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Do American Companies have a Responsibility to uphold certain Values beyond US Borders?
evanismyname
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In keeping with the recent attention focused on American (and of course other "1st world") tech companies and their complex relationship with Chinese manufacturing and labor systems, I have found myself thinking about the role that these companies play in globally reinforcing particularly unsavory practices by the local governments with whom they are pursuing business relationships. What actually prompted me to start this thread was Twitter's latest announcement that they will be providing international governments with a procedure for locally censoring tweets, their justification being that it is a necessary evil of opening up shop abroad and expanding their business opportunities into new markets.
In an attempt to preemptively neutralize the inevitable bad press, Twitter offered a "compromise" by stating that all take-down requests will be posted to http://www.chillingeffects.org/ and that information will only be censored in the particular jurisdictions of the offended governments in question. Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing has written a nice piece articulating the disingenuous excuses that Twitter is hiding behind:
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/31/twitters-early-bird-special.html#more-141730
From a purely business centered perspective, this makes absolute perfect sense. From a humanist perspective, it falls a little flat. While it is true that the primary goal of Business has always been first-and-foremost to make a profit, I feel that in the context of globalization that this mentality has become outdated. Some American corporations currently operate on such an unprecedented scale, that their global impact has the capacity to shape the direction of human social progress. I believe that the for-profit model can no longer be the self-justifying philosophy for modern global entanglements.
While America is far from perfect, there are a few areas of social progress that I believe are undeniable positive: Free Speech/Press, Labor laws, Civil Rights advancements, etc.
This brings us to the thread title: Do American companies have a responsibility to uphold American "values" when they operate abroad? For a company like Twitter, that would mean sacrificing the ability to expand their business model (with physical employees, advertising, etc) to certain countries. In oppressive regimes, Twitter has proved to be a successful tool for communicating dissent. While companies like Apple and Twitter may or may not be in a position to put pressure on foreign governments, they are currently have a unique opportunity to lead by example and not cave to $$$.
But if this is the case, how do we redefine ethical business practices to include this sense of social responsibility and activism? Is it possible, or necessary, to compel these corporations through legislation? Can we hold them accountable for their complicity in some of the world's most pertinent human rights quandaries?
In an attempt to preemptively neutralize the inevitable bad press, Twitter offered a "compromise" by stating that all take-down requests will be posted to http://www.chillingeffects.org/ and that information will only be censored in the particular jurisdictions of the offended governments in question. Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing has written a nice piece articulating the disingenuous excuses that Twitter is hiding behind:
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/31/twitters-early-bird-special.html#more-141730
Assailed by critics, Twitter pointed out that the new policy puts it ahead ahead of competitors which removes postings without disclosure. Defenders also pointed out the company's proven record of defending users' rights and standing up to legal pressure.
Insisting that transparent censorship is better than secret censorship, Twitter also published a tranche of copyright takedowns it had received; a taster of how the system will work.
All this distracts us, however, from a simple fact: Twitter currently performs no political censorship at all and has never once removed a tweet at the request of a foreign government. The false choice between degrees of political censorship belies Twitter's third option, of continuing its censorship-free tradition instead of playing with political fire abroad.
The exquisitely-balanced compromises that Twitter devised for itself—such as its promise not to pre-emptively filter tweets—appeal to U.S. business pundits who cannot envisage Twitter declining to do business in unfree countries. But it's left to the imagination why courts in these places, able to threaten local staff and business operations, would respect these corporate policies when they issue their inevitable demands.
...
Twitter confirmed to me that it has never censored a tweet at the request of a government. Not about Ataturk, not about the King of Thailand, nor anyone else. The blurring of domestic copyright takedowns with political criticism abroad is bad enough. But to describe more censorship as "less censorship" by comparing it to even worse hypothetical censorship is a caricature of free expression.
No surprise, then, that Thailand (where criticizing royalty is a criminal offense) was the first government to publicly praise Twitter's new policy.
From a purely business centered perspective, this makes absolute perfect sense. From a humanist perspective, it falls a little flat. While it is true that the primary goal of Business has always been first-and-foremost to make a profit, I feel that in the context of globalization that this mentality has become outdated. Some American corporations currently operate on such an unprecedented scale, that their global impact has the capacity to shape the direction of human social progress. I believe that the for-profit model can no longer be the self-justifying philosophy for modern global entanglements.
