We shall raise some moral questions and issues as they relate to workplaces, consumers and the environment. As with the previous lecture on corporate moral responsibility, we can only highlight some important issues without necessarily providing any clear answers.

Traditionally, the obligations between a business organisation and its employee could be reduced to ‘A fair wage for a honest’s day work’. With the emergence of industrial capitalism, however, this model of employer-employee is too simple and fails to address the moral issues involved in the workplace. For instance:

• the state of civil liberties in the workplace;
• respecting the rights and moral dignity of employees, including privacy.

Employees frequently complain that their organisations violate their moral rights and civil liberties (e.g. sacrificing their private and family life to meet business needs, abuse and bullying at work from other workers and employers, unable to speak freely or criticise openly business practices, and lack of free associations).

According to ‘the common law’ in the advanced societies, every employment is employment at will (i.e., either side of the employment contract is free to terminate employment at any time without advance notice and reason). However, ‘the common law’ has been modified in important ways to protect workers from discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and disability, and from unfair dismissal. But, many individuals still are treated unjustly, and lack effective organisational voice.

An important organisational conduct that affects the welfare and rights of employees is the personnel policies and procedures of hiring, firing, paying and promoting them. These have to be fair, transparent and open to change. Also, the conditions under which people work are important in respecting their rights; in particular three key aspects of working conditions are health and safety, styles of management and organisation’s maternity and day-care arrangement.

One crucial civil liberty is the right of privacy (i.e., independence and freedom). Privacy is widely acknowledged today to be a fundamental right, yet corporate behaviour and policies can often threaten it. Significantly, threats to privacy can arise on the job; e.g., some employers look through the files of their workers, eavesdrop on their telephone calls, and read their emails. Equally important is the way organisations attempt to influence behaviour that ought to be left to the discretion of their employees, in particular, their efforts to impose their own values onto their employees. For example, some corporates demand that their employees should be married, pay contributions to political organisations, or urge them to pursue political and civic goals.

Corporations and other organisations often have legitimate interests of work performance, company secrets and corporate image that require them to violate the private sphere of their employees. For example, an employee’s family member may belong to a political or social group, which is against the interest of the organisation, or have a criminal record.

The general proposition is that a firm has a legitimate interest in its employee behaviour, which significantly influences work performance. This includes ‘off-the-job’ conduct, where employees’ off-the-job activities can seriously damage the image a firm wishes to project. For example, the employee may have a history of violent behaviour or alcohol abuse, or be involved in a highly political court case. A company may encourage off-the-job activities (such as school and charity fund-raising events) that reflect positively for it. However, attempts by organisations to influence off-the-job behaviour often constitute invasions of privacy. Indeed, activities should be voluntary and left to the discretion of the individual, without any repercussions for employment prospects or promotion.

In addition, not only is it a moral duty of companies to respect the rights and dignity of their employees, but doing so can also work to the company’s benefit by enhancing employee morale and thus, the company’s competitive performance.

Are consumers sufficiently well-informed about the products they buy? Are they misled by deceptive labelling and packaging? In general, how far should society go in controlling the claims of advertisers, in regulating product packaging and labels, in monitoring product quality and price, and in upholding explicit standard of reliability and safety? What are the moral responsibilities of businesses in these matters? How do we promote social well-being while still respecting the choices of individuals?

Previously, the doctrine of caveat emptor (‘let the buyer beware’) was regarded the guiding principle of consumers – though this was rarely ever put into practice. Consumers were held to be knowledgeable, shrewd and sceptical, and it was their free choice whether to buy a certain product. It was claimed that they took an informed and calculated risk when they bought a product, so that they were accountable and responsible for their consequences of their consumption.

However, with the development of international capitalism and complex technical and social division of labour, the doctrine of caveat emptor became unworkable and inappropriate. Instead, the doctrine of strict product liability holds that the seller of a product has legal responsibilities to compensate the user of that product for injuries suffered because the product’s defective condition made it unreasonably dangerous, even though the seller had not been negligent in permitting that defect to occur.

In addition to the development of product liability law, government agencies regulate product safety. The agencies aid consumers in evaluating product safety, develop uniform standards, gather data, conduct research, and coordinate local, state and federal product safety laws and enforcement. Safety regulations may also prevent individuals from choosing to purchase a riskier, though less expensive product. This touches on a controversy over legal paternalism, which is the doctrine that the law may justifiably be used to restrict the freedom of individuals for their own good. For instance, prohibitions on drugs and dangerous medicine, and under-age drinking and smoking.

To be sure, simply obeying laws and regulations does not exhaust the moral responsibilities of business in the area of consumer safety. The prevailing view favours self-regulation. However, self-regulation can easily become an instrument for subordinating consumer interests to profit making when the two goals clash.

Finally, moral issues arise in relation to advertising. Because advertisers are trying to persuade people to buy their products, there is a natural temptation to mis-represent and even lie. Furthermore, critics argue that advertising encourages artificial and material values at the expense of public goods. Yet, advertising, marketing and promoting are essential part of the market society, without which markets will fail coordinate. A set of government regulations and professional and ethical codes is laid down for advertisers so as to minimise mis-use and abuse.

The recognition of a right to a liveable environment would strengthen the ethical reasons for business to respect the integrity of the natural world. This moral right could form a sound basis for a human and environmental bill of rights, and so enhance our ability to pursue polluters and other abusers of the environment.

However, by broadening the term ‘environment’ to include territorial and temporal dimensions, this has implications for our conception of environmental ethics.

• Firstly, we have obligations to those who live outside our society, yet the US has 6% of population, though uses 30% of world’s non-renewable resources, such as oil, and the European Union consumes resources disproportional to its population. As each individual matters and matters equally, why the uneven development?
• Secondly, we have obligations to future generations. Invariably, we put more emphasis on the present consumption of resources rather than on the future legacy that we will leave to our children. Yet, how do we balance our obligations to these ‘distant others’ with self-satisfaction?

Finally, a radical approach to environmental ethics challenges the human-centred approach. This approach questions our relationship to other species (e.g., bears, wolves, fishes, horses, cows and ants). Assuming an equal status with other species, as humans, we have an obligation to protect the welfare of animals. This can lead to prohibiting animal experimentation, animal testing, the production of animal products, and ‘factory-farming’. Of course, this has implications for our consumption of food and clothes, and our use of animals for sport, pets and work, as well as changing agricultural practices. Yet, despite the radical changes in our social and economic practices, these issues have to be tackled if environmental ethics is to be considered seriously.