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... tives make decisions that affect the lives of many other people, and there are often ethical dimensions to these decisions. It is true that, in recent years, a number of Big Businesses have been accused of overstepping ethical boundaries in their drive for profit. What I find disturbing, though, is that even in these charges, the focus is invariably on money: Did a business executive or particular investor (like Martha Stewart) make a profit from having inside information, while others lost money?
Did an accounting firm, in cahoots with a particular business, mislead investors so that people lost money from this misrepresentation? Has a particular business (like Microsoft) so monopolized a field that others cant make money in this field? Many communities have created Ethics Boards and the only cases they seem to consider involve making money as a result of inside information or abuse of ones position for profit. The third feature of Big Business that I would point to as creating the moral crisis we currently find in the United States concerns the way Big Business, through advertising, has quite deliberately turned most Americans into materialists in order to achieve its goal of maximizing profits. We are repeatedly told that to be happy, we must have the right stuff certain clothes, a certain car, etc.
and, of course, what the right stuff is is constantly changing, so well have to keep buying new products. Most peoples lives revolve around making money so they can buy whatever it is that corporate America tells them they should be buying. Businesses emphasis on making a profit and convincing us that we need to have more, and better, material possessions are interconnected and mutually supportive values. To make big profits, businesses must get a large number of us to buy their products.
To do so, they must persuade us that having material possessions at least theirs is essential to our well-being. In order to be able to buy their products, wed better make lots of money so the driving force of businesses (the profit motive) is reinforced as being a good thing. The result, according to Richard M. Ryan, is that: Vast numbers of us have been seduced into believing that having more wealth and material possessions is essential to the good life... many of us, consciously or unconsciously, have learned to evaluate our own well-being and accomplishment not by looking inward at our spirit or integrity, but by looking outward at what we have and what we can buy. Similarly, we have adopted a world view in which the worth and success of others is judged not by their apparent wisdom, kindness, or community contributions, but in terms of whether they possess the right clothes, the right car, and more generally, the right stuff. 10 Again, I think its doubtful that many people would really accept these values stated explicitly.
They have absorbed the values that are implicit in the operations of Big Business without consciously choosing them. And not only are these values questionable from a moral point of view, but psychologist Tim Kaiser cites evidence, in The High Price of Materialism, to show that even when people obtain more money and material goods, they do not become more satisfied with their lives, or more psychologically healthy because of it. In fact, research shows that merely aspiring to have greater wealth or material possessions is likely to be associated with increased personal unhappiness. 11 The fourth feature of Big Business that I would cite as being a causal factor in creating the current American crisis in morality is the prevalent attitude that the only restriction on making a profit is that one must stay within the law. In general, business executives tend to adopt the attitude that if it isnt illegal, its all right. They only worry about whats illegal, not whats immoral.
The main reason for this, of course, is that they know that they will (if caught) be punished if they break the law; but its not so clear that anything will happen to them if they do something that is morally wrong, if its not against the law. So it seems prudent to just worry about what is illegal. And, to be fair, laws are written down and are reasonably clear, whereas it may be difficult to determine what is morally right. So its easier to turn to the law to see what one ought to do in a given situation.
But my point is that business executives are unlikely to spend any time worrying about the moral implications of their policies. To the extent to which they think at all about what they ought not do, it generally comes down to being concerned only with that which is illegal. They have, as a result, sent the message to their employees, and others in society, that morality can be collapsed into legality. But morality should not be collapsed into legality.
First, they are not coextensive. There are actions that are a matter of moral concern which are not governed by laws (e. g. keeping promises to ones friends) and there are actions that are illegal which we would not classify as being immoral (e. g.
jaywalking). Second, even when they cover the same ground, outdated laws may lag behind a society's current moral beliefs and need to be changed. Consider that, for a time in our history, slavery was legal and women and blacks were not permitted to vote. Individuals with strong moral convictions challenged the prevailing laws on these issues, eventually changing them, and we now believe that they were right to have done so. There is no shortcut to determining what is morally right. We must, as individuals and collectively, think seriously about the issues involved, rather than fall back on whatever the law at a particular time happens to permit.
The fifth feature of Big Business that I think has contributed to the current crisis in morality is that most large companies are now run by people who arent particularly committed to their products. Once businesses were started by, and then run by, individuals who believed that they had developed quality products that people really needed. They staked their reputations on their products. Todays business executives like Lou Gerstner, of IBM, who also ran R J Reynolds and Amex tend to be professional managers of large corporations, who accept a job because of the challenge of turning a business around, or expanding a business, and because of the large salary and other perks they may receive.
In light of this fact, we should not be surprised that quality control may suffer so that quick profits can be made and that inherently harmful products, like tobacco, continue to be produced. Again, the message is being sent to workers and the public at large that making money is the most important thing, and let the buyer beware. The sixth feature of Big Business that has contributed to the current crisis in morality concerns the sheer size of the companies and the large areas over which the companies are spread. Often one part of the company doesnt know what the other parts are doing there is a compartmentalizing and those who work for the companies in one location never see those in other locations whose lives are affected by their actions.
In this sort of climate, it is all too easy to avoid asking important ethical questions about the companys practices. One focuses, instead, on just doing ones own job as efficiently as possible. Related to this, working for large companies has caused many executives and workers to move frequently around the country, sometimes even out of the country. As a result, we have evolved into a society where the climate is not conducive to long-term social relationships. Few of us live in the towns where we grew up and few of us stay in one neighborhood, town or city very long.
We barely know our neighbors. This has resulted, I believe, in our not being concerned enough about our dealings, and relationships, with others. We treat others as disposable commodities, rather than making an effort to treat people in a way that supports the possibility of long-term social relationships. Once Americans spent their enter...
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