A sneak peek at the new edition of our CSR textbook

The new second edition of our textbook, Corporate Social Responsibility: Readings and Cases in a Global Context is due out a little later this year. Above is a first look at the cover, featuring a shot by Lucas Schifres of workers crimping stones on silver in a jewelry factory in Panyu, Guangzhou Province, China.

The photo is part of Schifres' Faces of Made in China series, which was featured on the New York Times "Lens" blog last year. The purpose of the series is to "consider the otherwise anonymous people who produce our essential possessions ...to put a face to labor in China". Whilst most of the photos in the series are simple portraits of Chinese workers, the cover shot shows more of the context in which Chinese-made goods are manufactured.

Schifres didn't only photograph the workers but also interviewed them too. One of the more surprising things he found was, despite concerns from the West about the social responsibility issues evident in many Chinese factories (as exemplified by the Foxconn/Apple controversies of the last few years) they actually found a real sense of pride among workers. As the NYT blog reports Schifres saying, "The answer was always, ‘Oh, we’re very proud; we’re happy that the products go all around the world' ... ‘This is good for China; this is good for our generation.’” “They have absolutely no idea about controversies around the world about the Made in China products,” he said.

This for us captures one of the central questions in CSR - i.e. what exactly is responsible corporate behavior in a global context? Different parts of world have different rules, standards, and expectations concerning social responsibility, but global corporations have to traverse this variety in developing their programmes and need to ensure that their global supply chains meet acceptable standards for working conditions, environmental impacts and other social considerations.

These and many other issues are covered in the book. It's designed for Masters students and advanced undergraduates studying Corporate Social Responsibility courses. The new edition will feature all new cases  (on Vodafone, HSBC and Tata), many new readings, and fully updated editorial content from ourselves and our co-editor Laura Spence. It's also going to have a great new companion website with all sorts of materials for students and instructors. We'll provide more details soon. The book will be out in the summer.

UPDATE
The book is now published. See our post on this and the new free download of Chapter 1

Are Americans working too much?

With many people currently enjoying or looking forward to their summer holidays it is sobering to consider some of the differences in expectation that workers in different countries will have about how much paid time off they can enjoy. Statutory minimum leave varies enormously by country, from zero days in the US, through to 5 working days in China, 10 working days in Canada, and all the way up to 25 working days plus public holidays in countries like Denmark and Norway. Of course, variations in legislated minimums give plenty of scope for more explicit CSR type policies in low-regulation countries such as the US, but even looking at the average leave taken across countries, Scandinavia and most of Europe far outpace North America. Sure, a lot of the talk now is about Americans not having enough jobs, but another way of looking at it is maybe some Americans are simply working too much.

We have been interested in debates about working hours, flexible work arrangements, forced overtime and the like for some time. In the first two editions of our Business Ethics textbook we included cases on young professionals and excessive working hours.  In the most recent 3rd edition, this changed to a case about forced labor, which is a related but quite different issue. These are complicated problems, especially when much of the excessive hours worked by professionals is, in principle, voluntary. Even in sweatshops, some argue that workers choose to work long hours for low pay, because it is better than the alternative - which is no job and no pay.

Anyway, arriving in the inbox today was a nice infographic from onlinemba.com, the fruits of whose labors we've featured before in our survey of the best and worst corporate responsibility infographics. It tells an interesting, and well documented, story of the problems of excessive working hours in the US. We're not sure the call for a return of a 40 hour week will be heeded in the current climate, but it certainly helps start an important conversation. And with many in the CSR world apparently uninterested in working hours in the developed world as a relevant topic, it provides a decent business case for changing that perspective.




Infographic source: OnlineMBA.com
Photo by LaPrimaDonna. Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Is selling human organs really so unethical?

Earlier this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on the rise in the illegal trade in human organs. The WHO estimates that more than 10,000 black market operations involving purchased human organs are now carried out every year. There are serious ethical and medical concerns associated with the practice. Sellers risk being exploited, buyers may be victims of scams, and both parties face far higher risks of medical complications due to the lack of proper medical care.

The problem is though, although the commercial trade in organs is in many respects morally repugnant, many of the problems associated with the illegal trade in organs are actually directly a result of its illegality. Backstreet operations, black market trading - these are the critical risk factors here, not its dubious moral status. Plus, for all the important concerns about the problem of poor people being exploited to sell their organs to the rich, it is important not to mix up what are two different ethical issues here - one about exploitation of organ sellers and one about whether the commercial trade in organs is something that is acceptable in society at all. Both of these are worth examining in a little more detail.

First off, lets bracket for a moment the problem of exploitation and just consider the ethics of commercial organ trading. Sure, we know the practice has been made illegal in almost every country - but is selling human organs really so bad? One major issue that we have to consider here is that, like it or not, the sale of human organs saves lives. Donations of organs from the deceased are simply too limited to meet demand almost everywhere. In the US, more than 100,000 people are currently waiting for organ donations.  In China ,it is estimated that a million people are currently in need of a kidney ... yet last year only something like 5000 actually received one. Most countries are facing a severe supply problem. So from a simple societal cost-benefit perspective, then,  providing the seller stays in relatively good health, and the buyer is able to live longer or better than they would have otherwise, the benefits would appear to exceed the costs. Without sufficient supply from other sources, commercial organ trade can make society as a whole better off.

That is not to deny that there are indeed very significant costs that have to be borne by the seller here in terms of potential health risks. Even if society can be shown to benefit in aggregate, not everyone benefits equally. After all, the seller is potentially putting their own life at risk here. But if we can  imagine a situation where the seller is provided with suitable safeguards to minimise these risks - through a guaranteed level of decent medical care for example - then the cost-benefit argument could certainly prevail. In fact, that is precisely why we do often permit some forms of voluntary non-paid donation: under the right conditions,  live organ donation can make a net positive benefit to society. In principle, that cost-benefit equation should not be materially changed by introducing a commercial transaction ... except of course we have thrown some actual financial costs and benefits into the mix.

To be sure, few of us are comfortable with the idea of selling organs for money. For critics, it only makes sense from a cost-benefit point of view if we ignore the more ambiguous costs involved, such as the loss of basic humanity involved in such an act. Simply put, it is not something we want to accept in a civilized society. A similar argument is also raised in relation to other "unacceptable" practices, such as euthanasia, prostitution and drug use. Legalization might well create benefits, minimize harms, or simply enable greater personal freedoms, but the law also has to codify the principles of  human society that we want to establish and live up to. And commercial trade in live organs, so the argument goes,  is against those basic principles.

