The Ethics of Corporate Virtues\p=-

Ethical Traditions
1. Origins in the Codes of Hamurabi and the Edicts of
Nebuchadnasser. It is alleged that the Jewish and subsequently,
Christian Ten Commandments were a filtration from the above
codes and edicts. (Show pictures of the Codes and Edicts). All
attempts to civilize social and personal behaviour and
relationships. Divine Command Theory—good or bad does not
depend upon human perceptions, cultures or conventions, but
on God’s commandments, as revealed to holy prophets and
blessed human beings or enunciated by avatars of Gods,
visiting earth. The fundamental tenets of the Jewish, Christian,
Islamic and Hindu religions are based on this tradition.
2. The Greek Philosophers and Virtue Ethics—Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle- all in the realm of the secular and the rational.
Socrates eulogised knowledge as the chief virtue, without
which no other virtues can exist. Plato underscored four
cardinal virtues that defined ethical behaviour-Prudence,
fortitude, temperance and justice. Aristotle endorsed Plato’s
four cardinal virtues and believed that virtues are imbibed
through conscious practice and habit-formation and gave the
world Virtue Ethics. (Show pictures of Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle). According to Aristotle, every human being seeks an
ultimate good and other searches are a means to achieve the
chief good. Eudaimonia or Happiness, according to Aristotle is
the Chief Good. All other goods are intermediate goods or
means to achieve the chief good, like health, wealth, pleasure,
honour, beauty, friendship love and power.
To achieve this chief good, one must cultivate certain virtues.
These virtues are not naturally present in man, but needs to be
cultivated through habit. If these virtues are imbibed into your
 character, then you will be well-ordered, rational and in
control.
Aristotle expounded the concept of the “intermediate”. That is
virtue is a mean between two vices.. Fear—Courage—Fool-
hardiness; Miserliness—Generosity—Spend-thriftiness; Small-
mindedness—Honour—Conceitedness. This is not a concept of
moderation, as Kant accused Aristotle of, but a concept of
achieving an equilibrium, like a pair of scales. Aristotle says that
emotions are natural, like anger, it is how it is directed and
controlled that makes it a virtue or a vice.
3. Ethical Relativism and the Sophists: They questioned the very
existence of the Platonian absolute or cardinal virtues. For
them, virtues were born out of social convention, what the
society put value on and hence was relative to the beliefs of
particular societies. Thrasymachus went one step further. He
said the virtue of justice meant obedience to the laws of the
society you lived in and these laws were promulgated by those
in power, to serve their interests. Therefore, justice was
nothing but the interest of the strongest group. Can justify
“ethnocentrism” and even “genocide” or the “white man’s
burden” through this philosophy. (Show pictures of Protogoras,
Antiphon and Thracymachus)
4. Ethical Egoism: Thomas Hobbes- “To maximise net benefit and
minimise net harm to oneself is ethical”. This is the essence of
ethical egoism. Hobbes believed that a person’s voluntary acts
were aimed at pleasure or self-preservation. Nothing was good
in itself, unless it gives pleasure to oneself. Hedonism. (Give
examples of weed and sex). What happens when two people
want the same object of pleasure? Then life would be “solitary,
poor, nasty and brutish”, unless they can enter into a “social
contract”, that can be enforced by a sovereign power
(Leviathan). (Show pics of Thomas Hobbes)
5. The Moral Sense School: In Hobbes, self-centredness was the
main character of human beings. But others disagreed. There is
an in-built ‘moral sense’ in humans that produce virtues like
benevolence, sympathy, empathy, gratitude and so on that
creates a balance between virtue and self-interest. Selfishness
is not the only human passion. David Hume believed that
ethical behaviour was the ‘slave of passions’. Reason can at
best point out what is right and wrong, but what action a
person will take is purely based on the intensity of his feelings
towards or against the subject. Night vigil for rape victims or
Greta Thunberg. Gilligan and Noddings’ “Ethics of Care”—Give
300 bucks to a begger or take your only kid for children’s
movie? (Show pics of David Hume, Gilligan and Nel Noddings)
6. Utilitarianism: Human beings placed by nature under two
masters- Pleasure and Pain. Any action that gives you pleasure
is right; any action that gives you pain is wrong. Maximising the
net pleasure and minimising the net pain is ethical—Jeremy
Bentham. How do you assess this outcome? Through the
consequences of the act and not in the act itself. So dropping
an atom bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not unethical
in itself, if the consequences of that act stopped further
suffering. Bentham also took into consideration the intensity,
the duration, fecundity and propinquity of the act. All this was
calculated through a cumbersome and inaccurate hedonistic
calculus. J.S. Mill, the other famous utilitarian philosopher, did
away with this hedonistic calculus and said that one can assess
the consequences of an act by measuring its consequences by
well-established and accepted rules of society. Therefore, his
utilitarianism was called Rule Utilitarianism and that of
Bentham, Act Utilitarianism. Only when there is a clash
between accepted principles\moral laws, you can fall back on
the hedonistic calculus. Maximising shareholder wealth and the
 very foundation of capitalism is based on utilitarianism. More
respectable version of Ethical Egoism.
7. Deontology and Emanuel Kant: In his ethics, the act itself can
be ethical or unethical and not just the consequences. The
deontological insight is that there are moral laws that are
embedded in human nature and these laws can be subjected to
the test of reason and are universally applicable. You don’t
have to refer to God to feel the presence of these laws. He
believed in ‘categorical imperatives’, like the Golden Rule: “Do
unto others what you would want others to do unto you” or
“Treat others as an end in themselves and not as a means to
achieve an end”. Dropping those atom bombs were unethical
according to deontology, because you can’t kill 100000
Japanese (a means) to end further suffering (the end objective).
Kantian ethics comes up with difficulties and is seen as too
rigid, when faced with ethical dilemmas. Stealing food to feed
your starving children during a severe famine? Ethically wrong,
according to deontology. No room for attenuating
circumstances. Lying to save a person’s life, during a hostage
situation. Lying is unethical-no room for exceptions. Kantian
ethics does not bother about consequences.
8. Moral Rights Theory: Utilitarianism to judge any moral issues
had no rival from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century.
But to define justice as that that only satisfies the maximum
numbers was not satisfactory to many moral philosophers. So
came John Rawls in 1970 with his “Theory of Justice”, which
was a comprehensive treatment of the issue of justice and
therefore to the normative question of “what is right and what
is wrong”. According to Rawls, a balanced person of good
character will seek the maximum benefit for the least privileged
segment of the people, while ensuring something came to him
and his group. The Maximin Principle. And if the maximum
benefit must first go to the better-off people to produce
 greater benefit to the lesser off people in future, then this too
would be just and ethical. The whole focus turned to moral
rights and justice of segments of people from what is right and
wrong.. from ontological meta-ethics to normative ethics to
applied or practical ethics. How can ethics give solutions to real
and pressing problems like inequality of income within and
among nations, poverty, racial discrimination, gender issues,
animal rights.
9. Ethics in the 21st Century: The major concerns of this century
are terrorism, climate change, disruptive technological
advances like AI and Human Enhancement—Euthanasia,
Abortion, Surrogate Motherhood, Cloning, Full-Body
Replacement (Cyborgs), Autonomous Moral Agents (Humanoid
Robots). There is a revolution in the making, which will be in
full flow in the next 30 years. All these concerns need answers
from the discipline of ethics. In fact, meta-ethics, normative-
ethics and applied-ethics has once again regained its
paramount importance in the affairs of homo sapiens.

