DECISIONS AND ETHICS

WOJCIECH GASPARSKI

John Paul II

Nowadays there is an ongoing controversy related to the contemporary business legend. Enthusiasts are for sceptics against the "corporate social responsibility". The issue was discussed in Warsaw, Poland (6-7 October, 2003) at a conference-stage of European Campaign for CSR, a part of the "Marathon" run through 15 countries. It came from Portugal and is going to Switzerland now.
Some remember the Gospel of Wealth by Carnegie, others consider it as public relations dressed in another word garment. Ones consider the "stakeholder theory" as managerial others blame it to be a "doctrine" what induces critics to throw out the baby with the bath water, while what is necessary is to separate theory from ideology. It is a task for theoreticians and unbiased practitioners whose wisdom is so important in any kind of action, business action included.
Experts in system theory point out the context of any kind of human actions performed collectively. The real world is not a gathering of fragments but the whole of interrelated and interdependent elements. J. M. Bochenski - a Polish philosopher and a Dominican friar, who was a rector of the University of Fribourgh, Switzerland - identified two types of human action aims: "immanent" related to what is done, and "transcendent" related to for what that is done. Performing immanent aims is the necessary condition for achieving transcendent aims. It means that a firm must to produce - for it is its immanent aim, and has to exist, as well as has to be strong enough to continue, and finally it has to operate rationally. Firm as a system is composed of smaller systems (subsystems) created by groups of stakeholders. Although between aims of them and between them and the aim of the firm there are indispensable contradictions, particular aims of stakeholder groups would be achieved if and only if the firm as a whole accomplishes its immanent aim. This delineate the social sense of a company: a hospital has to cure, a school - to teach, an enterprise - to produce, it is how they perform important social functions.
Who dreams on industrial enterprise without tensions he or she dreams only: nothing like that exists, Bochenski warns adding at the same time that: Solidarity of aims of different groups of elements with the aim of an enterprise as a whole is taken for granted in its structure. Who sees in it a battlefield only has not understood the obvious structural fact which gives better insight into function - therefore in ethics - of an entrepreneur. Business is not a war during which habitual morality is suspended, and "morality of the state of emergency" allowing to kill enemies is introduced. Competition is not economical degradation of market rivals, personnel is not slaves of antique world or of modern America. Similarly to Clausewitz who pointed out that war is too serious to be relegate to generals, economics is too serious to relegate it to officers: CEOs, CFOs etc. They take care of their compensations too often as the case of the NYSE CEO showed recently.
Every domain of social life differentiated because of its essential functions in society is guided by rules characteristic for the domain. The rules taken together, according to sociology, are the institution. Enterprise is one of such institutions. It is peculiar for enterprise - as Piotr Sztompka, president of the International Sociological Association writes - that it is not a group of workers in a factory building but a set of rules characteristic for economic activity. Therefore such values like effectiveness, success, promotion, quality, profit, wages, pension, dignity of a firm, professional proud, or such norms like professional duties and rights, discipline of work, punctuality, honesty, responsibility, etc.
Responsibility of an organisation is not to be reduced to one value or norm selected from the above list. On the contrary, it is related to identification and taking into account of a tangle of interrelations (systemicity) between of all values and norms creating economic institution in social and natural environment in which the organisation operate and without which it would not be able to function. Taking an organisation as a whole is a precondition for integrity, i.e., for understanding responsible business as the one which accomplishes the company’s goal (increasing its value through delivering quality products/services) in the long run (harmonious permanence), ensured by proper shaping of relations with the main stakeholders (shareholders, employees, managers, clients, consumers, suppliers, local community, natural environment, etc.), and through all stakeholders conduct compatible with law and socially accepted ethical norms.
Conducting business with responsibility is the condition of the economic values growth (immanent aims) what subserves to the growth of social values (transcendent aims), what creates better conditions to further economic growth, whereafter of social values, and so on. They create a double helix, a kind of business DNA, the healthier genetically the fuller is its actual responsibility. It is not the legend but the story on the essence of business and the importance of its responsibility.