Let's be clear though: those principles come at a cost - the cost of human lives. People are literally dying waiting for suitable organ donors. At a time when the illegal trade is actually growing, shouldn't we be revisiting the question of whether the commercial organ trade is really so unacceptable that it's worth letting people die for our principles? Isn't it time we asked whether the legal prohibition route is actually working?

The exploitation question is a different but no less important question. The prospect of the most disadvantaged in society selling their own body parts just to get by assaults our most basic principles of human dignity. Obviously we need to tackle poverty itself in a more concerted fashion to get to the heart of this problem. But in the meantime, the big question we have to ask is whether the decision to make the commercial trade in organs illegal is actually benefiting or further exacerbating the exploitation of the poor?

Regardless of its legal status, people will continue to do whatever they can to escape poverty, and for the truly desperate, their organs may be their most valuable asset. Pushing such people into the hands of criminals and unlicensed medical practitioners, however, is a recipe for adding yet more exploitation onto an already unfair situation.

Legalization by itself would not solve the problem.  But if we were to accept that, in principle at least, the trade in human organs might be socially acceptable, the real question then becomes: how could we do it in a responsible way so that people do not get exploited?

There's no easy answer to this, but it is possible to conceive of a tightly regulated system that could eliminate most if not all of the worst forms of exploitation. Price controls for organ donations, strict rules for participation as donors and recipients, mandatory counseling for prospective donors, enforcement of medical follow-up, quality control checks, a transparent system to ensure clear organ provenance - these are the kind of arrangements that a serious regulator might want to put in place.

Many governments probably won't have the will or the capability to do this effectively, and it's hardly a very encouraging sign that the only country currently operating a legalized system is that great bastion of freedom and security, Iran. But a few years ago the Singaporean Government was apparently also considering the issue, although nothing seems to have come of it. Who's to say that China wont be the next, especially given that they are currently operating a widely condemned practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. A voluntary system could hardly be more controversial. But who these days would really be brave enough to advocate legalization given the international consensus against the trade? Maybe it's time for those on the intermiable organ waiting lists to start getting organized.

 Photo by Lasse-san. Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Top 10 Corporate Responsibility Stories of 2010

Mermaids protesting the BP oil spill. Photo by Johnathaneric.

 It's been a big year for corporate responsiblity. A huge oil spill, continued ructions in the financial sector, landmark decisions in the courts, and a new dawn for online companies around human rights issues. It is never easy to pick the most important stories of the year. Some get huge coverage simply because they feature big brand companies. Some hardly even scratch the public consciousness despite having major implications. In other cases, it can be difficult to determine accurately what their long-run significance will be.

But here in the Crane and Matten control room, we've put our heads together to come up with what we regards as the top 10 corporate responsibility stories of the year. These are the events that we think will have the most lasting impact on the field. But it was a hard choice - narrowly missing the cut were the 10 year anniversary of the Global Compact, the FIFA World Cup corruption scandal, Unilever's "Sustainable Living" plan, Apple's labour violations, Wal-Mart's latest announcements on sustainable agriculture, Jerome Kerviel's massive fine, and American Apparel's rollercoaster ride through 2010, among others.

But, hey, not everyone can be a "winner". So if you think we're worng, or if we've missed off your biggest story of the year, do let us know. And while you're at it, take a moment to complete our poll on the right to help us find the top stories according to our readers.Here, though, is our top 10.

1. BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Deepwater Horizon was one of the world's largest ever oil spills, and understandably this story absolutely dominated 2010. Not only did it put a final nail in the coffin for BP's once vaunted sustainability reputation, but it heralded a major rethink about the viability of deep sea drilling. BP didn't cover itself in glory by failing to come up with a realistic remedy until far too late - and ended up picking up most of the tab, thereby putting paid to the usual assumption that pollution is simply an 'externality' of business. Really, this was the mother of all corporate responsibility crises in 2010.  

2. Google's battle for free speech
Google's withdrawal from China at the beginning of the year was a landmark decision in the battle for free speech on the web. A real clash of titans, no other story this year illustrated better the clash between government and big business around human rights issues. But Google's subsequent legal problems in Italy, where senior executives were convicted of privacy violations, demonstrated just how complicated this battle is going to be. 

3. WikiLeaks publication of the embassy cables
Who knows where this one will end up, or just what its long term significance will be for corporate responsibility? But it's hard to deny its significance as a major turning point in the fight for greater government transparency, and the contested role of the media and NGOs in bringing confidential information into the public realm. Heralded by some as the first great cyber war, the WikiLeaks maelstrom inevitably catapaulted online companies into the fray with predictably unpredictable results.   

4. Citizens United decision
The only court case to make it into the Top 10,  but according to President Obama the 5-4 decision by the US Supreme Court in Citizen's United vs Federal Election Committee "reversed a century of law" and "opened the floodgates" for corporations to play an ever greater role in US politics. According to the ruling, companies and other special interests can now spend as much as they like on influencing the outcome of elections. And why? Because despite their vast resources, companies should have rights to free speech on political matters the same as any other citizen. An historic ruling.

5. Toyota’s product safety recall
This case grabbed a lot of headlines in 2010, mostly because of the very scale of the recall and Toyota's previously unblemished safety reputation. This was a huge embarrasment for the Japanese car maker and showed up serious problems in the firm's management culture.

6. Bank bonuses 
Bank bonuses stayed in the headlines during 2010. Despite continued economic problems, huge public bailouts in Greece and Ireland, persistent unemployment, and widespread austerity measures, some banks managed to award bigger bonuses in 2010 than ever before.  No surprise that the public stayed angry with a bonus culture apparently so far removed from their day-to-day problems. But European regulators finally seemed to get the message with new guidelines released at the end of the year that looked set to dramatically change the bonus landscape across the entire continent.

Butcher in Haiti with food vouchers used to stimulate trade. Photo by DFID

7. Corporate response to the Haiti earthquake 
Few stories better illustrated the precarious role of business in international development than the corporate response to the Haiti earthquake back in January. The arrival of cruise ships full of vacationers represented for many the unacceptable face of corporate insensitivity and amoral consumerism. Yet, few denied that business had to be an essential ingredient in getting the stricken country back on its feet again. 

8. Greenpeace campaign against Sinar Mas palm oil 
Greenpeace won Ethical Corporation's campaigner of the year in 2010 for its work in combating deforestation. This was exemplified in the NGO's campaign against Indonesian palm oil producer Sinar Mas which saw them force Unilever, Nestle and others to cease buying from the company during the year. Greenpeace's spoof ad on YouTube for the Nestle chocolate bar Kit Kat went viral demonstrating how campaigners were effectively harnessing social media for anti-corporate protest. 

