Guest Post: Upsides of Being Ethical: Why Good Guys and Girls Don’t Always Finish Last
By Alexis Bonari
[Editor’s note: Yes, this is fairly elementary—but it’s nice to be reminded of the basics once in a while. If this topic interests you and you want more depth, I recommend Stephen M.R. Covey’s Speed of Trust as well as my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson).
—Shel Horowitz]
In our ultra-competitive business world, it is easy to excuse treading on the wrong side of the line that separates necessary competition from sleazy behavior. The younger generation—those in their teens and twenties—have been bombarded with the idea that honor and ethics are relative terms. In other words, if everyone else appears to be cheating the system, it’s “ok” for me to do the same.
Do ethical people get left in the dust?
So, what really happens to businessmen and women who try to play by the rules of good business ethics? Do they get pushed aside by their more competitive, meaner contemporaries? The answer would appear to be “no”.
There’s a reason for everything.
Everything has a source, an origin. Even if we believe that ethics are relative, they still must come from somewhere. Our modern business ethics are founded on philosophical principals that date back hundreds, if not thousands of years. Humankind has continually refined these rules of conduct so that people can interact with each other in a positive, non-violent manner. Therefore, there is a practical, utilitarian purpose behind agreeing to a code of ethics.
It’s all about trust.
Essentially, we work together best when we feel that we can trust each other. Doing business is the ultimate form of working together. If an individual has questionable dealings in their past, it is highly likely that they will suffer some sort of backlash for it, be that publicly or privately. Take the executives at Enron as an example. They employed very aggressive, hyper-competitive strategies for amassing wealth. When investors felt they could be trusted, they were given huge sums of money. As their underhanded dealings came to light, they became the poster-children for unethical business practices and were reviled by a nation.
Although unethical business practices might result in short-term success, this rarely translates into stable business relationships in the long run. In this sense, those who choose to take a strong ethical stance generally come out ahead in the end.
Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching various online college degree programs. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com
Thank you again for all of your work. I’ve learned a lot from your books and your blogs. And I very likely will be a consulting client sometime soon.
Thank you again for all of your work. I’ve learned a lot from your books and your blogs. And I very likely will be a consulting client sometime soon.
Thank you again for all of your work. I’ve learned a lot from your books and your blogs. And I very likely will be a consulting client sometime soon.
Thank you again for all of your work. I’ve learned a lot from your books and your blogs. And I very likely will be a consulting client sometime soon.
Thank for sharing this article on trust and ethics. In the last year I’ve experienced two blatant copyright infringements of my work in commercial arenas with people selling similar or the exact same product. It startled me. It made me feel violated and angry. Some business friends told me to tough it out, not be so upset, not be so naive, and just figure out what to do about it. Fueled by anger, of course I figured it out. I researched the law and remedy strategies and spoke with an intellectual property lawyer.
In the first case the infringer (a well known author in her field) apologized and now my work which appears within her work is in quotes, with glowing comments about me and a few links. Took some time, energy and nail biting, but in the end there was a very positive result. And my guess is that after being caught in this instance, this author will most likely not plagiarize again.
The second case involves a “hobbyist” in my field. After sending a cease and desist email that was ignored, I filed a complaint with Facebook, Facebook disabled the infringer’s Page in 24 hours. All I wanted was to have my copyrighted material removed. But FB took it quite seriously because the only text describing this person’s product was my copyrighted text. Right now I am preparing an official DMCA complaint to have that same infringer remove the same copyrighted material from her web site. What is mind boggling to me, is that in the complaining email communication I’ve received from this person since her FB Page was disabled, she still does not understand that copyright law and ethics apply to her. She doesn’t understand that if you’re a thief and get caught and penalized, it’s not your victim’s fault, it’s your fault.
So yes, I’ve learned and continue to learn about remedies regarding infringement. And I am no longer naive. I work in the healing arts. One would *think* that poor ethics and thieves would not be so prevalent in this field. Wrong. There really are people, even in the healing arts, who apparently believe the ethics and laws do not apply to them. I feel like I’ve earned some stripes as I strengthen my business acumen, learning to protect my work and run my business like a business–even though the services and products are spiritual in nature. And really, aside from love and compassion, what could be more spiritual than ethics? In my opinion, people with spiritually oriented services who violate ethics and copyright law are even worse offenders than others. Our trust of them should be even higher, similar to the outrage many of us feel about priests who’ve sexually abused children because they are in a position of sacred trust. Will I likely feel violated again if there is a next time of infringement? Undoubtedly. But I’ll be much more prepared to initiate remedies.