A. Indian Ethics
Dharma, or the righteous way to live our lives, is the Indian
version of ethics. Lord Krishna, in the Bhagwat Gita, elaborates
the concept of Dharma: “Every organism is born to serve a
purpose. Understanding the purpose and living accordingly is
Dharma.” In this definition, it is ethical to wage a just war, if
that is your purpose and as long as you are not seeking to gain
personal prestige or wealth or power—you can even kill your
cousins, if required. Vyasa, in the Mahabharat, expands on the
concept of Dharma— “To actively help those in need as well as
passively not harming others and being fair and just in one’s
judgements.” There are elements of Dharmashastra in Virtue
Ethics, Utilitarianism and Moral Rights Theory, except in
Deontology, which is a philosophy of absolutes—war is wrong,
 even if it’s a just war; killing is wrong, even in self-defense;
stealing is wrong, even if to feed a dying person; lying is wrong,
even if that saves the life of an innocent person. Find other
ways other than war, killing, stealing and lying. Ethics is today
incorporated fully into the law of the land and it is western law
that most countries have adopted, with the exception of some
countries that follow the Shariat Law, which is based on the
Islamic version of the Divine Command Theory.

B. South-East Asian Ethics

Ethical principles in this part of the world is taken from
Buddhism, Confucianism and various variants of Taoism.
Confucious, in the 6th century BC, expounded a set of ethical
principles, like Hamurabi’s Codes, for Chinese society to live in
peace and harmony. These principles include love for one’s
fellows, filial piety, decorum, virtue and the ideal of the
superior man—this last principle was the justification for the
various kingly dynasties that existed in China till Mao-ze Tung’s
Communist revolution.
Lao-tzu, the legendary founder of Taoism and the traditional
author of the Tao-te-Ching, expounded the concept of Tao,
which is the balance in nature, the Yin and Yang and therefore
man must live in harmony with the forces of nature to be
balanced and well-ordered in one’s own life. All ethical
principles in Taoism follow from this alignment. There is no
concept of the Confucian Superior man here.