9. HP's termination of CEO Mark Hurd
Hewlett Packard has had its ethical ups and downs over the years, but few expected the company to follow through quite so severely when CEO Mark Hurd was found to have made fraudulent expense claims to cover up a relationship with a female contractor. Rejecting Hurd's offer to pay back the $20,000 he'd received for the claims, the highly regarded leader was ousted by the board for failing to live up to the company's code of conduct. This was an impressive commitment to ethical rules by anyone's standards. However, it angered many who thought the company was shooting itself in the foot. A tumbling stock price and Hurd's instatement at competitior Oracle showed how much pain there could be in doing the right thing.

10. India's 2G licence scandal
OK, so actually this happened in 2008, but it was only in the closing months of 2010 that the full extent of the 2G telecom spectrum licences scandal began to be revealed. In what some have called India's biggest scandal since independence, Telecommunications Minister Andimuthu Raja was forced to resign over allegations that he lost the Indian Government some $38 billion in revenues using an opaque permit system that was riven with corruption. Leaked tapes of secret phone calls with corporate lobbyists have poured oil on the fire. This could yet become India's Enron moment.

So that's our Top 10 for 2010. Doesn't make for particularly edifying reading, but it hasn't been all bad. In amongst the scandals and corruption there have been some genuine cases of ethical leadership in 2010, where companies like Google and HP have had to make some hard ethical choices that have cost them dear. No ne said corporate responsibility was easy.

The Birthday Party Begins

Ten year olds are in a funny age. Not quite children anymore, they are not grown ups either. They have learned the basics, reading and writing and calculus - but there is still a lot ahead of them.

I like the metaphor for the UN Global Compact ten year anniversary Summit. In the opening ceremony it became quite clear that indeed much has been achieved. To talk about business responsiblities is now widely legitmate and the guest list shows, that many companies have grown with it. This is also visible in who - next to Ban-Ki Moon (UN Secretary General) - was invited to give the major talk in this afternoon's opening ceremony: Wang Zhongyu, President, China Enterprise Confederation - China of all countries. Its nice that ten year olds still don't care too much about what the world around them thinks. And in fact one has to give Chinese businesses in the UNGC a lot of credit, certainly for their commitment and also for successes.

CSR is a world full of ambiguities, but today China's and Chinese businesses' record on the achievement of the ten principles was not on the agenda. Fair enough, this can come at another time.

Equally ambiguous I felt about a 5mins videoclip which was shown in the opening ceremony. I forgot the details, but it was incredibly cheesy, happy-clappy and goosepimply-emotional. Showing this at, say, the Christian Womens Knitting Association of South Arkansas' annual charity dinner - fine. But in a room with over a 1000 people from business (300 of which CEOs or the like)? I don't know. But hey, where shall a ten year old have already got a sense of style?

By the way, who started that fashion of showing a video clip with people talking in the clip while they are sitting in the flesh on the podium? This happened twice today. Why not just talk to each other?

Which happened finally, when we were told by Lord Hastings, the master of ceremonies for the Summit, to say hello to the person right of us and the person left of us. I was so relieved we did not have to kiss them. My neighbor on the left was from Uruguay, btw. He contgratulated me on Germany's win today in the Soccer World Cup. So it was nice after all...

Ambiguity also came up with the terminology in the world of CSR. CSR for most people who spoke today is still seen largely as philantropy while 'Sustainability' - the title of the Summit - in their view looks more at making operations and core business processes socially responsible. It all goes to show that language and concepts are, at the end of the day, all ephemeral and relative. Like ten year olds and their slang today. Would I understand a text message from them? Probably not, but if it means something good, I don't care.

Google in China (cont'd)

We have blogged in the past a couple of times about Google’s business operations in China and in the fresh from the press 3^rd Edition of our book we have an entire case (in Chapter 5) on the issue. In recent weeks this story has gotten a new instalment with Google’s reaction to hacker attacks on their Chinese based servers.

On the surface, Google’s decision to leave China and to base their operations in Hong Kong (which is not subject to the same censorship as mainland China) might make good business sense. After all China contributes only an estimated 1-2% to Google’s overall turnover and the attacks on their source code by (allegedly government employed ) Chinese hackers touches on vital commercial secrets of the company. And much of the lamented censorship in fact can also be seen as nothing more than a thinly disguised effort by the Chinese to favor local competitors against foreign providers, most notably the Chinese engine Baidu.

However, last week’s edition of the German magazine DER SPIEGEL raises some interesting further aspects of the case: ‘For the first time a Western company has dared to openly criticise Beijing’s comprehensive control of the Internet as a trade barrier and to draw consequences.’ The magazine in fact sees Google’s stance as nothing less than a new phase in geopolitics: ‘Now there is war: Google against China, a new transnational superpower against another new superpower which uses ... decades old means of power and oppression. The soft power of a gigantic agglomeration of knowledge faces the hard power of a classic nation state.’

This provides a remarkable context for Google’s recent decision. By relocating their operations they have done what many heads of state have not dared to raise with similar clarity: that censorship is fundamentally opposed to the core values of most Western democracies and that the Chinese approach, to put it neutrally, is not compatible with it. Given the substantial reactions to Google’s decision by their Chinese customers and supporters one could argue that Google has attempted something similar to those who gathered on Tiananmen Square 21 years ago (hence the title of DER SPIEGEL).

In this context it is largely irrelevant whether Google’s decision was just a sound business proposition. Even if so, it shows how globalization has transformed private companies in political players on the world stage. Though in all fairness, there is also ample ground to admire Google’s decision from an ethical perspective. After all, China remains a huge future market for internet services. As Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview in DER SPIEGEL, his decision was also informed by his experiences of government harassment and violence growing up in the Soviet Union. So the Google case will continue to showcase some of the basic insights of business ethics: to marry ethical and economic constraints is a struggle and the choice is rarely between the good and the evil option, rather than between the lesser of two evils or the best of two good options.

Photo reproduced under Creative Commons license.

More on Google's growing political influence

When we reported yesterday on Google's recent spat with China we pointed to the growing political influence and power that the company was wielding. Anyone that takes on the Chinese Government must be pretty sure their political muscle.

One of our readers helpfully pointed us to a story by Chris O'Brien that ran in the Mercury News over the weekend, which throws more light on this trend, indicating how Google's spend on lobbying in Washington DC had mushroomed in recent years. O'Brien writes:

"In just five years, the search engine giant has gone from almost no presence in Washington to spending more money on lobbying than all but one other Silicon Valley company in 2009. And in the past three months, Google topped all other valley spenders."

