Ethics for Sale According to New Survey

Fuld and Company, a competitive-intelligence consultancy, released the results of a survey it conducted in the third quarter of 2010.  The survey was given to a number of executives spanning many different industries throughout the United States and was designed to evaluate the ethical response of executives to various business scenarios.

What Fuld and Company found was that executives in technology and financial services companies were much less squeamish that most other industries when it came to ethics.  That is, they were much more comfortable entering into ethical gray areas.  Pharmaceutical and government workers were the most conservative (i.e. most ethical) when presented with difficult business scenarios where ethics were called into question.

My point is not to commend, defend, or decry any industry, instead I want to point out that ethics tend to be looser where there is less regulatory scrutiny or the financial stakes are very high.  The Wall Street Journal also reported on this story and they quote the author of the book, “Competitive Intelligence,” Larry Kahaner as saying, “What I’ve found is that the more money that’s involved, the less squeamish people become.  If companies have gotten away with stuff over the years, they don’t clean up their act.”

In other words, ethics are for sale.  This is one of the reasons that from the beginning of this blog I have criticized capitalism as it is currently practiced around the world and why I feel good regulation is integral for the long-term health and survival of capitalism.

Jason