EvilCorporationsEthics3-3-01pg1

�Evil� Corporations: Ethics at the Core?

Ralph Nader ran as a candidate for the Green Party in 2000. One of his campaign comments was that the republicans and democrats were one and the same party. When he made those comments, some thought he meant they felt the same way on issues. However, his comments were directed at the purchasing of influence by corporate interests of both parties. This was borne out in the soft money contributions that averaged $892,000 by the top 32 corporations to both parties.

Nader has long been a consumer activist. He has attacked the interests of corporations in their daily actions that are not necessarily in the best interests of consumers. In that same stream of thought, there are those who think and refer to corporations as �evil.� That is brought forth out of the evidence that corporations have done many things in the name of profits that have not been in the best interests of society. Dumping of waste into the oceans, underground, into our lakes and streams are just one set of problems of many that Americans see and feel everyday, whether they realize it or not. There are issues from power poles next to schools, the use and dumping of toxic chemicals, hazardous work environments, underpaying labor in foreign countries, and controlling governments that rarely go addressed in a coherent way.

Does all of this mean corporations are �evil?� No. What are corporations? Corporations are groups of people that have come together to achieve a common goal. People talk of corporations as if they are an entity in and of themselves. This is not true. Corporations have people that run them. When Edison makes a decision how to produce electricity, it is a decision made by people, not some ambiguous name. When an oil company decides to drill for oil or inject a well with waste, it is made by a person, or group of people not some company name. This often gets lost in the �blame game� of blaming someone else for events that occur around us. What does this mean?

Individuals in corporations must realize the responsibility they possess. In a corporation, many acknowledge their responsibility to their shareholders, but rarely do they acknowledge their responsibility to society. And even more rare is the acknowledgement of their role in that corporate mission or responsibility. Ask a CEO, he blames is responsibility to shareholders. Ask a vice president of the same corporation, and they may blame the CEO or president of the company. Ask the person actually doing the work, and they blame the management. Everyone seems to have someone to blame, yet the corporation is responsible in their minds. In each case, the blaming of others in the corporation absolves them of responsibility of their role in what happens. That is, unless, it is something good that happens. Then, they were a key component.

The question becomes: why don�t people take the blame when they are perfectly willing to take the credit? There are numerous possible answers to this question. One could make the argument of the human nature of the pain versus pleasure principle. People want to take the credit, as it is pleasurable to have others view you positively. Conversely, people don�t want to take the blame, as it is painful to have others view you negatively. This may be a primary reason. However, it does not exclude the evaluation of other possibilities that may also influence the same behavior.

Organizational culture may have an influence that may explain some of the problems. What is �organizational culture?� Organizations have a �culture� within them that is based on attitudes, beliefs and values of that organization. Those attitudes, beliefs, and values overlap and interlock in what can best be viewed as a three-dimensional web or matrix. Within that web, the attitudes, values and beliefs that are central to the foundation of the organization are closer to the center and are built upon by other attitudes, beliefs, values and symbols of those ideas at the core of the web. Once this �culture� is created, often not knowingly, it becomes a driving force for the shape and scope of the organization. This �culture� will permeate the entire organization and also evolve over time and even distance from the core of the organization.

For example, if a core value of an organization is profit making, then it will be held highly as important to achieving the success of that organization. A belief farther away from the core of the web may be teamwork, since teamwork may help attain the beliefs at the core, it will become a filter for the core value. In other words, an individual within the organization may view teamwork as a key to achieving organizational profits. That may, in turn, be a driving force between people working together as a team within that organization. It also may be a driving force for overlooking problems in order to avoid disrupting the team atmosphere, especially if those problems may hurt the core value of profit making.

People want to keep their jobs, otherwise, they would have changed or be in the process of changing their jobs. Whether that is out of need of the money to survive or out of enjoyment of that job, they want to keep them. Therefore, they tend to go along and try to fit in within the organizational culture. After the organizational culture is established within the organization, those that deviate from that culture, tend to be pushed to either fall in line or leave the organization. In this way, the organizational culture maintains itself.

Just as the organization is made up of people who make the organizational culture, it is people, not some amorphous organization that maintain, perpetuate or evolve the corporate culture. Only through individuals, is the organizational culture reinforced or rejected and changed. Individual acts within an organization can have an impact on that organization. Until now, many have written about the organizational culture and its impact on people within the organization. They have written about individual acts exemplifying the organizational culture. However, it is time to realize the impact an individual can make on that culture.

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