The charts produced by the Mercury News show just how steep this curve has been, and how its lobbying expenditures are even starting to catch up with its fellow technology giants Microsoft and IBM:


The fact of Google's activities in DC is hardly surprising, but it is nice to get some detail behind the company's changing political status .... and to see just how much the company now sees policy makers as a key stakeholder. In a companion piece, O'Brien also takes a look at the changing face of the types of issues Google is lobbying on, and at some of the revolving doors between Google and the US government in terms of staffing. As he makes clear though, this is pretty much par for the course for a major multinational corporation - the point is not that Google is different (as it often likes to claim) but that it is essentially much the same. The big difference though is the speed of change, and the readiness with which Google has equipped itself for dealing with its political context - or as economists like to call it, the 'non-market environment'.

When we looked into our crystal ball at the beginning year, it looked likely that 2010 would be a pivotal year for Google in terms of corporate responsibility issues. There is every chance that with its growing power and the major impact it is having on industries such as media and publishing, a backlash could easily start to take off. However, the behind the scenes lobbying and the putative game-changing in China suggest that Google is reading the signs and seeking to head-off the critics before they can build up momentum. Getting this one right could be critical.


Figure copyright Mercury News

Google vs China: upping the ante on industrial espionage

One of the big business ethics stories of the last month has been Google's announcement in mid January of a 'new approach to China' following reported attacks on the company's IT infrastructure from inside the country. Google's announcement spoke of targeted attacks on the email accounts of known human rights activists, both within and outside China, as well as other security breaches of Google and 'at least 20 other large companies'. Whilst the announcement of this degree of hacking would have been cause for concern, the explicit link to the surveillance of advocates of human rights in China was positively incendiary. Google was not just talking about regular industrial espionage here but about state-sponsored spying for political purposes. So suddenly the company had launched itself into a diplomatic row - albeit one between a company and a government - rather than its usual commercial scrapes.

The announcement didn't just make the headlines because of Google's allegations though. The company dropped another huge bomb by declaring that it would no longer continue to operate a censored version of its search engine in China - despite being required to by the Chinese authorities. 'Over the next few weeks' the company announced, 'we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.'

Since the furor over Google's announcement blew up a couple of weeks ago, numerous commentators have offered their view on what's going on. Many have focused on Google's ongoing troubles in securing in market leadership in China, (suggesting that the human rights concerns have been used as a smokescreen behind which to withdraw gracefully from a commercial failure), while some have presented it as a belated switch to principled behavior. Some have even reckoned that Google is using the publicity around the announcement to build awareness and brand loyalty in China. Working out the motivations of the company in picking such a huge fight in one of the world's most important markets is never going to be easy.

Three things that have particularly stood out for us though in all this are these, and we think they offer some salutary lessons for the brave new world of business ethics that is starting to emerge.

1. Google the 'political corporation'. Google clearly feels big enough and powerful enough to pick a fight with one of the most powerful governments in the world.... over human rights. On the one hand, this is great in that it means that we don't have to just rely on the government to protect our human rights. Some big companies (whatever their motivations may be) may also be willing to do some of the heavy lifting from time to time (at least when when it suits them). In some of our writings, we've refereed to this as the corporate administration of citizenship rights (yes, not the catchiest phrase we'll admit, but it does the job). On the other hand, isn't this an issue that national governments - especially the US Government - should be leading on, rather than, as Hilary Clinton did, simply backing-up Google once it has broken cover. Still, whatever one thinks about this Google is clearly feeling big and important ... and perhaps also starting to feel the heat that comes with such size. It could just be getting in quick before the ethical backlash over its mammoth reach begins in earnest. With its fingers in all kinds of free speech, privacy and intellectual property issues, Google is fast becoming the essential political corporation of the 21st century.

2. One step forward, two steps back for the Global Network Initiative. The global what??! If you've not heard of it, well you're not alone. In the latest bout of Google vs China, the initiative hardly even scored a mention in the media storm. However, the GNI was launched back in 2008 to much fanfare, and was promoted as the new approach that internet companies were going to deal with censorship issues after getting their knuckles rapped by the US government for bowing to the Chinese government's demands. Well, the 'new approach' before the latest new approach of course. As a partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a score of NGOs and academic institutions, the GNI held out considerable promise for delivering a more responsible approach to a tricky ethics problem that frankly, was not going to go away fast. Fast forward to January 2010 and GNI advocates could well point to Google's announcement as proof that the initiative is starting to have a significant effect. After all, one if its members is making a major song-and-dance about its commitments to internet freedoms. The trouble is though, no one at Google thought to mention the GNI, or suggested that it played a role in its decision. More worryingly, one of Google's main partners in the initiative, Microsoft, publicly criticized the company for it stand in China. Oops, hardly a hallmark of a strong partnership.

3. Industrial espionage goes up a level. First, spies worked for governments, just like in the old movies. Then they worked for companies ... in fact just like in the (new) movies, such as the 2009 Julia Roberts' release Duplicity. But some of the big news stories now in industrial espionage involve both companies and governments. It's a kind of semi-industrial espionage. The Google story was just the latest and best known incident of this government-business espionage, but clearly its becoming an increasingly prominent feature of the contemporary business landscape. Just this last weekend, the Sunday Times in the UK reported on a leaked British security service document accusing China of bugging, bribing, and blackmailing UK business executives in an attempt to secure commercial secrets. Notably though, here the warning came not from a multinational corporation, but from the national security service (the irony of MI5 warning against spying was not lost on many of the newspapers' readers who commented on the story). Either way though, as these incidents suggest, the stakes being played in industrial espionage have been significantly raised. The question, of course, is how best to respond ... and whether governments or companies should be leading the line.


Photo by Mykl Roventine. Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Oil

While in New York recently, we took in Edward Burtynsky’s latest exhibition, ‘Oil’, at the Hasted Hunt Kreutler Gallery in Chelsea. It’s an impressive collection, put together over more than a decade, and tracing the value chain of oil from extraction to use, and disposal.

Some of the shots are simply stunning, more akin to abstract art than photojournalism. From Australian mines to Azerbaijani wells, and Shanghai car factories to LA freeways the overwhelming scale and embeddedness of oil as a feature of the contemporary global landscape is thrown right in our faces. Burtynsky’s large format pictures are simultaneously shocking and beautiful, prompting for us a strong, but somewhat ambiguous response. Yes, this addiction to oil has got out of hand; yes, our thirst for oil has ravaged the environment; but, wow, isn’t this pinnacle of modernity also in some ways just downright amazing?

