Is Business Ethics the Hot Topic for 2005? I Think I See A Trend

* [1] Of 1,889,000 hits on Google for “business ethics” or “ethical business,” 1,189,000–62.9 percent–are on pages updated within the past three months.

* [2] A survey of S&P 500 companies, published Wednesday in Lohas Journal, found a 150 percent increase in one year in the number of CEOs reporting on social responsibility in their shareholder letters, and an 800 percent increase since 1999 in CEOs who describe their companies as corporate or global citizens–with such major players as Pfizer, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, Citigroup and Cisco leading the way.

* [3] Businesses have devoted vast sums to disaster relief following the Indian Ocean tsunami, often far out of proportion to their size. One guidebook publishing company earmarked AU $500,000 (US $388,170) for disaster aid.

* [4] The US House of Representatives reversed itself and scuttled a plan that would have made it harder to challenge members facing allegations of ethics violations

* [5] The grassroots, zero-budget Business Ethics Pledge campaign that I launched in June has already reached six of the world’s seven regions, with signers as far-flung as Kenya, Panama, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, and Scotland.

Business ethics has become the hot business trend!

People are waking up. They are realizing that ethics and corporate citizenship build trust–that following and marketing an ethical stance is actually good for business. This bodes well for my pledge campaign–and for the state of the world.