C. Ethical Issues from the Corporate World

How would you characterize today’s global political world?
Very ethical, moderately ethical or fully corrupt? How would
you characterize Indian bureaucracy? Very ethical, moderately
ethical or totally corrupt? How would you characterize the
global corporate world? Moderately ethical or totally corrupt?
 Let’s take some examples and analyse these cases from the
ethical traditions you just heard:
i. The Great American Streetcar Scandal
 Back in the 1920s, most American city-dwellers took public
transportation to work every day. There were 17,000 miles of
streetcar lines across the country, running through virtually
every major American city. That included cities we don't think
of as hubs for mass transit today: Atlanta, Raleigh, and Los
Angeles. Nowadays, by contrast, just 5 percent or so of workers
commute via public transport, and they're disproportionately
clustered in a handful of dense cities like New York, Boston, and
Chicago. Just a handful of cities still have extensive streetcar
systems — and several others are now spending millions trying
to build new, smaller ones.
 Running streetcars was a very profitable business in the late
1880’s. Cities expanded, and people who found themselves
living too far from work to walk depended on them. (Some real-
estate developers built nearby suburbs around streetcar lines.)
Over time, the businessmen who ran the streetcars, called
"traction magnates," consolidated ownership of multiple lines,
establishing powerful, oftentimes corrupt monopolies in many
cities.
 In the early-to-middle 20th century a consortium of automotive
interests (led by General Motors) bought up streetcar lines in a
number of cities and converted them to bus routes. This group
was ultimately found guilty in federal court of "conspiracy to
monopolize mass transit."
 By the 1950s, virtually all streetcar companies were in terrible
shape. Between 1938 and 1950, one company purchased and
took over the transit systems of more than 25 American cities.
Their name, National City Lines, sounded innocuous enough,
but the list of their investors included General Motors, the
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Standard Oil of California,
 Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and other companies who
stood to benefit much more from a future running on gasoline
and rubber than on electricity and rails. National City Lines
acquired the Los Angeles Railway in 1945, and within 20 years
diesel buses – or indeed private automobiles – would carry all
the yellow cars’ former passengers. Does that strike you as a
coincidence?
 “It’s easy to blame car companies because they’re the logical
economic beneficiary of this car-oriented system. But the
reality is more complex, and if there’s any conspiracy here, it’s
on the part of local officials who kept approving sprawling
subdivisions that have led to the present inefficient land use
patterns.”
 While it's true that National City continued ripping up lines and
replacing them with buses — and that, long-term, GM
benefited from the decline of mass transit — it's very hard to
argue that National City killed the streetcar on its own.
Streetcar systems went bankrupt and were dismantled in
virtually every metro area in the United States, and National
City was only involved in about 10 percent of cases.
 General Motors' destruction of electric transit systems across
the county left millions of urban residents without an attractive
alternative to automotive travel.
 But the basics of the shift are well-covered in a review
published by Cliff Slater in a 1997 issue of Transportation
Quarterly: "GM simply took advantage of an economic trend
that was already well along in the process — one that was
going to continue with or without GM's help," concludes Slater.
 Displacement of people into “ghettos”—fallout of deliberate
racist policy of acquiring land to build road and other
infrastructure for the automotive industry!