Now for those of us interested in issues of corporate responsibility such ambiguity is nothing new. Balancing the good with the bad, the value creation for some with the value destruction for others, is what much of what our field is all about. But Burtynsky takes this a little further. By seeking to absorb us in the global experience of oil, by joining up the dots in ways that make us want to learn more about what we’re looking at, what we are … yes, enjoying, he draws into the debate not just business ethics nerds like Crane and Matten, but also people that might like a good picture but who might never otherwise give much of a second thought to the ‘oil problem’.

Burtynsky’s exhibition, which is showing simultaneously in New York, Toronto and Washington, is also accompanied by a book, also called simply ‘Oil’. As he says in the introduction:

“In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine. It was then that I began the oil project. Over the next ten years I researched and photographed the largest oil fields I could find. I went on to make images of refineries, freeway interchanges, automobile plants and the scrap industry that results from the recycling of cars. Then I began to look at the culture of oil, the motor culture, where masses of people congregate around vehicles, with vehicle events as the main attraction. These images can be seen as notations by one artist contemplating the world as it is made possible through this vital energy resource and the cumulative effects of industrial evolution.”

Growing up in Ontario as the son of a former GM worker, Burtynsky had his initiation into these cumulative effects at first hand. He has described for instance how his father’s death from cancer (and that of many of his co-workers) might be linked to PCBs in oil used in the workplace. The moral ambivalence of flying in a helicopter to take beautiful shots of the substance that likely killed his father injects an urgency into his work that makes it all the more compelling. Of course, as fellow Ontarians now, this has particular resonance for us. It’s perhaps no surprise that a Burtynsky piece hangs in the boardroom on our school … and next week the film based on his work, Manufactured Landscapes, is going to be shown in our Responsible Business Movie Night series. But Burtynsky speaks not just to his neighbours; his captivating depictions of the global culture built around oil have something for everyone. And you don’t even need to grow your carbon footprint flying to New York to see it. Click here for some large format shots at Photo District News and here for some previews from The Guardian newspaper.

Ethics pledges, business schools, and the financial crisis

With all the talk recently of greedy bankers and guilty fraudsters, some people have been looking to business schools as a potential source of some of the problems. The New York Times recently published a stinging criticism highlighting the failure of schools to focus their students' skills and attention on anything more than short term shareholder value. Not surprisingly, it generated a lot of attention, not only in the business school community, but also among the broader readership of the paper.

Obviously schools can not be wholly to blame for sowing the seeds of the financial crisis, but the points made about the inattention to ethics and social responsibility in many MBA programs are well made. Things are changing, but there are still only a few schools (among which we'd count our own) where such critical issues have become deeply and meaningfully embedded in the curriculum. Students meanwhile have demonstrated that they are increasingly attentive to social and environmental issues. Survey evidence, growing course enrollments, and escalating membership of student clubs and competitions around CSR issues are all testament to that. Another way that this has started to surface though is in the emergence of "ethics pledges" - a growing phenomenon, particularly in the USA.


Emanating originally from Bentley University in the USA, the ‘Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility’ is perhaps the best known of these pledges. It is based around a pledge to ‘to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job’ that signers might consider, and commits signers ‘to try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which [they] work.’ The initiative’s website enables potential organizers to learn about how to organize on-campus campaigns, and to download posters, wallet cards, and other resources. So basically, the pledge is about sticking to your values, regardless of the various pressures or seductions of the workplace. Of course, making career choices can be hard when you want to make a difference in society. What if a potential employer seems to be offering you a great position but you’re not convinced that it shares your values? The ethics pledge aims to help students navigate these tough choices while keeping their commitments to ethics and social responsibility intact.

More than a hundred schools and colleges are using the pledge, but other initiatives have also emerged including the ‘Shanghai Consensus’ pledge organized by the China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, and for business leaders, the ‘Business Ethics Pledge’, which begins ‘I pledge allegiance, in my heart and soul, to the concepts of honesty, integrity, and quality in business.’ Unlike the other alternatives, the Business Ethics Pledge even allows you to sign electronically and start advertising your business on-line as a signatory.

As might be expected, such pledges have been particularly popular in North America and, to a lesser extent China and Taiwan, reflecting perhaps the focus in such cultures on individual level agency in business ethics. Those who subscribe to such initiatives clearly believe in the importance of personal integrity and of the power of individuals to make a difference. As the Business Ethics Pledge founder, Shel Horowitz says, ‘This is about changing the world! About creating a climate where businesses are expected to behave ethically, and where executives who try to drag their companies into the unethical swamplands find that nobody's willing to carry out their orders.’

We're not wholly convinced by this - especially since so many of the problems we're seeing today are not so much the result of individual miscreants (well, OK, maybe Bernie Madoff could have done with keeping to a decent pledge), but because of deeper level structural issues in financial markets, governance and remuneration systems, and regulatory problems. But still, when the focus of attention is so much on changing the culture of business, a good old fashioned pledge of allegiance may not be such a bad idea. After all, you've got to start somewhere. And it will certainly show those business schools that've been slow to get their ethics education together that their students mean business. Just not business at any cost.

A step forward for technology companies and internet freedoms

If you've been following, as we have, the story of internet companies being implicated in human rights abuses around privacy and freedom of expression - see one of our earlier blogs here - then you'll be interested to see that Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, three of the companies most in the firing line on these issues, have launched a new multi-stakeholder program, the 'Global Network Initiative' aimed at tackling the problem.

This has come in a little under the radar, as there has not been much news of these developments in the business press leading up to the launch, but it appears to have arrived as a pretty well worked out program. With a tagline of "Protecting and Advancing Freedom of Expression and Privacy in Information and Communications Technologies", the initiative is a partnership between tech companies, human rights groups, academic institutions, and other institutions involved in media and communications freedoms. It has a set of principles, guidelines on implementation, including a commitment to human rights impact assessments, and a built-in review process. Most importantly, there is also a commitment to institute independent monitoring of companies' compliance with their commitments (though not, as far as we can tell, a commitment to report publicly).

It is, it has to be said, a difficult area to navigate for technology companies. Dealing with overseas governments can raise a host of problems that they are ill prepared to deal with, especially when they are operating overseas through a subsidiary or joint venture. So the initiative is certainly welcome. It establishes a clear framework for action that should make a meaningful difference to decision makers inside the organizations concerned. Of course, the devil will be in the detail of how such principles will be realized in practice. Especially interesting in this respect for us are the commitments to actively lobby governments to shift their expectations and demands:

"Participating companies will encourage governments to be specific, transparent and consistent in the demands, laws and regulations (“government restrictions”) that are issued to restrict freedom of expression online.

