Mandela to become the first president of a free South Africa.

I’m not passing judgment on the accuracy of the claim that the wonderful, world-changing projects highlighted in the video represent KPMG’s (and predecessor Peat Marwick’s) overall corporate culture  over many decades. I haven’t done the due diligence on that, and frankly, I’m pretty skeptical of the claim. Big Four accounting firms don’t tend to be known as cauldrons of world-changing social entrepreneurship.

But clearly, the company decided to spotlight its role as a changemaker and to foster an employee culture of empowered action—and that’s terrific. Not at all surprised to see the excellent results. Every manager should look at the amazing engagement this campaign created, with over 42,000 stories submitted by employees and 76 percent agreement that their jobs had deeper meaning.

Be sure to note the graph at the bottom, contrasting several employee satisfaction metrics under managers who emphasized or didn’t emphasize a higher purpose.

If one of the largest accounting firms in the world can take this on, your probably much simpler business can do it too. Every person who supervises others should take that data to heart and make sharing their own organization’s higher purpose a consistent part of their own employee motivation (if you get stuck on this, contact me; I can help).

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Greenwashing, Technology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,
corroded tailpipe (not a VW; for illustration purposes only)
corroded tailpipe (not a VW; for illustration purposes only)

This may be a new low in business ethics: Volkswagen got caught fitting more than 500,000 diesel vehicles with a device that senses emissions checks, and only fully enables its pollution control systems when the emissions check is being done!

What does that mean? Hundreds of thousands of vehicles “partying like it’s 1959,” belching unmitigated particulates into the air that you and I breathe. There were no emissions requirements at all in 1959, in case you were wondering.

This is outrageous! In addition to the recall and the fines, I think this is grounds for a widespread boycott. Being not just lied to but poisoned by a major company that pretends to care about the environment is not acceptable behavior. We as consumers need to stand up and say, ‘ENOUGH!”

And we consumers have power. There’s a long and honorable history of boycotts sparking change in corporate behavior. Just ask Nestlé.

The above link is to the New York Times article, but this act of deeply purposeful criminal fraud is all over the news media. This link goes to a Google search for “volkswagen defeat device emissions.” As of 6:09 p.m. Eastern on Friday, September 18, Page One results include stories in NPR, the Washington Post, and USA Today in addition to the Times.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Greenwashing, localism/locavore, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
Independent-owned boats like these on the Spanish Costa Brava could be forced out by Big Fish. Photo by Shel Horowitz

Independent-owned boats like these on the Spanish Costa Brava could be forced out by Big Fish. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Independent-owned boats like these on the Spanish Costa Brava could be forced out by Big Fishing. Photo by Shel Horowitz
As a vegetarian for the past 42 years, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about fish. But I went to a talk, “Food Grabs vs. Climate Justice: How capitalists and climate deniers are locking up access to land and sea, and how Food Sovereignty movements are creating real climate solutions,” part of the Center for Popular Economics’ annual summer institute in Western Massachusetts.

Moderated by Sara Mersha (Grassroots International), panelists included Michele Mesmain (Slow Food International), Betsy Garrold (Food for Maine’s Future), and Seth Macinko (Department of Marine Affairs, University of Rhode Island). Both Macinko and Mesmain focused on fish and fisheries.

Both experts agreed on the need to control overfishing–and both said there’s a better way than the current widely embraced privitization “solution”: taking the public resource of the sea held in common, and giving it, for free and in perpetuity, to large corporations who are already catching the most fish. These corporations then can lease fishing rights back to the local fisherfolks, who used to be able to fish them for free–or simply force them out of business.

Macinko said you can manage a resource to prevent overfishing without savaging the historic commons rights, and noted the unholy alliance of environmental groups (including Environmental Defense Fund), academics, corporate-oriented major foundations such as Pew, government and trans-government authorities including the World Bank, the Big Fishing lobby, and, lo and behold, the Koch Brothers’ foundation pushing for this rights grab. Then Mesmain showed three models of successful fisheries management without privitization: a 1000-year-old guild governing France’s Mediterranean coast, a much more recent initiative in the Basque region of Spain–both involving open-sea fisheries, and one through the Okanagan Nations Alliance (8 nations/tribes in Washington State and British Columbia) covering inland river salmon fisheries.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , ,

Guest Post By Yosef Rabinowitz, Managing Director, TBRC Cost Recovery

Yosef Rabinowitz, founder of TBRC Cost Recovery
Yosef Rabinowitz, founder of TBRC Cost Recovery

Back in 2003, I signed up a small business for telephone and internet service through one of the carriers that we represent at TBRC. After a few years of the client being on the service, I received a call out of the blue from a telephone bill auditor whom the client had hired to examine their monthly bill to see if there was any money to recover for past billing errors or if there was any way to save money going forward. The client wanted me to assist the auditor in his search.

