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Ethics in business

  • 27-03-2012 8:33am
    #1
    Atomicjuicer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 290 ✭✭


    It seems to me that a serious flaw in capitalism as we know it is that its not always working for the improvement of society.

    Could we make it a law that large businesses must be audited by an external "ethics" agency every year and have the results published publicly?


Comments

  • #2
    minidazzler
    Registered Users Posts: 14,739 ✭✭✭✭minidazzler


    1. Who would pay for this ethics committee?
    2. Who decides the standard?
    3. Is every country gonna follow suit or is it just us?
    4. Is it really possible to Audit every action of every company every year?
    5. What would be the punishment for unethical behaviour?


  • #3
    holystungun9
    Registered Users Posts: 2,933 ✭✭✭holystungun9


    Fairplay to businesses who do it or try to abide by some code of ethics but on a grander scale, business and ethics are two separate things.


  • #4
    Atomicjuicer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 290 ✭✭Atomicjuicer


    minidazzler wrote: »
    1. Who would pay for this ethics committee?
    2. Who decides the standard?
    3. Is every country gonna follow suit or is it just us?
    4. Is it really possible to Audit every action of every company every year?
    5. What would be the punishment for unethical behaviour?

    1. 50/50 business and government
    2. Agency develops standards (improves over time)
    3. To be honest I think the US could benefit more than us
    4. No it the report would be general in nature and then slightly more specific eventually
    5. No punishment. It would be for consumer awareness.


  • #5
    coffee_cake
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Politics Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 81,310 CMod ✭✭✭✭coffee_cake


    you want a government run ethics committee?

    sure why not. let's put Bertie in charge.


  • #6
    Grayson
    Registered Users Posts: 16,106 ✭✭✭✭Grayson


    bluewolf wrote: »
    you want a government run ethics committee?

    sure why not. let's put Bertie in charge.

    Where did he say government run?


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  • #7
    BASHIR
    Registered Users Posts: 553 ✭✭✭BASHIR


    What's ethically right to me and what's ethically right to you can vary greatly.


  • #8
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,659 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Atomicjuicer wrote: »
    It seems to me that a serious flaw in capitalism as we know it is that its not always working for the improvement of society.


    Could we make it a law that large businesses must be audited by an external "ethics" agency every year and have the results published publicly?
    What was that quote about capitalism being the hope the the basest of men acting for their own selfish reasons would bring about the greatest good ?


    How many cycles have we been through there the guys with the money ask for the rules to be relaxed because this time it's different, that they understand how it all works...

    Far too many companies trading on their past name :mad:

    Look at the standard of advertising, how much of it is ethical ?


    There was also a figure IIRC 1/3rd of the time spent by the top financial guys is spent on tax avoidance


    Auditing ?
    Once upon a time there were 5 big auditing firms. One of them had 85,000 employees and a revenue of over $9Bn On June 15, 2002, Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents related to its audit of Enron, resulting in the Enron scandal

    Point being it would be difficult to find honest auditors based on past experience. Also it means there are only 4 big players capable of supplying this service to multinationals.




    As an aside it's been pointed out that if McDonalds customers wanted something like free range eggs laid by vegetarian chickens , they'd do it tomorrow.


  • #9
    Atomicjuicer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 290 ✭✭Atomicjuicer


    Capt'n Midnight wrote: »
    As an aside it's been pointed out that if McDonalds customers wanted something like free range eggs laid by vegetarian chickens , they'd do it tomorrow.

    McDonalds currently have a radio ad campaign interviewing local farmers who supply their 100% Irish beef. Maybe chicken quality is next on the menu?

    Enron was a mess for sure - no denying that corruption exists even in auditing firms but I still think it's necessary and worth a try. It seems to me that with all the golden parachutes flying out the doors there might be an opportunity to steer organisations towards in more positive directions.


  • #10
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,659 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    bluewolf wrote: »
    you want a government run ethics committee?

    sure why not. let's put Bertie in charge.
    No prizes for guessing what happened the last time they did that.

    Didn't Bertie appoint Liam Lawlor as vice-chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Ethics back in 1999 ?

    He was also on
    Vice Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service.
    And was on Public Enterprise and Transport.


    And Liam would be alive today if they had just audited his accounts instead of dragging it out for years in a tribunal.


  • #11
    ROFLcopter
    Closed Accounts Posts: 138 ✭✭ROFLcopter


    BASHIR wrote: »
    What's ethically right to me and what's ethically right to you can vary greatly.

    Very true, you can invest with various companies that make weapons and arms, for instance I could invest in companies like BAE Systems, Cobham, VT Group, Rolls Royce and Smiths Group. All these companies manufacture arms, which will be used to kill people in various countries around the world.

    Or you could invest in Philip Morris, BAT, Gallaher and Imperial Tobacco which we know will kill people.


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  • #12
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    There needs to be enforced transparency on business, obligating them to make public record of many aspects of their business, so that anyone can look them over and see they are behaving correctly.

    If any of the released information was falsified, they would pay a heavy fine for it.


    There is simply no excuse for this not to be the case now, with the ease of publishing information on the Internet, most especially when it comes to transparency in government.
    We have privacy-invading social networking sites which can track and publicly detail quite a lot of info about your personal life, data-retention laws which keep records of our internet activity for years, but we know fúck all about the inner-details of business or government.

    This level of enforced transparency would dissuade and eliminate a huge amount of corruption immediately, and would allow the uncovering of corruption going years back since records from then would have to be publicly released.


    Just imagine it really; a public website, with a huge reserve of information about all business's in the country and government activity, and (by rights) everyone in the country having the ability to sift through that and look for any dodgy shít.

    A single person, anybody, could end a company or politician, just by doing a small bit of research and finding some incriminating or falsified information.


    As things are right now, if you want this kind of information (primarily from government) you need to make a freedom of information request, which could end up costing you thousands depending on how much effort it takes to gather that information.

    If things were changed such that this information is deemed "public knowledge", or "in the public interest" (or simply "paid for and owned by the public") by default, and published on a central website, you can eliminate or uncover most fraud/corruption.


    There isn't any good reason not to have things like that; even if it cost millions a year to implement and maintain, it would be absolutely worth it for keeping government and corporations in check (and would probably pay for itself several times over in prevented corruption/fraud).


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