People in the corporate world have been around for so long they can't see the forest for the trees:
- In olden days the owners of a company were financially and criminally responsible for its behavior. It got sued, the owners were liable.
- then the Limited Responsibility Company (LLC or LTD) was invented, isolating Acme LTD stockholders financially from misbehavior by Acme.
- also, managers at a company take any criminal blame, owners are not implicated in misdeeds.
At this point, the only real limitation to corporate unethical behavior was that a company could still go bust. But then Bush/Obama promulgated the too big to fail doctrine, which ensured that huge companies that went bust because of reckless working ethics would not be nationalised but just bailed out.
Let's skip ahead a bit - you don't need to be a genius to see that Boeing's employees were willingly and knowingly skimping on safety for the 737 because of management pressures, that the FAA was fully cognizant of these pressures, and that management and employees were well rewarded for their profit maximising.
It's time to call a spade a spade - corporate ethics is an oxymoron. The referee is wearing a blindfold, and the maximum penalty is that play gets stopped for a minute.
Edmund
Law, Ethics, & Consequences
Edmund had made an interesting point previously, that the corporate world, indeed the world at large is interested in the consequences of liability arising from breaches of the law. That is quite true. It doesn't however give a free pass to corporations for their actions, when they breach ethical guidelines, which are few and far between. At the end of the line, a moral objection to the action of a corporation appears toothless, except for a couple of items. In a deliberation in a jury room, morality is often more important than any code, either legal or ethical. The decision often comes down to what is reasonable, to the great unwashed public, the pool from which a jury is drawn. Therein lies justice. Where a corporation offends the sensibility of the public, or their customers, and where there is a choice available, pain may occur to the bottom line.
I have little faith in corporate entities ethics, and the law is an ass. However, I have observed 12 individuals gain consensus on what is right or wrong. Assuming that a government instrumentality will sort out problems historically has a poor record, no matter what the persuasion of the system, capitalistic, socialist or communist.