MR. DeYOUNG:
JOB SECURITY FORCES PERSONAL COMPROMISE
Dear Mr. DeYoung:
"Is Business Bluffing Ethical?" is a recent article which appears in the Harvard Business Review (January-February 1968). In that article the author, Albert Z. Carr, raises some difficult questions about the nature of competition among business organizations and about the relationship of a person's ethical and moral standards to the conduct of daily business. Several examples of conflicts between ethics and "business sense" were cited. Let's consider a concrete example.
Tom was a sales executive with a Southern firm. He told of an instance when he had lunch with one of his most important customers, a Mr. Colby. At the time of their meeting, the state was having a very heated political campaign over which Tom and Colby were of different persuasions. Colby mentioned that he was treasurer of the citizens' committee supporting the candidate Tom opposed. Before the two men got down to business, Colby asked if he could count on Tom for a $100 contribution to the Lang campaign fund. Tom's reaction was the following: "Well, there I was. I was opposed to Lang, but I knew Colby. If he withdrew his business I could be in a bad spot. So I just smiled and wrote the check then and there."
Upon discussing the matter with his wife, Tom found that she was bitterly disillusioned with the business world because it could put such pressures on a person to go against his own values. Tom's perception of the incident was that "it was an either/or situation. I had to do it or risk losing the business."
Mr. Carr suggests that such situations are part of the "game" which governs the business world. He goes on to compare ethical standards of business organizations today with the ground rules of a poker game, "That most businessmen are not indifferent to ethics in their private lives, everyone will agree. My point is that in their office lives they cease to be private citizens; they become game players who must be guided by a somewhat different set of ethical standards."
Finally, Carr cites a Midwestern executive as saying "So long as a businessman complies with the laws of the land and avoids telling malicious lies, he's ethical. There is no obligation on him to stop and consider who is going to be hurt. If the law says he can do it, that's all the justification he needs. There is nothing unethical about that. It's just plain business sense."
Mr. DeYoung, the student whom business wants for its management ranks is not interested in playing games where he must maintain two identities and two sets of ethical values—one as a private citizen and one as a businessman. I would be interested to know how you personally reconcile the conflicts between your ethical beliefs and your "business sense."
David G. Clark
Graduate Studies, Stanford
Dear Mr. Clark:
Sincerely yours,
Indeed there are some men of the calibre you cite in business; probably in greater number than most responsible executives know.
I suspect also that there are many instances where a man like your sales executive, Tom, compromises his personal "ethics" to make a sale. But wasn't he trapped by his own supposition? Didn't he write-off his own company's integrity, along with the history of the customer's satisfaction with their product line and service backup, when he wrote the check?
It strikes me that a little intestinal fortitude, and a tactful remark about his own political convictions, would have brought the issue to a proper test; business based on quality products and service versus "bought" business.
If the man won't make the test, then he ought not to make business a whipping boy because he chose to compromise his own standards. If his employer won't stand the test, then his choice is obvious: quit; and join a company whose standards measure up to his own. In the long run he will have done himself a favor because an ethical man, who is competent, always is in high demand. A posture aligned with high standards will gain more respect of significance than any setbacks sustained through loss of a few sales.
As for the Midwestern executive who equates business' ethical standards simply to compliance with the law-it being implied that this falls short of what society would expect-I question both his awareness of the law's comprehensiveness, and his insight into most businessmen's motivations.
responsible executives don't make decisions on the basis of legal permissiveness; of seeing what they can get away with at the risk of courting punitive actions at law, or the public's displeasure. Those are negative yardsticks, and the thrust of business thinking that involves moral judgments is affirmative.
Check product specifications, for example, and see how many exceed standards established by regulation. Results: a better
quality product, greater performance longer life expectancy.
take re-training and re-assignment of employees to better-paying jobs requiring greater skills when automation phases out various work slots. Results: more highly-skilled employees, better-earning potential, greater job security.
Consider the direct personal involvement of more executives, and the application of their company resources, in efforts to deal effectively with such urban crises as ghetto unemployment. Results: more local employment, a step toward self-help, a broadening base for stability.
None of these actions are compelled by law . they are taken voluntarily by businessmen acting under the compulsion of their personal ethics. It is the beliefs underlying such actions that I regard as the criteria for responsible businessmen's ethics. Critics may question this criteria as self-interest. I'll buy that. It is. But it is enlightened self-interest which is simply good "business sense," and reflects the ethical standards that broadly prevail in our free society.
The point is that in business, ethical standards encompass not only questions of personal conduct and integrity, but the whole range of business' activities with the public as a whole. Yet in the final analysis it is always the individual who must make the decision; a decision that will reflect the influences of one's family life, religion, principles gleaned from education, the views of others, and one's own inherent traits of character. It is these factors that show up in a man's business decisions, not the other way around. The man, therefore, who maintains his own convictions and sense of moral values will be a better businessman, and will find that there really is little problem in developing a business career without fear of compromise.
Sincerely,
Quaselle the Young
Russell DeYoung, Chairman, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
WHO CARES ABOUT STUDENT OPINION?
BUSINESSMEN DO.
Three chief executive officers—The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company's Chairman, Russell DeYoung, The Dow Chemical Company's President, H. D. Doan, and Motorola's Chairman, Robert W. Galvin—are responding to serious questions and viewpoints posed by students about business and its role in our changing society . . . and from their perspective as heads of major corporations are exchanging views through means of a campus/corporate Dialogue Program on specific issues raised by leading student spokesmen.
Here, David G. Clark, a Liberal Arts graduate student at Stanford, is exploring a question with Mr. DeYoung. Administrative activities in Greece and Austria, along with broadening experience
in university administration, already have claimed Mr. Clark's attention and auger well a career in international affairs.
In the course of the entire Dialogue Program, Mark Bookspan, a Chemistry major at Ohio State, also will exchange viewpoints with Mr. DeYoung; as will David M. Butier, in Electrical Engineering at Michigan State, and Stan Chess, Journalism, Cornell, with Mr. Doan; and similarly, Arthur M. Klebanoff, in Liberal Arts at Yale, and Arnold Shelby, Latin American Studies at Tulane, with Mr. Galvin.
All of these Dialogues will appear in this publication, and other campus newspapers across the country, throughout this academic year. Campus comments are invited, and should be forwarded to Mr. DeYoung, Goodyear, Akron, Ohio; Mr. Doan, Dow Chemical, Midland, Michigan, or Mr. Galvin, Motorola, Franklin Park, Illinois, as appropriate.