| “The truth can wait, for it lives a long life” (Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher, 1788-1860)
The philosopher Schopenhauer believed in the eventual triumph of truth, despite the disappointments engendered by his indifferent contemporaries. Two centuries later, we live in a time of accelerated changes, and we do not have the long life to wait for the truth. Activist business ethics, business ethics with a more activist militant approach, is needed in order to remedy the wrongdoing committed to the stakeholders and minority shareholders. This will be achieved by cooperation between ethical businessmen and businesswomen, activist academics and associations of stakeholders and minority shareholders.
We should treat others as we would want them to treat us, not through interest, but by conviction. Yet this principle is not the guideline of many companies in the modern business world, although most of religions and philosophers have preconized it in the last 3,000 years. How could we convince or compel modern business to apply this principle and is it essential to the success of economy? In order to answer these questions this book examines the evolution of activist business ethics in business, democracies, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other religions, as well as in philosophy, psychology and psychoanalysis. The book examines international aspects, the personification of stakeholders, the predominance of values and ethics for CEOs and the inefficient safeguards of the stakeholders’ interests. The book presents new vehicles for the safeguard of those interests and future activist vehicles, such as the Supervision Board and the Institute of Ethics.
Activist ethics in business should be established in the forefront of business as a countermeasure to the crumbling of moral values. The cost of the lack of ethics and the contractual costs are much higher than the cost of ethics in business, as trust becomes more and more rare. Many businessmen perceive business as a poker game, in which cheating is condoned or even encouraged. But business is much more serious; businessmen spend most of their creative life at work; the jobs of millions of persons are at stake as well as the welfare of the world’s economy. In spite of the difficulties, ethical conduct is favorable to business, as shown in numerous cases from ethical companies such as IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Levi-Strauss and others. Unlike many of their contemporaries, these companies are not amoral and their mission is not mainly to maximize their profits without infringing the law. Between unethical conduct and an unlawful act there is only one step, and this step is very easy to cross, especially if the environment is favorable. The end does not justify the means and ethics should be on an equal basis with profitability. |