ii. The Enron Scandal

Enron was formed in 1985 by Kenneth Lay after merging Houston
Natural Gas and InterNorth. Several years later, when Jeffrey Skilling
was hired, he developed a staff of executives that – by the use of
accounting loopholes, special purpose entities, and poor financial
reporting – were able to hide billions of dollars in debt from failed
deals and projects. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and other
executives not only misled Enron's Board of Directors and Audit
Committee on high-risk accounting practices, but also pressured
Arthur Andersen to ignore the issues.
Enron shareholders filed a $40 billion lawsuit after the company's
stock price, which achieved a high of US$90.75 per share in mid-
2000, plummeted to less than $1 by the end of November 2001. The
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began an
investigation, and rival Houston competitor Dynegy offered to
purchase the company at a very low price. The deal failed, and on
December 2, 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of
the United States Bankruptcy Code.
Many executives at Enron were indicted for a variety of charges and
some were later sentenced to prison. Andersen was found guilty of
illegally destroying documents relevant to the SEC investigation,
which voided its license to audit public companies and effectively
closed the firm. By the time the ruling was overturned at the U.S.
Supreme Court, the company had lost the majority of its customers
and had ceased operating. Enron employees and shareholders
received limited returns in lawsuits, despite losing billions in
pensions and stock prices.
In an attempt to achieve further growth, Enron pursued a
diversification strategy. The company owned and operated a variety
of assets including gas pipelines, electricity plants, pulp and paper
plants, water plants, and broadband services across the globe. The
corporation also gained additional revenue by trading contracts for
the same array of products and services with which it was involved.
This included setting up power generation plants in developing
countries and emerging markets including The Philippines (Subic
Bay), Indonesia and India (Dabhol). Enron was rated the most
innovative large company in America in Fortune's Most Admired
Companies survey.
Skilling constantly focused on meeting Wall Street expectations,
advocated the use of mark-to-market accounting (accounting based
on market value, which was then inflated) and pressured Enron
executives to find new ways to hide its debt. Fastow and other
executives "created off-balance-sheet vehicles, complex financing
structures, and deals so bewildering that few people could
understand them.
Although trading companies such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill
Lynch used the conventional "agent model" for reporting revenue
(where only the trading or brokerage fee would be reported as
revenue), Enron instead elected to report the entire value of each of
its trades as revenue. This "merchant model" was considered much
more aggressive in the accounting interpretation than the agent
model. Enron justified this method because they were accepting the
entire risk of the transaction.
Between 1996 and 2000, Enron's revenues increased by more than
750%, rising from $13.3 billion in 1996 to $100.8 billion in 2000. This
expansion of 65% per year was unprecedented in any industry,
including the energy industry, which typically considered growth of
2–3% per year to be respectable. For just the first nine months of
2001, Enron reported $138.7 billion in revenues, placing the
company at the sixth position on the Fortune Global 500.
Enron also used creative accounting tricks and purposefully mis-
classified loan transactions as sales close to quarterly reporting
deadlines. In Enron's case, Merrill Lynch bought Nigerian barges with
a buyback guarantee by Enron shortly before the earnings deadline,
which effectively meant that Lynch had given Enron a bridge loan for
guaranteeing the buy-back that must be paid back when actually
buying the barges. Enron mis-reported the bridge loan as a true sale,
then bought back the barges a few months later. Merril Lynch
executives were later tried and convicted for aiding Enron in its
fraudulent accounting activities.
In Enron's natural gas business, the accounting had been fairly
straightforward: in each time period, the company listed actual costs
of supplying the gas and actual revenues received from selling it.
However, when Skilling joined the company, he demanded that the
trading business adopt mark-to-market accounting, claiming that it
would represent "true economic value."[11]:39–42 Enron became
the first nonfinancial company to use the method to account for its
complex long-term contracts. Mark-to-market accounting requires
that once a long-term contract has been signed, income is estimated
as the present value of net future cash flow. Often, the viability of
these contracts and their related costs were difficult to estimate.
Owing to the large discrepancies between reported profits and cash,
investors were typically given false or misleading reports. Under this
method, income from projects could be recorded, although the firm
might never have received the money, with this income increasing
financial earnings on the books. However, because in future years
the profits could not be included, new and additional income had to
be included from more projects to develop additional growth to
appease investors. As one Enron competitor stated, "If you
accelerate your income, then you have to keep doing more and more
deals to show the same or rising income."[15] Despite potential
pitfalls, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved
the accounting method for Enron in its trading of natural gas futures
contracts on January 30, 1992. However, Enron later expanded its
use to other areas in the company to help it meet Wall Street
projections.
For one contract, in July 2000, Enron and Blockbuster Video signed a
20-year agreement to introduce on-demand entertainment to
various U.S. cities by year's end. After several pilot projects, Enron
claimed estimated profits of more than $110 million from the deal,
even though analysts questioned the technical viability and market
demand of the service. When the network failed to work,
Blockbuster withdrew from the contract. Enron continued to claim
future profits, even though the deal resulted in a loss.
Enron used special purpose entities—limited partnerships or
companies created to fulfil a temporary or specific purpose to fund
or manage risks associated with specific assets. The company elected
to disclose minimal details on its use of "special purpose entities".
These shell companies were created by a sponsor, but funded by
independent equity investors and debt financing. For financial
reporting purposes, a series of rules dictate whether a special
purpose entity is a separate entity from the sponsor. In total, by
2001, Enron had used hundreds of special purpose entities to hide its
debt.
Corporate governance
On paper, Enron had a model board of directors comprising
predominantly outsiders with significant ownership stakes and a
talented audit committee. In its 2000 review of best corporate
boards, “Chief Executive” magazine included Enron among its five
best boards. Even with its complex corporate governance and
network of intermediaries, Enron was still able to "attract large sums
of capital to fund a questionable business model, conceal its true
performance through a series of accounting and financing
manoeuvers, and hype its stock to unsustainable levels.
Although Enron's compensation and performance management
system was designed to retain and reward its most valuable
employees, the system contributed to a dysfunctional corporate
culture that became obsessed with short-term earnings to maximize
bonuses. Employees constantly tried to start deals, often
disregarding the quality of cash flow or profits, in order to get a
better rating for their performance review. Additionally, accounting
results were recorded as soon as possible to keep up with the
company's stock price. This practice helped ensure deal-makers and
executives received large cash bonuses and stock options.
Before its scandal, Enron was lauded for its sophisticated financial
risk management tools. Risk management was crucial to Enron not
only because of its regulatory environment, but also because of its
business plan. Enron established long-term fixed commitments
which needed to be hedged to prepare for the invariable fluctuation
of future energy prices. Enron's bankruptcy downfall was attributed
to its reckless use of derivatives and special purpose entities. By
hedging its risks with special purpose entities which it owned, Enron
retained the risks associated with the transactions. This arrangement
had Enron implementing hedges with itself.