In that instant, given that I had what I thought was an excellent relationship with my client, I felt blindsided and quite upset by the fact that he didn’t call me first (especially since we also do phone bill audits). My reaction internally was “Well that’s gratitude for you! After all the lengths we’ve gone each year in order to make sure that they’re getting great service at a great price? No WAY am I going to help them out with this audit.”

After about 30 seconds of (silent) childish brooding, though, my ego gave way to reason, and I did the right thing by guiding the auditor through the various charges on the client’s bill (he had never seen a bill from this particular carrier before).

That evening, as I went to bed, I had a bit of crisis of conscience. Even though I did assist the auditor, how could I have even THOUGHT to not help him, even if he’s a competitor and encroaching on my “turf”, so to speak (or so I felt in the moment when he called)? That’s not ME! That’s not who I am! I wrestled with this issue for several days (mostly in a state of quiet shame) before a friend pointed out a very basic concept of life:

We’re all human, and in the eyes of the law and common decency (and God, for those who believe), we humans are ultimately judged by our actions, not by our thoughts. So while I may have been upset at myself for even considering doing the wrong thing, I ultimately did what was right for my client (and my conscience) in the face of initially strong feelings to the contrary. I saw his point and felt a lot better after that.

Fans of the original Star Trek® series will recall the episode where Capt. Kirk comes through the transporter and is split into two beings…his good side and his evil side. The “evil” Kirk wreaked havoc on the ship with his impulsive behavior. However, the other Capt. Kirk, with only his good side and no access to his ego/evil side, couldn’t make any decisions. He NEEDED the “evil” side for that. And so do we. The bottom line is that life is going to throw “situations” at us from time to time. It’s OK (even natural) for ego to kick in at the beginning and make us WANT to lash out and do the wrong thing (it’s there to alert us that a need of ours isn’t being properly met), as long as we eventually keep ego in check so that we can move in the right direction.

Epilogue: Helping the auditor (rather than impeding his audit) worked out well in the end. Afterwards, he introduced me to the other 40+ telecom auditors in his company and a number of them have since referred clients to us for carrier services.

Yosef Rabinowitz is the Founder and Managing Director of TBRC Cost Recovery, LLC, a New York City-based consulting firm that examines business and nonprofit telecommunications bills for past billing errors and future savings opportunities. This article originally appeared in the June 2015 issue Off The Hook, TBRC’s monthly newsletter.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Guest post by Paul Loeb

Remember the World Trade Organization, which slipped into the shadows after massive Seattle protests in 1999? The same day last week that Congress initially blocked the possibility of fast track approval for the TPP trade agreement, the House voted to overturn rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat. Those supporting the vote said they were responding to a World Trade Organization ruling, judging US country-of-origin labeling unfair competition with meat coming from foreign countries like Canada and Mexico, and therefore a violation. They said they had no choice for fear of triggering sanctions or lawsuits from countries exporting meat across our borders.

I don’t know about you, but I like knowing whether my meat comes from Iowa or Uzbekistan, Montana or Mexico, Kentucky or Kenya. So do 93% of Americans, according to a Consumer’s Union survey. People like supporting US farmers, cutting down distance travelled, knowing there will be at least minimal inspection standards, even if the delights of e coli occasionally slip through. It seems commonsensical that we’d want at least the chance to become informed consumers, whether with the origins of our meat, GMO-derived crops, or the amount of sugar and calories in our baked goods.

Maybe the House members are wrong in insisting that the international tribunals that adjudicate trade disputes would deem this a violation. But if this particular House bill passes the Senate and gets signed by Obama, even the mere possibility of a lawsuit will have struck down a wholly reasonable law that protects our health and supports our local economies. And if TPP passes the Senate, other attempts to regulate commerce for the common good will be potentially gutted as well, from attempts at financial regulation to limits on the prices charged for drugs, to environmental rules and seemingly innocuous actions like requiring accurate labeling. Some of this could occur through legal action, and some through the mere fear that such action could occur.

Now maybe TPP won’t contain rules on meat. Maybe it will simply limit other ways we might try to exert our sovereignty over critical choices that affect us. But we do know that this agreement—involving countries constituting 40% of the global economy—through what’s called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, will establish unaccountable tribunals with the power to let corporations collect damages for loss of profits. We don’t know the precise reach of the agreement because ordinary citizens haven’t seen it. Even Congressional opponents were prohibited from taking notes when they looked at it, and “cleared advisors” who’ve seen it have been legally prohibited from talking specifics. Yet we’re told it represents an inevitable future, that the benefits will trickle down to ordinary citizens, and that those who ask reasonable questions about its profound implications are merely obstructionist whiners.

So do we demand full transparency before moving ahead? Or do we trust that the corporations that negotiated these rules have our interests at heart, and would never, in the slightest, harm our democracy? Whether or not the country-of-origin labeling on meat survives or is ended by the House bill and WTO ruling, TPP plays for far larger stakes, the ground rules that affect our very potential to take common action. The meat bill is one more warning that there are some rules and agreements where we should be careful to eagerly swallow.

Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While

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