While America is far from perfect, there are a few areas of social progress that I believe are undeniable positive: Free Speech/Press, Labor laws, Civil Rights advancements, etc.
This brings us to the thread title: Do American companies have a responsibility to uphold American "values" when they operate abroad? For a company like Twitter, that would mean sacrificing the ability to expand their business model (with physical employees, advertising, etc) to certain countries. In oppressive regimes, Twitter has proved to be a successful tool for communicating dissent. While companies like Apple and Twitter may or may not be in a position to put pressure on foreign governments, they are currently have a unique opportunity to lead by example and not cave to $$$.
But if this is the case, how do we redefine ethical business practices to include this sense of social responsibility and activism? Is it possible, or necessary, to compel these corporations through legislation? Can we hold them accountable for their complicity in some of the world's most pertinent human rights quandaries?
evanismyname on
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The first problem is when a company uses their influence to change or circumvent laws like when they bribe government officials so they can continue polluting or enforce horrible work conditions.
The second problem is when a company capitulates to a foreign government so they can do business with them like what Twitter is doing.
That said, I would not have a problem with the US government imposing laws requiring American companies to behave by certain ethical standards while operating abroad.
Why do the workers in the company (of all types - I'm including execs and cleaners) lose their moral obligations when they go to work?
Because we should all set our moral compasses to "Pimps and backstreet whores" when we're getting paid to do something?
There is a bit of a dichotomy inherent in this, as well.
Scenario one is often framed along the lines of "if we don't give this company exactly what it wants, they'll close up shop and it will cost us jobs".
Scenario two involves companies that fold like the Flash on laundry day due to the demands of (relatively) second rate governments.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
It's because the US isn't going to play hardball the way those other governments do.
If we makes things inconvenient for a company to manufacture here, they'll outsource at the drop of a hat because they know that whatever meager penalties result (if any) will be far outweighed by the benefits gained from the outsourcing.
If they make problems in, say, China, there's a chance that they'll be told to GTFO and lose everything.
If the US were to say (and please note that I'm not suggesting this would be a good idea) "if you outsource due to the increased corporate tax rate, we will ban the sale of your products within our borders", companies would perhaps be a little bit more concerned.
Aside from that, workers are employed to perform a job by the company (and thus by shareholders), so that they can live. When the actions of a company require immorality, you can blame the worker if you want but the worker is expendable. The shareholders are ultimate cause for that company's action however, whether through deliberate action, or not caring about anything other than the rate of return for their investment.
History does not seem like a very good refutation of moral rules/laws/facts/absolutes/whatever the current popular term is.
And it strikes me as simplistic to blame the shareholders, because it ignores the tremendous influence that various levels of management have on the running of the company.
This is basically meaningless buzz-word business rhetoric. Workers are expendable? I don't know what that means. History has taught us... what exactly? I don't think history and philosophy are the same thing.
Employment - the obligation to do your job - is a moral situation. The moral requirement to do the job you've agree to do does not trump all other moral considerations, but must be weighed alongside those. As must every other moral necessity.
As to the OP: I think that the idea that morality is national - that American borders or American lives matter differently to Ugandan borders or Laotian lives - to be unsupportable and the sign of a politician or businessperson who has no interest in ethics at all.
Or to summarise it even further: should I give a shit if a bunch of brown/yellow/far away people get worked to death?
There's an app for that!
And a corporation is not, even under current law, its shareholders. That's the whole point of corporate personhood, that the liabilities are only transmitted in certain cases.
You're completely right, but I worry that conflating law and morality will make things tricky here.
So we should continue to tilt at windmills that engage in the same sorts of practices regardless of which employee is at the helm, and let the shareholders that want their dividends off the hook? Are we to say that its all too big for shareholders to hold any responsibility for the way in which their profit is made? That is an enormous cop out, because everything that a company does is to please its shareholders.
Well, I am not sure what you're talking about for most of the time, because I think you're either missing the point of some people's posts, debating in a language you're not sufficiently fluent in, or engaging in rhetorical shenanigans, but I can engage with your last sentence: That's not true at all. 'Companies' don't do anything. People within companies do things, and pleasing themselves is top of the list, then their boss & subordinates in an order related to their personal attitudes. Shareholders rarely feature.
So when you are a mid-level manager at FoxConn responsible for working people until their brains melt, and you decide not to, you will be replaced by someone that will, because the system didn't change; the shareholders (and their appointed board of directors) are the only people that can't be fired, and that permanence brings power.