Enron's aggressive accounting practices were not hidden from the

board of directors, as later learned by a Senate subcommittee. The
board was informed of the rationale for using the Whitewing, LJM,
and Raptor transactions, and after approving them, received status
updates on the entities' operations. Although not all of Enron's
widespread improper accounting practices were revealed to the
board, the practices were dependent on board decisions. Even
though Enron extensively relied on derivatives for its business, the
company's Finance Committee and board did not have enough
experience with derivatives to understand what they were being
told. The Senate subcommittee argued that had there been a
detailed understanding of how the derivatives were organized, the
board would have prevented their use.
Enron's auditor firm, Arthur Andersen, was accused of applying
reckless standards in its audits because of a conflict of interest over
the significant consulting fees generated by Enron. During 2000,
Arthur Andersen earned $25 million in audit fees and $27 million in
consulting fees (this amount accounted for roughly 27% of the audit
fees of public clients for Arthur Andersen's Houston office). The
auditor's methods were questioned as either being completed solely
to receive its annual fees or for its lack of expertise in properly
reviewing Enron's revenue recognition, special entities, derivatives,
and other accounting practices.
Andersen's auditors were pressured by Enron's management to
defer recognizing the charges from the special purpose entities as its
credit risks became known. Since the entities would never return a
profit, accounting guidelines required that Enron should take a write-
off, where the value of the entity was removed from the balance
sheet at a loss. To pressure Andersen into meeting Enron's earnings
expectations, Enron would occasionally allow accounting companies
Ernst & Young or PricewaterhouseCoopers to complete accounting
tasks to create the illusion of hiring a new company to replace
Andersen.[11]:148 Although Andersen was equipped with internal
controls to protect against conflicted incentives of local partners, it
failed to prevent conflict of interest. In one case, Andersen's Houston
office, which performed the Enron audit, was able to overrule any
critical reviews of Enron's accounting decisions by Andersen's
Chicago partner. In addition, after news of U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations of Enron were made
public, Andersen would later shred several tons of relevant
documents and delete nearly 30,000 e-mails and computer files,
causing accusations of a cover-up.
Corporate Audit committees usually meet just a few times during the
year, and their members typically have only modest experience with
accounting and finance. Enron's audit committee had more expertise
than many. It included:
Robert Jaedicke of Stanford University, a widely respected
accounting professor and former dean of Stanford Business School
John Mendelsohn, President of the University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center
Paulo Pereira, former president and CEO of the State Bank of Rio de
Janeiro in Brazil
John Wakeham, former United Kingdom Secretary of State for
Energy and Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury
Ronnie Chan, Chairman of Hong Kong Hang Lung Group
Wendy Gramm, former Chair of U.S. Commodity Futures Trading
Commission
Enron made a habit of booking costs of cancelled projects as assets,
with the rationale that no official letter had stated that the project
was cancelled. This method was known as "the snowball", and
although it was initially dictated that such practices be used only for
projects worth less than $90 million, it was later increased to $200
million.

In 1998, when analysts were given a tour of the Enron Energy

Services office, they were impressed with how the employees were
working so vigorously. In reality, Skilling had moved other employees
to the office from other departments (instructing them to pretend to
work hard) to create the appearance that the division was larger
than it was. This ruse was used several times to fool analysts about
the progress of different areas of Enron to help improve the stock
price.
Fastow and his wife, Lea, both pleaded guilty to charges against
them. Fastow was initially charged with 98 counts of fraud, money
laundering, insider trading, and conspiracy, among other crimes.
Fastow pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy and was
sentenced to ten years with no parole in a plea bargain to testify
against Lay, Skilling, and Causey.Lea was indicted on six felony
counts, but prosecutors later dismissed them in favor of a single
misdemeanor tax charge. Lea was sentenced to one year for helping
her husband hide income from the government.

