Know Your Role
I wish I had time for a longer blog as I've had a big desire to make a good post, but I'd rather have a good night's sleep instead. In substitution of a long post, I wanted to raise a question and see how people would react.
Tonight was a weird night. I had my ethics class with my international management class right afterwards, but that's normal. The weird thing was that the two profs who teach the classes taught completely opposite thoughts/ideas that caught everyone who have the two classes together completely off guard. On one hand, in the ethics class my prof spoke about corporations or businesses' responsibility to uphold ethics and to contribute positively to society. Some case studies we examined in class included the discrimination that occurs in hiring, and whether this discrimination was just (which is totally another topic for another blog). But we also looked at the chemical revolution that occured in the 70's that gave us the plastic and chemical products that we enjoy today (hair sprays, air fresheners, etc).
With these come a huge price that not many people are aware of. Plant workers dealing with this vinyl material very often come out of their careers with brain tumors and liver diseases. It turns out that this material is highly toxic, although the companies and firms that originally produced these materials lied to their employees and reassured them about the process being completely safe. It was really a heartfelt story to watch in the PBS special we saw in class about one plant worker who slowly died in a hospital bed after 20 years of plant work without any knowledge of the danger.
But with this, my prof was making the obvious conclusion that it is the firm's responisbility to disclose this information and therefore act ethically to prevent from such hazardous working conditions.
However, in my next class, I heard a very different story. My other prof. for my International management class began the lecture talking about it being the governments'/regulators' responsibility to regulate ethical business on firms. He reasoned that this was the purpose of having them there. Also he said that CEO's and high ranking officers are very often regular people like you and me. They recycle themselves, and would like to see the environment and community taken care of. But often they aren't in the position to make a tangible change in the firm's interests. He summarized by saying, "If you have something against what your business is doing, you'd better get out and find another job." He also used the metaphor of large business being a large ocean tanker. No matter how hard you crank the wheel left or right, your change in direction won't happen immediately. Due to the sheer size of the business, it takes a duration of time and force for any change of direction to come (it requires inertia). This coupled with the low power one official may have in a company summarizes his conclusion why CEO's and Managers just aren't responsible for the ethics of a company.
My question is: what do you think? Obviously there's the cop-out of saying that it should be a combined effort between the two bodies, but of course everyone knows this can only happen in a perfect world. My question to you is: who is the onus of ethics on? Is it the firm's responsibility to first uphold this ethics standard before the regulators come in? Or is it the other way around? Bottom line, if something highly and completely unethical were to happen, ultimately who should be held responsible to the public? Whose role is it to uphold ethics?
3 Comments:
I think the onus of ethics is on everyone.
Your prof who said that a CEO can't exert control over his own company sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about. I've seen and met the upper management of the last company I worked at -- when they want something done, it gets done. Management is responsible for putting in and encouraging a culture that is ethical or unethical and they have a real impact.
That said, workers are also responsible for upholding ethics. I don't sign off on work that is unethical. This can be a real tough issue for new engineering grads because a lot of companies have "this is the way things have always been done" cultures on the ground level. To this extent, I agree with your one prof that it doesn't make sense to work at a company that doesn't have the same values as you. It's tough to change things as a new grad because you're not in a management position -- and to get in a management position, you would probably have to be a part of the unethical behaviour to begin with.
Here's an anecdote for you: one of my profs has a friend who worked as an environmental engineer. This guy became really disheartened because he went into his career expecting to be working on ways to save the environment, but what he really ended up doing was working on ways for companies to do the bare minimum to meet environmental standards. I think the guy eventually ended up switching careers, but it just goes to show you that some companies have cultures of meeting regulations, not ethics.
Ethics is a complex issue, but the pie in the sky tale we tell ourselves in engineering is that everyone is responsible for ethics and that everyone can make a difference. It's my opinion that management has the most control over ethics, but it is of course up to the worker to do their part as well.
To me the basic question is : who is responsible for ethical corporate behaviour? The company, or the regulatory bodies/government? By letter of the law, it is the regulatory bodies. However, by SPIRIT of the law, to me, it is definitely the companies. Here are the fundamental reason why I think so.
Regulatory bodies do not know when unethical behaviour will take place. Once its taken place and they can come in, what good does it do to those who have been harmed? Really, the main thing regulatory bodies can do is enforcement or prosecution. For the example you used with the toxic materials, its too late for the victims. No monetary compensation can ever give back the victims’ their quality of life.
One more example, and it may be a bit extreme. Lets take the case of a random teenager walking up to merchandise on a shelf. Three consequences can occur, the teen can look and walk away, purchase it, or steal it. While it is up to resource protection to discourage or arrest shoplifters, its up to the person to prevent it from getting there. RP will have no way of knowing who is there to look and who is there to steal. The prof in my opinion is in a way condoning that the teen can steal as it is up to others to enforce the rule of the law.
Who cares who the onus "should" be on. The main question should be what is the most effective way to ensure that ethical standards are being met. We care argue all night about passing the buck to someone else and that they should be responsible. at the end of the day though all that matters is despite the onus, who is the most effective at enforcing this. The answer to that question should be the government. Ethics are a matter of values, and different corporation and CEO have very different values. Only one body such as the government (or some form of governing body) should set the standard and set severe enough penalties that it is not worth being unethical for the purpose of profit or gain. It took me 5 month to think this up...
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