Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [121]
Another somewhat famous philosopher similarly kept asking questions while never giving answers. In ancient Greece, Socrates taught his listeners to constantly question what they were told. Although this practice led to his being sentenced to death by the people of Athens for the crime of “corrupting the youth” (i.e., teaching them to think for themselves), Socrates became immortalized in Plato’s dialogues.
Seuss, too, deserves our thanks for continuing this long tradition of corrupting the youth. One of the many great things about Seuss is that while his wit, poetry, and art make him eminently accessible to children, he raises issues with which philosophers have wrestled for centuries and which still perplex adults today. Children (and adults) reading him may not find answers, but at least Seuss has them thinking about the questions.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s Not Personal . . . It’s Just Bizzyneuss: Business Ethics, the Company, and Its Stakeholders
Matthew F. Pierlott
Just as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don’t live to eat, and neither must businesses live just to make profits.
—John Mackey, Whole Foods Market CEO1
At one time it was the social responsibility of anyone addressing the topic of business ethics to admit the apparent oxymoronic nature of the subject. “Business ethics? Isn’t that a bit like vegan hamburgers?” Fortunately, the very idea of applying moral thinking to business is no longer presumed misguided. That is not to say cynicism with regard to the moral conduct of businesspeople has died. The past decade has certainly seen its share of corporate scandals, from the Enron and WorldCom fiascos that, with a plethora of other creative accounting disasters, began the decade to both the financial crisis and the BP oil catastrophe glupping up the Gulf that closed it out. While all of these events have certainly contributed to the cynicism, they also have underscored the importance of taking business ethics seriously.
A fundamental issue in business ethics is determining to whom a company has a responsibility. It’s fundamental because so many other conversations in business ethics (although not all) must presuppose some model or other, and it appears that there are two competing perspectives on the issue that divide our thinking. One is known as the “stockholder” or “shareholder model,” and the other is the “stakeholder theory” of the modern corporation. In this chapter, we will examine the two basic perspectives and then explore the different responsibilities a business might have to different sets of stakeholders, with the help of Dr. Seuss, of course.
Taking Stock of the Stakeholders
and the Stakes for the Stockholders
So, what criteria must a company meet to be a “good” company? One way to answer this is to recognize that the evaluation of something depends on the function it performs. This follows the method of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who said:
[E]very virtue or excellence both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well; e.g., the excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well. . . . Therefore, if this is true in every case, the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well.2
The specific excellence of something is determined by its proper functioning. Aristotle saw natural functions as the illustration of this idea, but it applies to artifacts, too. A good axe is a sharp axe, because a sharp axe chops wood better than a dull one. We can also apply this notion to organizations, like companies.
Well, what is it that a company is supposed to do? One position that has had a lot of ideological influence is famously associated with