Alan Joyce: “My priority is to do the right thing by Qantas.”

Qantas extraordinary grounding of its entire fleet on Saturday raises some meaty ethical issues that most commentators attempt to avoid (see Michael West for example). No-one seem to want to be seen talking about ethics. Perhaps it is preferable to talk about interests because that is the “bottom line” of what motivates people to do things, anything else smacks of hypocrisy. But so much of our conversations deal with ethical issues. Newspapers have been polling the public asking if they think Mr. Joyce did the right thing. However, avoiding talking explicitly about the ethics of the matter we are left with very partial arguments that often do not get past self-interested rationalisations and spin. So for fear of hypocrisy we embrace corrosive cynicism.

Example…. Claiming “to do the right thing”, Mr Joyce remains vague about what he means by “Qantas”. It very probably does NOT mean the workers, the pilots, the engineers, the people who handle the luggage and many other services. He most probably means the shareholders, maybe extending to the decision-making circles: upper management and the board. But in the ethical realm, “doing the right thing” must extend to others affected by what the actor does. For this reason, many businesses talk about “stakeholders” not just “stockholders”. Part of stakeholder capitalism is a recognition of the importance of a “social license to operate” that may be withdrawn if the society where the business operates comes to the opinion that the business is damaging that society. The common practice of a stakeholder responsible business is to consult those who are likely to be materially affected by decisions of the business. It seems that ‘Qantas’ did not do that about the grounding of the fleet. And that lack of consultation/warning caused a lot of discomfort, inconvenience, cost and possible harm to thousands of passengers, not only those going to business meetings and holidays but also to funerals and sick relatives or are sick themselves. It is also causing wide-spread social backlash for Qantas itself. One particular stakeholder is extremely angry: the Australian Federal Government; an anger, it seems compounded by Mr Joyce afterwards claiming that he did advise Minister Albanese. (more…)

Watching British MPs grill Rupert and James Murdoch was an interesting example of attempts to find out the truth of what the phone hacking affair at “News of the World”. We could call the process “ethical pathology” because it represents attempts to find out what produced such a blatant and far reaching abuse of people, a clear ethical failure. As is often the case, finding out what went wrong is linked to apportioning responsibility and then sanctions, in other words a legal process. And, as is often the case, the uneasy relationship between ethics and law is being used to confuse the truth.

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Dr. Shann Turnbull

Modern banking has become one of the most unethical, exploitative and irresponsible features of capitalism. The government is responsible. No bank can exist without a government license.

Banks that are too big to fail are too big to be responsibly managed, governed or regulated. The government and their regulators have been asleep at the wheel in protecting the interest of citizens. (more…)

Bill Clinton has put up his hand accepting responsibility for damaging Haiti’s capacity to produce its own food when he was President and, as a long term consequence made recovery from the recent earthquake so much more difficult.

In a speech opening the World Food Day Commemoration at the UN FAO headquarters in NY, he argued that governments and businesses around the world should not treat food as just any commodity: food is not like colour television sets. (FAO http://www.fao.org/news/story/0/item/8106/icode/en/)

Does such a distinction hold up?

Estimates of the months since the explosion of the 20th of April on-board the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig of up to 60,000 barrels of oil leaking into the ocean point to objective damage to whole ecosystems and the communities that depend upon them. The impact of the accident was immediate: 11 people lost their lives in the explosion whilst the extent of the impact on the people and wildlife of the gulf still cannot be estimated as the oil-haemorrhage continues. Despite continued wrangling about who is to blame, BP has accepted responsibility and has also begun paying compensation to people of the Gulf now unable to make a living, setting aside $20 billion for future compensation claims at the request of the US Government. BP has to date paid $165 million in damages to people and businesses affected by the leak (BP). There are another 46,000 claims awaiting documentation to facilitate their assessment.

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