Lay and Skilling went on trial for their part in the Enron scandal in
January 2006. The 53-count, 65-page indictment covers a broad
range of financial crimes, including bank fraud, making false
statements to banks and auditors, securities fraud, wire fraud,
money laundering, conspiracy, and insider trading. United States
District Judge Sim Lake had previously denied motions by the
defendants to have separate trials and to relocate the case out of
Houston, where the defendants argued the negative publicity
concerning Enron's demise would make it impossible to get a fair
trial. On May 25, 2006, the jury in the Lay and Skilling trial returned
its verdicts. Skilling was convicted of 19 of 28 counts of securities
fraud and wire fraud and acquitted on the remaining nine, including
charges of insider trading. He was sentenced to 24 years and 4
months in prison.[102] In 2013 the United States Department of
Justice reached a deal with Skilling, which resulted in ten years being
cut from his sentence.[103]

Lay pleaded not guilty to the eleven criminal charges, and claimed
that he was misled by those around him. He attributed the main
cause for the company's demise to Fastow. Lay was convicted of all
six counts of securities and wire fraud for which he had been tried,
and he was subject to a maximum total sentence of 45 years in
prison. However, before sentencing was scheduled, Lay died on July
5, 2006. At the time of his death, the SEC had been seeking more
than $90 million from Lay in addition to civil fines. The case of Lay's
wife, Linda, is a difficult one. She sold roughly 500,000 shares of
Enron ten to thirty minutes before the information that Enron was
collapsing went public on November 28, 2001. Linda was never
charged with any of the events related to Enron.
Arthur Andersen was charged with and found guilty of obstruction of
justice for shredding the thousands of documents and deleting e-
mails and company files that tied the firm to its audit of Enron.
Although only a small number of Arthur Andersen's employees were
involved with the scandal, the firm was effectively put out of
business; the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted
felons. The company surrendered its CPA license on August 31, 2002,
and 85,000 employees lost their jobs. The conviction was later
overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court due to the jury not being
properly instructed on the charge against Andersen. The Supreme
Court ruling theoretically left Andersen free to resume operations.
However, the damage to the Andersen name has been so great that
it has not returned as a viable business even on a limited scale.
iii. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal
The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was a major
political scandal in early 2018 when it was revealed that Cambridge
Analytica had harvested the personal data of millions of peoples'
Facebook profiles without their consent and used it for political
advertising purposes. It has been described as a watershed moment
in the public understanding of personal data and precipitated a
massive fall in Facebook's stock price and calls for tighter regulation
of tech companies' use of personal data.
Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at Cambridge University, developed
an app called "This Is Your Digital Life". He provided the app to
Cambridge Analytica.[3] Cambridge Analytica in turn arranged an
informed consent process for research in which several hundred
thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey only for
academic use. However, Facebook's design allowed this app not only
to collect the personal information of people who agreed to take the
survey, but also the personal information of all the people in those
users' Facebook social network. In this way Cambridge Analytica
acquired data from millions of Facebook users.
In the US, the story of how whistleblower Christopher Wylie had
built media mogul Steve Bannon’s “psychological warfare tool” by
harvesting millions of people’s Facebook profiles had erupted across
every news channel. Questions rained in on Cambridge Analytica,
Facebook, and its boss, Mark Zuckerberg, including the most
insistent – where was he?
A couple of hours after the scandal broke, the Twitter graph showed
a wavering line heading off a cliff. Facebook’s market cap had
plunged $30bn in the first two hours of trading. By the end of the
week it was more than $100bn. Today it’s $170bn down.
If there’s one tiny ray of light in all this, it’s that journalism can have
an impact – even the cash-strapped, shoestring British variety. And if
there’s a reason to despair, it’s that it’s not enough.
Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive, has defied parliament.
The company is quite simply beyond the rule of law. Because what
the Cambridge Analytica story exposed, by accident, from Facebook’s
reaction in the months that followed, is the absolute power of the
tech giants. Power and unaccountability that is the foundational
platform on which populist authoritarians are rising to power all
across the globe. Power and unaccountability that continues
unchecked. In Britain, in a media landscape that is insular and self-
regarding and obsessed with what happens at Westminster, we’ve
failed to connect the dots between Facebook and Brexit and the
world outside. To the global currents that favour autocrats and
populists. And to the technology platforms assisting them.
On October 27, 2012, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote an
email to his then-director of product development. For years,
Facebook had allowed third-party apps to access data on their users’
unwitting friends, and Zuckerberg was considering whether giving
away all that information was risky. In his email, he suggested it was
not: “I’m generally skeptical that there is as much data leak strategic
risk as you think,” he wrote at the time. “I just can’t think of any
instances where that data has leaked from developer to developer
and caused a real issue for us.”
In 2013, two University of Cambridge researchers published a paper
explaining how they could predict people’s personalities and other
sensitive details from their freely accessible Facebook likes. These
predictions, the researchers warned, could “pose a threat to an
individual’s well-being, freedom, or even life.” Cambridge Analytica's
predictions were based largely on this research.
Instead, the scandal and backlash grew to encompass the ways that
businesses, including but certainly not limited to Facebook, take
more data from people than they need, and give away more than
they should, often only asking permission in the fine print—if they
even ask at all. There has been a growing recognition that companies
can no longer be left to regulate themselves, and some states have
begun to act on it. Vermont implemented a new law that requires
data brokers which buy and sell data from third parties to register
with the state. In California, a law is set to go into effect in January
that would, among other things, give residents the ability to opt out
of having their data sold. Multiple states have introduced similar bills
in the past few months alone. On Capitol Hill, Congress is considering
the contours of a federal data protection law—though progress is, as
always in Washington, slow-going.
If there’s one choice that Facebook has made repeatedly over the
past 15 years, it’s been to prioritize growth over privacy. Users were
consistently encouraged to make more of their information public
than they were comfortable with. The settings to make things public
were always a bit easier to use than the ones to make things private.
Data was collected that you didn’t have any idea was being collected
and shared in ways you had no idea it was being shared.
Now Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, is 34. He’s a public
figure who is attacked relentlessly in the press and by politicians