Thank you for what you do in Principled Profit, and for sharing this article on ethics. It’s not just the remedy that matters, so do our feelings in the process. Theft if theft, and I don’t think I’m alone as one who was stolen from in feeling angry and violated. Finding that balance between not being either too naive or too jaded is a challenge. Articles like this help, work like yours helps. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment. I’ve actually written quite a bit about copyright violation (and have been a victim several times myself, including this post: https://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=689&action=edit). Yes, I know that feeling of being ripped off. Like you, I’ve occasionally converted a copyright infringement into a positive outcome, and other times failed to get the violator to see the problem.
Thank for sharing this article on trust and ethics. In the last year I’ve experienced two blatant copyright infringements of my work in commercial arenas with people selling similar or the exact same product. It startled me. It made me feel violated and angry. Some business friends told me to tough it out, not be so upset, not be so naive, and just figure out what to do about it. Fueled by anger, of course I figured it out. I researched the law and remedy strategies and spoke with an intellectual property lawyer.
In the first case the infringer (a well known author in her field) apologized and now my work which appears within her work is in quotes, with glowing comments about me and a few links. Took some time, energy and nail biting, but in the end there was a very positive result. And my guess is that after being caught in this instance, this author will most likely not plagiarize again.
The second case involves a “hobbyist” in my field. After sending a cease and desist email that was ignored, I filed a complaint with Facebook, Facebook disabled the infringer’s Page in 24 hours. All I wanted was to have my copyrighted material removed. But FB took it quite seriously because the only text describing this person’s product was my copyrighted text. Right now I am preparing an official DMCA complaint to have that same infringer remove the same copyrighted material from her web site. What is mind boggling to me, is that in the complaining email communication I’ve received from this person since her FB Page was disabled, she still does not understand that copyright law and ethics apply to her. She doesn’t understand that if you’re a thief and get caught and penalized, it’s not your victim’s fault, it’s your fault.
So yes, I’ve learned and continue to learn about remedies regarding infringement. And I am no longer naive. I work in the healing arts. One would *think* that poor ethics and thieves would not be so prevalent in this field. Wrong. There really are people, even in the healing arts, who apparently believe the ethics and laws do not apply to them. I feel like I’ve earned some stripes as I strengthen my business acumen, learning to protect my work and run my business like a business–even though the services and products are spiritual in nature. And really, aside from love and compassion, what could be more spiritual than ethics? In my opinion, people with spiritually oriented services who violate ethics and copyright law are even worse offenders than others. Our trust of them should be even higher, similar to the outrage many of us feel about priests who’ve sexually abused children because they are in a position of sacred trust. Will I likely feel violated again if there is a next time of infringement? Undoubtedly. But I’ll be much more prepared to initiate remedies.
Thank you for what you do in Principled Profit, and for sharing this article on ethics. It’s not just the remedy that matters, so do our feelings in the process. Theft if theft, and I don’t think I’m alone as one who was stolen from in feeling angry and violated. Finding that balance between not being either too naive or too jaded is a challenge. Articles like this help, work like yours helps. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment. I’ve actually written quite a bit about copyright violation (and have been a victim several times myself, including this post: https://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=689&action=edit). Yes, I know that feeling of being ripped off. Like you, I’ve occasionally converted a copyright infringement into a positive outcome, and other times failed to get the violator to see the problem.
Thank for sharing this article on trust and ethics. In the last year I’ve experienced two blatant copyright infringements of my work in commercial arenas with people selling similar or the exact same product. It startled me. It made me feel violated and angry. Some business friends told me to tough it out, not be so upset, not be so naive, and just figure out what to do about it. Fueled by anger, of course I figured it out. I researched the law and remedy strategies and spoke with an intellectual property lawyer.
In the first case the infringer (a well known author in her field) apologized and now my work which appears within her work is in quotes, with glowing comments about me and a few links. Took some time, energy and nail biting, but in the end there was a very positive result. And my guess is that after being caught in this instance, this author will most likely not plagiarize again.
The second case involves a “hobbyist” in my field. After sending a cease and desist email that was ignored, I filed a complaint with Facebook, Facebook disabled the infringer’s Page in 24 hours. All I wanted was to have my copyrighted material removed. But FB took it quite seriously because the only text describing this person’s product was my copyrighted text. Right now I am preparing an official DMCA complaint to have that same infringer remove the same copyrighted material from her web site. What is mind boggling to me, is that in the complaining email communication I’ve received from this person since her FB Page was disabled, she still does not understand that copyright law and ethics apply to her. She doesn’t understand that if you’re a thief and get caught and penalized, it’s not your victim’s fault, it’s your fault.