Participants will also encourage government demands that are consistent with international laws and standards on freedom of expression. This includes engaging proactively with governments to reach a shared understanding of how government restrictions can be applied in a manner consistent with the Principles.

When required to restrict communications or remove content, participating companies will:

• Require that governments follow established domestic legal processes when they are seeking to restrict freedom of expression.
• Interpret government restrictions and demands so as to minimize the negative effect on freedom of expression.
• Interpret the governmental authority’s jurisdiction so as to minimize the negative effect on to freedom of expression."

There are so many tricky details in that one passage alone, but it is heartening to see that the participants seem to be fully aware of the complications. As the Wall Street Journal blog, China Journal, put it:

For the most part, however, members decided not to include specific rules on issues such as where to host servers — outside servers can keep data out of problematic territories — because they felt that fast-changing technology might make them quickly irrelevant.

“The idea is that we believe the guidelines will need to be reviewed, and we will have to revise them as we take into account the actual experience,” says Sharon Hom, the executive director of Human Rights in China, which also helped develop the framework over two years. “It envisions an ongoing process of learning and sharing best practices,” she says.

So, there is still a lot to work out as the initiative unfolds. Let's just hope that Microsoft, Yahoo and Google can stay friends long enough to do all that mutual learning and sharing before they fall out with one another again...

Hope or despair for CSR in China?

This week, we are hosting a long-time colleague, Wayne Visser, here in Toronto. Wayne, who co-edited the A-Z of CSR with Dirk and completed his PhD under Andy's supervision, is now at the University of Cambridge and has launched a new social enterprise CSR International - a knowledge and networking organization for CSR professionals. We've been talking lots about CSR and sustainability issues and Wayne has just posted an interesting blog on CSR in China that we think you'll enjoy reading:

CSR in China: Cause for Hope or Despair?

This article looks at some of the mind-numbing facts and recent developments in CSR, as it wrestles with the question of whether to feel hopeful or depressed about the future of China and world. Let us begin with the facts...

Yahoo facing up to human rights in China?

It's been a heady time for business and human rights recently what with the UN Special Representative, John Ruggie's final report having just been released to general mumurings of support.

His approach of "protect, respect and remedy" makes a lot of sense as an organizing framework, and whilst it falls short of the kind of normative principles and binding regulations that some critics were hoping for, his focus on providing some much needed clarity on what it means for businesses to manage human rights responsibilities is one that we are happy to see. The message that companies do have responsibilities in this arena, and distinct ones from government at that, provides an important mark in the sand in terms of identifying some of the political responsibilities of corporations.

All this is good timing for news to emerge about Yahoo's response to the government censorship issue in China that hit the headlines a few years ago (and that we wrote about in our Business Ethics text). Of course, Yahoo has been mainly drawing attention recently in respect to its battles with Microsoft about their abortive takeover. But the good people at Ethical Corporation recently reported on developments in the censorship issue that have been overshadowed somewhat by all the takeover speculation.

It turns out that following a dressing down by the US authorities, and a lawsuit from the World Organisation for Human Rights (which was eventually settled out of court), Yahoo has made some efforts to enage in what Ruggie would call the "remedy" component of business and human rights - such as paying legal bills for imprisioned Yahoo customers, setting up a fund to support human rights, and lobbying the US government to press for the release of political dissidents imprisioned by the Chinese authorities as a result of Yahoo's release of user information.

Of course, all this does not detract from the continuing responsibility the company should have for protecting the human rights of its stakeholders in the first place. But at least it does show that firms can play a role in pressing for human rights at a political level. This is in marked contrast to the Olympics sponsors, all of which have resolutely refused to discuss the possibility of any political response to events in Tibet. As the Adidas CEO recently said, pressure to issue a statement on human rights in China was an "effort to drag us into politics, and we will not allow that to happen".

Why the difference? Well the main point here is that Yahoo's involvement in human rights comes from people actually using its products - something that, in the parlance of global governance, falls directly within their "sphere of influence". The Olympics sponsors, however, are more removed from the issue, and so can realistically make a case for having rather less influence. After all, people are not going to be arrested for wearing Adidas sneakers. Such assessments though are, of course, a somewhat inexact science. However, these are some of the major issues that UN, Yahoo, Adidas and others concerned with business and human rights will have to grapple with in the years to come.

CSR and democracy in China

This week’s blog comes from Shanghai, where Crane and Matten have been involved in various speaking engagements over the last years at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). There are two conferences on CSR in Shanghai this week both of which were fascinating.

CSR is definitely on the agenda here. Not just for big western multinationals, but also for local companies and entrepreneurs. Yes, a lot of what was on display is corporate propaganda, but there is some real evidence of what companies do, too.

The conferences gave a lot of food for thought for our ongoing research work. CSR in China casts some particularly interesting light on the role of CSR and democracy. Examples of how companies conduct stakeholder consultations, attempt at securing participation, protecting property rights or providing access to health, education and security – corporations here in their CSR activities pretty much emulate certain traditional governmental jobs.

But not only that. In fact these companies apply a model of interaction to their stakeholders that treats them basically similar to the status we would associate with citizens in western democracies. The obvious question is: if western companies do their western-style CSR in China, are they not effectively implementing micro spaces of liberal democracy? Stronger even: are CSR-active corporations, at the end of the day, part of some subversive movement towards democracy by operating this approach in the way they conduct their CSR projects with their stakeholders? The jury is out. But the tensions between an inclusive, participatory CSR model on the one hand and a political system that leaves little space for democracy are palpable.

Time for multinationals to step up to the mark in Burma

The debate about the role of multinational corporations propping up Burma's oppressive regime has been a long and fractious one. It's something that we in have discussed in our business ethics book, and which has been widely documented elsewhere. But with the country suddenly in the midst of a huge natural disaster that has already claimed some 22,000 lives, now is clearly the time to go beyond debate and for any companies still doing business there to start rolling up their sleeves.

Many commentators have claimed that Wal-Mart's major ethical turning point came when it launched a massive aid operation in the face of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005. So is Cyclone Nargis going to be the catalyst for any of the hundreds of multinations doing business with Burma to demonstrate some concrete proof that their business links can bring positive social benefits to the Burmese people? After all, the common argument used by companies involved in Burma is that they can benefit ordinary people more by investing there than divesting. So this is a real opportunity to finally show the world that this whole argument is more than just a lame excuse for profiting from human rights abuses.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) latest list of companies doing business with Burma includes Caterpillar (USA), China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), Daewoo International Corporation (Korea), Siemens (Germany), Gas Authority of India (GAIL), GlaxoSmithKline (UK), Hyundai (Korea), and Total (France). If anyone is going to be having a Wal-Mart moment in response to Cyclone Nargis, surely it should be one of these. For once, a bit of "disaster capitalism" could actually do some good.