I'm not going to reply to every post, but anyone that thinks workers have a moral obligation, yet thinks that companies legally having limited liability removes the shareholders' moral obligation, is talking through their hat.
Uh, what?
I'm not talking about shareholders being responsible for that one guy who commits fraud and runs away with millions, but when we're talking about the sort of integral shittiness in corporate culture illustrated in the OP, its more than one bad egg. Boards of directors exist specifically for oversight of the company, yet how much do they look into how their organisation is really run? How often do they look past the spreadsheets and check for the decimal place? The answer: as often as their shareholders indicate is required.
And company workers are absolutely morally responsible for their actions when on the clock. If we don't allow the Nuremberg Defense for soldiers who might be executed for disobeying, then we certainly won't let it fly because someone had to pay their mortgage.
I think I will add that to the list of Things You Don't Get and stop responding to your posts.
I think the confusion has come from Gosprey assuming that people are saying that workers having moral responsibilities meaning shareholders don't. When no-one is saying that.
I think.
You know, you can assign moral responsibility for the same act to more than one entity.
Regardless. An index fund may contain several thousand different companies. An institutional investor might desire to hold several of such funds. This investor might be a consumer bank. Say you put $5 in your checking account. How far does the chain of moral culpability extend? My intuition is that the responsibility climbs as high as but no higher than the highest directing personality. Your own description seems quite unconstrained.
Yeah, Milt was full of shit when he said that, because he ignored the one key fact about corporations - corporations are what We The People say they are, because we don't have to issue that charter,and there is no reason why we can't put obligations into those charters.
I thought she went to jail for lying to the authorities
Companies are actually allowed to make decisions which are not profit motivated to be socially responsible. You just need shareholder approval. If the manager's ask the board to put a social question to the shareholders and the board approves it, but the shareholders do not, who would we say is culpable?
Of course, if we start the debate on business ethics in one area, where does it stop? It doesn't help that the current political and corporate climate seems to be aimed at challenging qualities of American legislation and values that were once celebrated for their humanist achievements, and using countries with a pretty weak track record in human rights (a la China) as examples to strive towards.
Now, this may be debatable as well but I believe that if we were to talk about global progress in specific regard to Human Rights, that there are many countries that are way behind the curve. But that doesn't stop a lot of US businesses from expanding into their jurisdictions and often complying, or even reinforcing their laws. Now I don't necessarily believe that corporations should be expected to become activist organizations by any stretch of the imagination. But I do believe that by caving to local censorship, for example, that we legitimize the act in a global context. Writing it off as "local customs" or however you want to spin it, downplays the fact that a lot of American companies are in a position to indirectly pressure the rest of the world by holding themselves to these standards, no matter where they are.
The voting shareholders, provided that the social question was reasonable. If the board puts out a question that they know the shareholders would reject, just so they can throw up their hands and say, "Hey, we tried an environmental initiative, but the shareholders rejected it," then the board was culpable as well.
That said, a new recycling program, or a charity initiative, or a change in supplier from sweatshop labor to non-sweatshop labor is unlikely to garner a shareholder vote in a major national corporation.
For the record, I also completely and totally reject any argument based on naive moral relativism, and any argument based on the idea that corporations have no moral obligations outside of a profit motive. I'm really tired of these topics coming up every time a company does something wrong, particularly the latter, as if all a person needs to do to be immune from social censure is file an article of corporation.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well, normally, I would ask a simple question: is the censored version of the service a net good?
For example, when Google China opened up shop and started censoring search engine hits, I felt that this was a net good. This increased access to information for the people of China. Particularly, I can point to their actions of 2010, when they temporarily disabled their own censorship in response to a hacking operation by the Chinese government against Google, to show that Google has at least attempted to do good in China.
The BoingBoing article is a little disingenuous. (Not really a surprise - it's BoingBoing.) Nowhere does the author admit that Twitter is completely blocked in China. If this maneuver allows them to penetrate behind the Chinese firewall, then that's a net good. If they make it obvious to censored Tweeters that they're being censored (by replacing the censored content with a takedown notice), then that's even better.
Neither Google nor Twitter are the villain here. China is (along with other countries that engage in censorship). You don't make inroads into situations like that by taking your ball and going home.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If the company agrees to a censored version of their service, on the other hand, the government is no longer forced to make such a choice. Oppressive regimes can benefit from these services' economic advantages without the threat of social instability, which may only reinforce their power.
--LeVar Burton