around the world. He has two children, a house he blocks from view,
and a cover on his laptop camera. He’s also seen his company get
burned for ignoring user privacy, and he’s seen that the platform he
built to make the world more open and connected can also be used
by harassers, racists, trolls, bullies, and Vladimir Putin. His company’s
reputation has faltered; growth on the main platform has slowed,
and employee morale has dropped. It seems like a good time for a
change.
“Public social networks will continue to be very important in people's
lives—for connecting with everyone you know, discovering new
people, ideas and content, and giving people a voice more broadly,”
Zuckerberg wrote. “But now, with all the ways people also want to
interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler
platform that's focused on privacy first.”
The company’s loose policies on data collection over the years are
also what allowed it to build one of the most successful advertising
businesses in history. All the data the company collects helps
advertisers segment and target people. And it’s the relentless pursuit
of that data that has led to Facebook being accused of making
inappropriate deals for data with device manufacturers and software
partners. This is a history that Zuckerberg knows well, and one that
he acknowledged in his post. “I understand that many people don’t
think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-
focused platform—because frankly we don’t currently have a strong
reputation for building privacy protective services,” he wrote.
The fact that your individual messages might be encrypted in transit
does not, in any way, prevent Facebook from knowing who your
friends are, where you go, what links you click, what apps you use,
what you buy, what you pay for and where, what businesses you
communicate with, what games you play, and whatever information
you might have given to Facebook or Instagram in the past.
D. Some Ethical Guidelines to Combat Unethical Adversaries
When grease money is the norm, when crony capitalism is the way
to get ahead of your competition, when back-stabbing and corporate
sleaze is the corporate culture and the environment be damned is
the unwritten corporate value, how does one, as a junior employee
remain ethical?
As a junior executive, you have only three options:
i. Observe, but do not participate. Gain a reputation for being
straight. It will pay rich dividends later in your career.
ii. Become a whistle blower, if the crimes are
disproportionately high and after ensuring you have a tight
case, with all data. If the crimes are small, then follow (i).
iii. Leave the organisation for less dirty pastures
As a head honcho and in a position to decide policy and infuse an
ethical organisational culture and reputation, you have the following
options, in the face of a corrupt political and competitive milieu:
i. In responding to unethical activity by a competitor, do not
violate the very norms and values that you seek to preserve
and in terms of which you judge the adversary’s actions to
 be unethical. (Deontology and Virtue Ethics). A company
must counter a competitor’s lies with the truth, not with lies
of its own. Success or victory won at the cost of one’s own
principles will be hollow. Principles cannot be turned on and
off at will. If they do not guide one’s response to immoral
activity, there is no assurance they will guide one’s response
at all. When economic survival and self-defence are morally
justifiable aims, they must be pursued ethically.
ii. In responding ethically, use your moral imagination. Gandhi
countered British armed force with a technique that
captured the imagination of masses of people, and it
achieved his goal more effectively than force could have.
Often there are many more alternatives open to us other
than simply suffering at the hands of an unscrupulous
opponent or fighting him on his terms. Moral imagination
pushes us to seek advantages we may have that we do not
ordinarily consider, to look for the chinks in the armour of
our adversary, (Blue Ocean strategies, for example) and to
search for analogies in the responses of others whom we
admire.
iii. When the response to immorality involves justifiable
retaliation or force, apply the principle of restraint. The
principle of restraint requires that the powerful, regardless
of the immorality of the enemy’s actions, use no more force
and cause no more harm than necessary to accomplish one’s
justifiable aims. The more powerful one is, the greater is the
restraint required. In dealing with children, adults need to
apply more restraint than in dealing with other adults,
because of the difference in power.
iv. In measuring your response to an unethical opponent, apply
the principle of proportionality. This principle requires that
any force used must be proportional to the offense and
harm suffered and to the good to be achieved, and that
 those who use the force must have some hope of being
effective in achieving the end for which they use it. Relevant
in discussions of the legitimacy of whistle-blowing, for
example.
v. In responding to an unethical foe, apply the technique of
ethical displacement. Ethical displacement involves rising to
a higher level in order to solve the dilemmas that an
individual faces. Moral dilemmas are situations in which
neither of one’s choices is morally acceptable. If they are
true dilemmas, their solution cannot be found on the level at
which they appear. Thus a dilemma for an individual on a
personal level may only have a solution on the corporate
level, in the sense that solutions to personal dilemmas may
require changes in corporate structures. Corporate
dilemmas, in turn, may require changes in industry
structures to guarantee fair conditions of competition.
Industry dilemmas may require changes in national policies
or legislation. And national business dilemmas, such as
pollution problems, may require changes in structures or
agreements on an international level.
The technique of displacement analysis is initially a
descriptive technique and then a diagnostic technique. Any
solution that results from it will not be intuitive and will not
be easy. The idea that ethical issues are easy and are easily
resolved intuitively by ethical people is precisely what has to
be overcome, both at the personal and at the organizational
level. Business supplies an example. Bribery is unethical
because it subverts the competitive system and gives unfair
advantage to those who engage in the practice. It is unfair
because someone other than the one receiving the benefit
pays—either consumers, shareholders, or taxpayers. In a
situation in which bribery is the going game, a company that
acts with integrity seems to have no option but to opt out of
 it, and therefore lose business. This is blatantly unfair, yet a
company with integrity cannot either demand or accede to
bribery. At the level of the individual company, injustice
seems to triumph. It is only by rising to a higher level that
the disadvantage can be overcome. Legally outlawing
bribery is a way to make the field of competition fair on the
national level.
Nor should one draw the conclusion that law is the only
solution. Americans and American companies operating in
South Africa were faced with demands that they practice
discrimination, as specified in the South African apartheid
laws. Any individual or firm that violated those laws would
be prosecuted or be forced to leave. The successful strategy
for disobedience in this case consisted in a large number of
American firms agreeing that they would all publicly violate
the apartheid laws by following the Sullivan Principles,
which precluded discrimination. Together they were
powerful enough that the South African government ignored
their violations of its laws. Individual integrity was not
enough, even though only individuals and firms with
integrity would take the action that those individuals and
firms took.