Good news from China

We have been talking about China quite a bit recently. Not only on this blog, but also in numerous discussions and emails with our current and former students, various issues around the Olympics have come up. One of the sentiments voiced particularly by our Chinese readers was that it is quite hard to be Chinese these days. With all these critical questions asked about the politics of the country the debate can all too easily sound as if it is about bringing an entire country and its people wholesale into discredit.

Believe us, with one of the authors of this blog coming from a country with quite a notorious legacy in the 20th century, we can empathize with that feeling. Therefore, the more we are happy to report some interesting news on China and business ethics this week.

On Thursday, it was front page news in the New York Times that Chinese authorities successfully broke up a child labor ring in southern China’s Guangdong Province. More than 100 children between 13 and 15, often kidnapped from other parts of the country, were liberated from ‘captive, almost slavelike conditions and minimal pay’.

The article demonstrates a growing concern for human rights among Chinese authorities. It also provides an interesting perspective on the ethical issues involved. One factor is the sheer size of the country, which makes it tricky to enforce even the best intentions of the central government. Furthermore, it highlights that despite China’s economic boom, considerable parts of the population are still living in relative poverty and that cheap labour from rural China is in much demand from coastal regions feeling the pinch of rising costs.

These things take time, as we in the west should know all too well. In our business ethics book (p.298) we discuss Tom Donaldson’s argument that in applying human rights to a situation, the general context of economic development has to be taken into account. One or two centuries ago, European or North American children indeed played a key role in contributing to the family income, just think of Charles Dickens’ novel ‘Oliver Twist’.

The article also puts this governmental crack down in the context of the Olympics. As unpleasant as all this international criticism might be – it obviously has an effect. And as predicted earlier in our blog, businesses are in the front line if it comes to the locus of change. Perhaps most heartening of all though is that details of the child labour ring were uncovered by the Chinese media, not the usual suspects from overseas.

During the cold war, progressive political leaders such as the famous Willy Brandt were vilified for their ‘change through rapprochement’ politics between West and East. Arguably, by hindsight this was a key element in bringing down the Iron Curtain. It seems that with China, the same strategy might work. That’s why hosting the Olympics, maintaing close economic ties, and encouraging media freedoms, could be key for the journey ahead.

On a more personal note, Crane and Matten had other good news from China this week. Brokered by one of our students, a leading Chinese University Press has taken up discussions with our publisher to prepare a Chinese translation of ‘Business Ethics’! We keep you posted on these developments. But no promise yet that we will ever master a Chinese blog for that one…

Giving olympic sponsors a sporting chance?

For those of you that have been following our entries on the upcoming Beijing Olympics, we thought this article, "Navigating Olympic Sponsorship: Marketing Your Brand without Alienating the World" from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania might be of interest (thanks to Elizabeth Watson for alerting us to this one). It gives a good overview of some of the issues that the Olympics' corporate sponsors will have to juggle in the face of the political protests. As one of the Wharton professors comments in the article:

"Corporations that want to sponsor the Games have to navigate the political undercurrents ... I wouldn't be surprised if many underestimated the potential for [the Games] to turn into an international issue and thought instead, 'We can reach a billion eyeballs; the political stuff will just go away. But politics isn't about money. It's about hope and fear and common purpose and identity."

As the article rightly says, it is hardly surprising that the Games are a political focal point, and indeed, they often have been over the years. The difference now though is that the politics are far more embedded in economics than they once were. What with China being such an important trading partner for many corproations, not to mention the huge sponsorship deals involved, the incentives to avoid rocking the boat are there for all to see.

As we've already said, it's a little too early to tell what the consequences are going to be for the corporate sponsors, but one potential outcome mooted in the Wharton article may just be rattling a few nerves at Coca Cola, McDonalds, Volkswagon and the other sponsors. As anyone who has visited China will be aware, broadcasters in the PRC have a definite proclivity to black-out broadcasts at the slightest suggestion of anything controversial. After spending billions on sponsorship, the last thing the multinationals will want to see is a blank screen. Well, that's not counting the potential for "an unlucky photo or video clip of, say, Chinese police cracking a protester over the head in Beijing with a General Electric, Johnson & Johnson or Visa logo in the background". Unlucky? Or it just part and parcel of the heady brew of business, politics and sport?

The torched journey of the torch

We have talked about the Olympics in Beijing 2008 in an earlier blog. So here we are again. It teaches us some fascinating lessons about the shift in politics globally.

After massive protests which partly stopped the journey of the Olympic torch in Paris yesterday, we are awaiting its arrival in San Francisco today. Pictures on TV don’t promise an exactly smooth further ride. With Richard Gere and Desmond Tutu among the protesters this will be another high profile spotlight on the fact that China – despite being an accepted player in the global economic community – by many is still considered a pariah in terms of democracy and human rights.

It is interesting to watch into which arena these inherently political issues have waned. Fair enough, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel as heads of two Western governments have cancelled their participation in the opening ceremony. A symbolic gesture of distancing from what some commentators see as re-run of the 1936 Olympics. Back then, another regime instrumentalized the Olympics for gaining international legitimacy.

But so far, most democratic leaders in the West have shied away from raising louder voices, let alone action. Also precious little so far to hear about Chinese ‘flame attendants’, ripping off Tibetan headbands from torchbearers or wrestling down protestors. These ‘men in blue’, according the BBC, ‘in fact, the cream of China’s armed police’, so far happily did their work on the streets of Athens, London or Paris.

So, the loudest and clearest voices come from the streets all around the globe. They are led by activists and citizens who voice their anger and concern. Their tactics are well known: linking their cause to high-profile events provides visibility to an otherwise neglected issue. Greenpeace, as we discuss in Case 10 in the book, has used this tactic successfully at the Sydney 2000 Olympics in introducing the Greenfreeze technology.

It will be exciting to watch how these dynamics will further unfold. It is highly likely that civil society protests will continue. From a business ethics perspective, the jury is out whether all the companies sponsoring the Olympics are in fact in for a major PR disaster. Executives at Coca Cola, Volkswagen or Adidas have a tricky nettle to grasp.

Not only is the value and integrity of their global brand at stake. Moreover, they all have elaborate policies on CSR, ethics or sustainability. Just as we speak, they might be well advised to revisit their take on the Beijing Olympics. We hope they have enough managers literate in business ethics to help them with this task.

