Business Ethics...

Yesterday, while reading the Gritty Business Buzz, I ended up on the website of a fellow VA-friend and she has that link on her page, saying that she had signed the business ethics pledge , which made me curious ...What is that she is standing for ?

So certainly I clicked on the link and ended up on that amazing website of Shel Horowitz ....

Why The Business Ethics Pledge Campaign

By Shel Horowitz

"Can one self-employed guy working from a farmhouse in Massachusetts actually have an impact on the way business is conducted in our modern world?

Some people seem to think the whole Business Ethics Pledge campaign is misguided, or at best tilting at windmills. I can tell you this: It's gotten incredibly positive feedback. The last project for which I've gotten so many thank-yous was when I started the movement that saved our local mountain from a very poorly-conceived housing development, a campaign that involved several thousand people. That campaign confirmed the idea that one person can indeed make a difference, and that difference is most easily achieved if the lone individual joins with others into an organized force. Oh yes, and people told me right at the beginning that we could never stop that monstrosity—so I've had some experience with achieving the "impossible".

Lots of people achieve the "impossible." Could anyone have predicted to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1955 that just ten years later, segregation would be outlawed? Would anyone have believed as Soviet tanks were crushing dissent in Prague that 20 years later, the entire Soviet Union and all its totalitarian satellites would come crashing down along with the Berlin Wall?

Jack Canfield (co-author of the Chicken Soup books and the Success Principles) tells the story about motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who tried to rent a van in New York City to deliver supplies to poor people in Harlem. His staff told him there were no vans to rent in all of New York City—so he went out on the street and started flagging down van drivers. Eventually, he flagged down the regional captain of the Salvation Army, who not only agreed to help, but improved the project.

I wrote my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, to help change the world's attitude about business. And when I realized that the book by itself wouldn't reach enough people to create the social change I want, the Pledge was a logical next step.

The Ethics Pledge campaign is deeply meaningful to some sectors of the business world, and I will continue pushing the Pledge and everything it represents, both to attempt to actually accomplish its (admittedly ambitious) goal, and to offer support to those who've placed their trust in this campaign and who have helped spread the word about it.

Since the 1950s, the concept of the "hundredth monkey" has been used to describe a paradigm shift that happens when a certain very small percentage of individuals shift their actions or beliefs—and then, like a wave, the new behavior or attitude spreads rapidly through society. Malcolm Gladwell calls that point of critical mass "the tipping point." Usually, a movement starts small, builds for some time while nobody's noticing (often in another culture), and then explodes into the public consciousness. We've seen it over and over again, in every sphere of our lives: politics, art & culture, and yes, business:
The Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott created the tipping point in national consciousness to begin the end of segregation, after 50 years of quiet behind-the-scenes activism in small groups.
The original Earth Day, in 1970, moved the consciousness of American society so that we began to pay attention to our society's effect on the environment. But remember—Rachel Carson's Silent Springwas published back in 1962; the nuclear test ban movement was even earlier.
The collapse of European Communism in 1989-90 probably wouldn't have been possible without Prague Spring and the brave resistance to the Soviet invasion, two decades earlier.
Business innovations like Kaizen (continuous improvement) were based on the writings of Western business thinkers but pretty much ignored here at first. But they were adopted widely in Japan, and brought back successfully to the US only after the Japanese automakers started cleaning the clocks of the American giants.

Will the Pledge campaign actually succeed? I don't know; it doesn't resonate with everyone. 25,000 each influencing at least 100 may or may not be enough to create the "tipping point"; there's really no way to find out other than to do it. I believe it will work--or at least help lay the necessary groundwork so that when the second wave arrives, the consciousness is ready to shift. At best, the pledge could be a catalyst for rapid change throughout society.

After all, I've been involved in "impossible" movements my whole life. When I started in social change, segregation was a very recent memory, the war in Vietnam was raging, and Nixon was calling for 1000 nuclear power plants. Segregation, the Vietnam war, and the (extremely dangerous) nuclear power industry were all brought to a halt by the power of ordinary human beings working together.

I'm an ordinary person who happens to have a combination of organizing skills and marketing skills, and I'm willing to tilt at this particular windmill to see if in fact I can move it around on its axis. When the housing development on the mountain was announced, the experts all said "this is terrible, but there's nothing we can do." It was actually that powerless response, rather than the project itself, that inspired me to form Save the Mountain—I knew I could prove them wrong. I fully expected that campaign to take five years; we defeated the project completely in just 13 months.

Is this goal really important enough to devote ten years of my life? I believe it is. I believe business has the power to transform society for good or for evil, and that too many of the transformations it has created have been for evil. I see an eventual ripple effect that results in improvements to the environment, to working conditions in developing countries and at home, in the way we are treated by politicians, the way the media covers the world and in the cultural consciousness that we are not just consumers, but citizens--people who stand up and step forward to create the world we want to live in. I hope you'll join me in this movement. the first step is very easy. Just sign the pledge. "

And here is the pledge I took :

I pledge allegiance, in my heart and soul, to the concepts of honesty, integrity, and quality in business. I recognize that the cornerstone of success is treating all stakeholders fairly, with compassion, and with a commitment to service. Working from abundance, I recognize that even my competitors can become important allies. I will not tolerate crooked practices in my business, from co-workers, direct or indirect reports, supervisors, managers, suppliers, or anyone else—and if I encounter such practices, I will refuse to go along with them and report them to appropriate authorities within and outside the company. I pledge to support the "triple bottom line" of environmental, social, and financial responsibility. And I pledge to participate in a serious effort to focus the business community on these principles, by sharing this message with at least 100 other business leaders.

So when are you going to join us ?