vi. In responding to an unethical adversary, use publicity to

underscore the immoral actions. Publicity serves two
functions. First, it opens up the unethical practice to public
scrutiny and allows the public to judge it for what it is.
Second, publicity makes it possible to mobilize public
pressure against the practice and its perpetrators. What is
tacitly accepted and quietly withstood becomes unbearable
when brought to full light. Publicity demands a public
reaction instead of a quiet individual one and often makes
 possible a joint reaction that individual persons may be too
intimidated or frightened to make.

F . Universal Moral Values for Corporate

Codes of Ethics, Mark S. Schwartz, Journal of Business Ethics (2005)
59: 27–44 Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10551-005-3403-2

In July 1992, the Josephson Institute of Ethics brought together in

Aspen, Colorado, 30 national leaders representing schools, teacher
unions, family support organizations, faith communities, national
youth service groups, ethics centers, and character education experts
to determine whether they could agree on a list of core of ethical
values that could provide a framework for analyzing ethical problems
and developing character education programs around a common
language acceptable to everyone (or almost everyone). The goal of
the meeting was to answer that question by articulating universal
moral values inherent in the concept of character. After three-and-a-
half days of debate and discourse, the Aspen Declaration was crafted
and signed by all those in attendance. The most momentous
statement of the Declaration was the assertion that six core ethical
values ‘form the foundation of democratic society’ and that these
core values ‘transcend cultural, religious, and socioeconomic
differences.’ This unprecedented statement forthrightly turned the
tide against the ethical relativists and values clarificationists with an
approach that promotes and advocates specific behaviors consistent
with a half-dozen universal ethical values...Ending definitively the
debate ‘whose values?’ these six distinct moral concepts were
adopted in proclamations passed by both houses of Congress and
signed by the president of the United States as well as about three
dozen governors, and nearly 1,000 cities and counties.
The six core moral values stated in the Aspen Declaration have been
referred to by other business ethicists (e.g., Carroll, 1993; Schwartz,
2002). The values include the following (Josephson, 1996, pp.
9-17):
1. Trustworthiness (including notions of honesty, candor,
integrity, reliability, and loyalty)
2. Respect (including notions of civility, autonomy and tolerance)
3. Responsibility (including notions of accountability, excellence,
and self-restraint)
4. Fairness (including notions of process, impartiality, and equity);
5. Caring (including notions of concern for the welfare of others,
as well as benevolence); and
6. Citizenship (including notions of respecting the law and
protecting the environment).
The proposed set of core universal moral values can act as a
normative foundation for the creation or assessment of any
corporate code of ethics or even global code of ethics (e.g., the UN
Global Compact).