Nike, China, and the Olympics

It looks like the 2008 Beijing Olympics are shaping up to be a major occasion for discussion of all kinds of social, ethical, and environmental issues. From human rights, to pollution, climate change, and a whole host of other issues, campaigners and activists are using the global pulling power of the Olympics to focus on some of the darker sides of the Chinese economic miracle. We've already had the Hollywood movie director Steven Spielberg resigning from his role in the games in protest against China's support for Sudan in the wake of the Darfur crisis. And, with corporations taking an ever greater role in global sporting events like these, we can expect the anti-corporate movement to get in full swing for a summer of olympian protests.

Some companies though are taking the lead in getting their story straight early. Nike is one of the forerunners here with the recent publication of a China supplement to its corporate responsibility report, 'Innovate for a Better World'. It makes for interesting reading.

To begin with, the report makes it clear that Nike and China's fortunes are inextricably linked. Not only are a third of all Nike shoe's produced in China, but China has also become the company's second biggest market. Mark Parker, the Nike CEO and President has this to say in his introduction to the report:

"For Nike the Beijing Olympics provide an opportunity to share China’s importance to our business. China produced 35 percent of Nike’s footwear in fiscal 2007 and is a substantial sourcing market for our apparel and equipment. This year we’re on course to achieve $1 billion in sales – making China our second largest market outside the U.S. China is key to our continued growth and success. Nike and China will succeed together."

Make no mistake, Nike needs China right now, probably more even than China needs Nike. So for Nike it is critical for the integrity of their hard won, newly minted reputation for corporate responsibility that the Olympics do not go seriously awry when it comes to ethical issues. And getting their defence lined up before the criticisms come flying in looks to be a good strategy at this stage. Nike isn't just sitting hoping that it doesn't get fired on, but is actually putting its head above the parapet and publishing data to show whats going right with their China operation. OK, so its less expansive about what's going wrong, but that's hardly much of a surprise. And taking the step to publish the report in the first place - and to make sure it is based on documented evidence - is interesting in itself as a strategy to try and diffuse the potential problems that might arise as the world starts focusing its attentions on China during 2008.

Nike has had to learn the hard way that defensiveness and secrecy in the face of ethical criticisms isn't always the best option, so we shall see if this new approach to transparency works out the way they're hoping. There is always the danger of course that by drawing attention to their operations in China, Nike just ends up as the main focus of attack - or even that it spurs their critics to dig even further to find some bad news. But, from where we are sitting now, it looks like a good way to start getting ready for a summer of considerable heat.

Like many other texts, our new CSR textbook includes a case on Nike's adventures in Asia, so it will be interesting to see how this next chapter turns out, and whether the Olympics comes to be regarded as a case study of Nike's increasing confidence in this arena, or an own-goal that teaches us all something new about the perils of conducting responsible business in China

And the Oscar for best business ethics movie goes to....

Those of you that have noticed the "Ethics on Screen" feature in our business ethics book, or that have come across the film series, Doing the Business that we were involved in starting up at Nottingham, will be well aware of our interests in exploring corporate responsibility issues at the movies. With the awards season in full swing, and Oscar night less than a week away, we thought we would reflect on a few of the films that have been released in the last year that have addressed business ethics issues in one way or another. Here, for starters, are four of our favourites...

There Will Be Blood
First up, and top of many people's list come Oscar time, is this quirky epic about the early days of the oil industry in the US. Tracing the fortunes of the oil man Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), the film provides a fascinating account of the emergent social compact wrangled out between industry and the local community. Day-Lewis plays a hard-grafting, hard bargaining, and ultimately hard headed prospector who pushes the ethical line in his somewhat underhand negotiations for drilling rights. But in an early manifestation of what some might recognise now as a shaky form of CSR, albeit of a decidely self-interested variety, Plainview's investment in the community sees one small town start to flourish as a result of its oil reserves, with a new church and other infrastructure coming to the once impoverished community. Most notable here is the battle between capitalism and religion that frames the film, as Plainview fights against the local preacher for power, control, and for the rich rewards from the precious resources that we are still fighting over today. In the end, it has to be said that the film's message, if it has one, about corporate responsibility is rather opaque. But there is lots of fun to be had poring over some of the allegories, especially at a time when companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell are breaking profitability records on both sides of the Atlantic, and when issues of oil, religion, and capitalism continue to dominate the debate about the war in Iraq.

Michael Clayton
Another Oscar nominated feature, this time staring George Clooney as a fixer in a corporate law firm. Here's what Warner Brothers say this one is about - as you can see, it is classic business ethics territory:

"...Michael Clayton is an in-house fixer at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen's dirtiest work at the behest of the firm's co-founder, Marty Bach. Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture, and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class-action suit that Clayton's firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach's brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life...."

Like many films before it, including movies such as The Insider, Boiler Room,and Glengarry Glen Ross, Michael Clayton is all about how our personal ethics intertwine with the harsh realities of corporate ethics, and the choices we sometimes have to make in navigating between them.

Up the Yangtze
When programming the 'Doing the Business' series, we always struggled to find good quality Asian movies that dealt seriously with business ethics issues. With rapid economic transformations in India, China, and elsewhere though, a number of excellent movies have started to come out that chart some of these developments. Up the Yangtze is one of these - a sharly observed documentary about a luxury tour boat on the famous Chinese river that provides us with a unique view of the massive Three Gorges megadam project. The film traces the experiences of one of the workers on the boat and her role in the Chinese 'economic miracle'. Assembling insights from villages flooded by the dam project, the burgeoning tourist trade, and the brash urban elite, the movies provides a kaleidescopic view of a country undergoing enormous social and economic transformation - and the ethical issues and problems that inevitably come in their wake.


It's a Free World
Many of Ken Loach's films have provided a harsh but realistic picture of those at the bottom of the economic pile - the immigrant cleaners (Bread and Roses), railworkers (The Navigators) and others that are invariably the losers in the casino of capitalism. His latest, It's a Free World, explores the underworld of migrant workers in London, and the firms that recruit them. It focuses on Angie, a hardworking and determined recruiter who has suffered some some of the injustices of the flexible labour market herself, and is now to prove a point by starting up on her own. As Loach's film production company, Sixteen Films, puts it:

"... Angie sets up a recruitment agency with her flat-mate Rose, working in a twilight zone between gangmasters, employment agencies and the migrant workers they place. This is a tale set against the reality of the Anglo Saxon miracle of flexible labour, globalisation, double shifts and lots of happy, happy, happy consumers: Us."

It is not, it has to be said, a happy film. But as a gritty, realistic, and clear sighted view of a slice of the labour market that most of us rarely catch much of a glimpse of, it is hard to beat.