Tag: Ethics

Trust was a real competitive advantage for mutual businesses. But the difficulty of meeting the conflicting expectations of different users and the slow adaptation to the requirements of changing technology explains why mutuality ceased to be a viable basis for stock exchanges.
However, if mutuality is not the answer to customers’ requirements for providers they can trust, the industry badly needs to find other answers.

A jurisdiction benefits from forum shopping if its decisions are out of line with mainstream opinion, and the most common reason is that there is something wrong with its legal system.

Just as the accomplished prostitute makes her client believe that his attraction, rather than his money, secures her love, the astute adviser can make his client feel the conviction in his voice. Generally, it is better to be the flatterer than the flattered.

The modern insistence on finding someone else to blame for any misfortune is now too widespread, and the costs of litigation too great, for either criminal or civil proceedings to be an appropriate means of deterring unacceptable corporate behaviour. The law of corporate responsibility is unsatisfactory. It should also provide for situations where the corporate culture is all too financially viable, but rotten to the core.

The future level of greenhouse gas emissions is governed mainly by the increasing demand for transport and electricity as economic development progresses in developing countries. Rich countries must pay for the research and development which would make developing and running a low carbon infrastructure affordable by poorer countries.

"The best bargain is an expensive CEO," wrote Al Dunlap. The history of Sunbeam decisively proves him wrong.

Modern business and the people who lead it achieve authority through, and only through, their success. The legitimacy of their authority is achieved - literally - by delivering the goods.

Pierpoint Morgan, outspoken promotor of the importance of character in doing business, might not have taken Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom seriously, or decided that Andrew Fastow, the chief financial officer of Enron, met his tests of character. This is not part of the financial service sector's credo anymore, but as we trace events in the history of the House of Morgan, some might wish this were the case again.

Prosperity is the product of market institutions in a culture shaped by the values, although not necessarily the beliefs, of the religious Reformation - first discussed by Max Weber some 100 years ago. Hence today, due to the decreasing economic influence of the Catholic church, there are Catholic countries in Europe that have enjoyed remarkable growth.

Companies have no immortal soul but live and die like human beings - prosperous by the attributes of their personality. This week, John takes discusses the many faces of corporate personality.