Why Business and Morality Shouldn't Be An Oxymoron
By Eric Hammer
If you were to consider great examples of an oxymoron, business
and morality would have to be right up there at the top of the
list. The reason is simple: business in its purest form is all
about trying to make as much money as possible and morality only
enters into the picture when people allow their own emotions
and morals to enter into the picture. That said, there are good
reasons for businesses to engage in moral behavior. Here's what
you need to know:
Pure Capitalism
Pure capitalism is designed to maximize profits while minimizing
losses. This means that in a pure capitalist system, companies
would have the least number of safety precautions possible and
pay the lowest amount of money to their employees they could
possibly get away with. The reason for this is that capitalism
at its purest form has nothing to do with morality. In fact,
in a pure capitalist system, business and morality would probably
never meet.
It Makes for Good Business to Add Morality
However, as noted above, there is a good reason for a business
to consider adding morality to their bag of tricks - because
it makes for good business. In essence, business and morality
do go together in one way - public relations. Businesses that
hope to make sales to the public need one of two things. Either
they need a captive market (i.e. a monopoly or a cartel) or they
need the public to like the company more than their competition.
Now while a free market will allow even a morally reprehensible
business to make some sales to the public simply by maintaining
prices which are lower than that of their competitors, that same
business could make even more money by combining morality with
their business.
How to Combine Business and Morality
They say that all is fair in love and war. To that list, one
should generally add the word business as in "all is fair
in love, war and business." That's because business is in
essence a war - a war for the hearts and minds of your customers,
who presumably have a choice of where to go with their business
(this is why monopoly companies rarely have good customer service
by the way - because they know that people who need what they
have to sell will buy from them anyway since there is no choice).
Therefore, when in business, one must combine business and morality.
Be Fair
You can do this in a variety of ways. For example, a business
wishing to engage in morality will ensure that their employees
are paid fairly and that they source their raw materials from
places which treat people fairly (Starbucks is a good example
of this - offering health insurance to their employees, above
minimum wage pay and sourcing from fair trade coffee growers).
Be Community Minded
Another way to go about combing business and morality is to
be community minded. This may mean that the business sponsors
a local school baseball team for example. Or perhaps your business
sponsors low income projects of another kind (for example, an
expensive restaurant may donate all leftovers to a homeless shelter
and a drug manufacturer may donate their medicine to poor people
who can't afford it and don't have insurance).
Don't Use Religion
However, one area where businesses can get themselves into
trouble when they try to engage in combining business and morality
is when they use religion for the purpose. Mind you, there is
nothing wrong with donating to religious charities, however when
using religious morality as an exclusionary tactic (i.e. we only
hire people who conform to our faith values and worship at our
churches because we believe that all others are immoral), it
will inevitably backfire because of laws preventing such discrimination
and because of public backlash.
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