So yes, I’ve learned and continue to learn about remedies regarding infringement. And I am no longer naive. I work in the healing arts. One would *think* that poor ethics and thieves would not be so prevalent in this field. Wrong. There really are people, even in the healing arts, who apparently believe the ethics and laws do not apply to them. I feel like I’ve earned some stripes as I strengthen my business acumen, learning to protect my work and run my business like a business–even though the services and products are spiritual in nature. And really, aside from love and compassion, what could be more spiritual than ethics? In my opinion, people with spiritually oriented services who violate ethics and copyright law are even worse offenders than others. Our trust of them should be even higher, similar to the outrage many of us feel about priests who’ve sexually abused children because they are in a position of sacred trust. Will I likely feel violated again if there is a next time of infringement? Undoubtedly. But I’ll be much more prepared to initiate remedies.
Thank you for what you do in Principled Profit, and for sharing this article on ethics. It’s not just the remedy that matters, so do our feelings in the process. Theft if theft, and I don’t think I’m alone as one who was stolen from in feeling angry and violated. Finding that balance between not being either too naive or too jaded is a challenge. Articles like this help, work like yours helps. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment. I’ve actually written quite a bit about copyright violation (and have been a victim several times myself, including this post: https://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=689&action=edit). Yes, I know that feeling of being ripped off. Like you, I’ve occasionally converted a copyright infringement into a positive outcome, and other times failed to get the violator to see the problem.
Thank for sharing this article on trust and ethics. In the last year I’ve experienced two blatant copyright infringements of my work in commercial arenas with people selling similar or the exact same product. It startled me. It made me feel violated and angry. Some business friends told me to tough it out, not be so upset, not be so naive, and just figure out what to do about it. Fueled by anger, of course I figured it out. I researched the law and remedy strategies and spoke with an intellectual property lawyer.
In the first case the infringer (a well known author in her field) apologized and now my work which appears within her work is in quotes, with glowing comments about me and a few links. Took some time, energy and nail biting, but in the end there was a very positive result. And my guess is that after being caught in this instance, this author will most likely not plagiarize again.
The second case involves a “hobbyist” in my field. After sending a cease and desist email that was ignored, I filed a complaint with Facebook, Facebook disabled the infringer’s Page in 24 hours. All I wanted was to have my copyrighted material removed. But FB took it quite seriously because the only text describing this person’s product was my copyrighted text. Right now I am preparing an official DMCA complaint to have that same infringer remove the same copyrighted material from her web site. What is mind boggling to me, is that in the complaining email communication I’ve received from this person since her FB Page was disabled, she still does not understand that copyright law and ethics apply to her. She doesn’t understand that if you’re a thief and get caught and penalized, it’s not your victim’s fault, it’s your fault.
So yes, I’ve learned and continue to learn about remedies regarding infringement. And I am no longer naive. I work in the healing arts. One would *think* that poor ethics and thieves would not be so prevalent in this field. Wrong. There really are people, even in the healing arts, who apparently believe the ethics and laws do not apply to them. I feel like I’ve earned some stripes as I strengthen my business acumen, learning to protect my work and run my business like a business–even though the services and products are spiritual in nature. And really, aside from love and compassion, what could be more spiritual than ethics? In my opinion, people with spiritually oriented services who violate ethics and copyright law are even worse offenders than others. Our trust of them should be even higher, similar to the outrage many of us feel about priests who’ve sexually abused children because they are in a position of sacred trust. Will I likely feel violated again if there is a next time of infringement? Undoubtedly. But I’ll be much more prepared to initiate remedies.
Thank you for what you do in Principled Profit, and for sharing this article on ethics. It’s not just the remedy that matters, so do our feelings in the process. Theft if theft, and I don’t think I’m alone as one who was stolen from in feeling angry and violated. Finding that balance between not being either too naive or too jaded is a challenge. Articles like this help, work like yours helps. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment. I’ve actually written quite a bit about copyright violation (and have been a victim several times myself, including this post: https://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=689&action=edit). Yes, I know that feeling of being ripped off. Like you, I’ve occasionally converted a copyright infringement into a positive outcome, and other times failed to get the violator to see the problem.