Editor's Page
Corporate ethics Earlier this year Du Pont senior vice president Richard E. Heckert took part in a discussion of corporate ethics at an American Institute of Chemical Engineers meeting in Atlanta. Here, verbatim, is part of his prepared text. If any corporate organization wants high ethical standards to prevail in its ranks, there must be action (and not just good wishes) at the top. There must be a clear, unambiguous commitment by the senior management to a stated code of conduct. Over time, this code will need amendment, but at any given moment it ought to be there for public view. It ought to be written in plain English, compliance ought to be monitored, and violations ought to carry penalties that have been advertised in advance. At least a partial answer [to the problems of business ethics in an international setting] can be found in the way business goes about resolving such questions. In some instances, it is an error for business to try to find the answer by itself. The broader interests of the public and the nation should override the more narrow interests of commercial enterprise. The best example of the moment is South Africa: Should American-based corporations build plants there or not? As it happens Du Pont does not have any investment in production facilities there, but we can see that there are obviously two sides to this. Will U.S. investments prop up a government that is judged to violate human rights as a matter of policy, or will they bring economic and technical gains that can help improve living standards of the nonwhites as well as the ruling minority in South Africa? The answer very possibly is that it will do both, so what is the ethical course of action? Some people—the so-called ecumenical stockholder groups, for example—want business to ban South Africa from the company of nations just as rigidly as South Africa has banned some of its own people. As the old saying goes, I wish I were as sure of anything as these people are of everything. My point isn't that I know what's best, but that the judgment call must be made by our society broadly. Economic policy on relationships with South Africa is not appropriately, or at least not very effectively, set by private corporations acting independently. When it comes to setting national policy, the corporate role must be subordinate to the political process. Heaven knows the process is not perfect. It produces lots of policies that you and I think are wrong, but that is a less serious failure for our free society than it would be to have corporations making foreign policy. What needs protection above all is the process of open debate by which our society arrives at judgments about right and wrong behavior. If different groups with different codes simply ctfme head on at one another, slapping nonnegotiable demands down on the table, we will get nowhere. We must instead give all views a fair hearing, and agree to abide by the open consensus, openly arrived at, even when it hurts. The objective of business ought to be to keep its behavior on the high side of the public consensus on morality, and to articulate its standards and performance for all to see. The buzz word for that in this country is "disclosure." In Europe they call it "transparency." Whatever the label, it means operating in a goldfish bowl in terms of your moral code. It is doubtful that any one step business might take would do more for us than simply saying, "This is what we believe is right; so this is what we're doing." People will respect that. Simply disclosing our views isn't going to quiet all debate about corporate ethics, or eliminate criticism of overt wrongdoing. Nor should it! Businessmen have made their share of mistakes, for which they deserve to be criticized. Yet on balance, the record is not bad and is probably getting better. Many of the issues that have captured so much public attention are not all that difficult to resolve, and even tough issues can be made manageable, if we are willing to talk about them candidly. To keep business from ending up crossways with society, in the U.S. or most other nations, the best strategy I know is to stand up and say, "This is what we believe." D
C&EN editorials represent only the views of the author and aim at initiating intelligent discussion
April 3, 1978 C&EN
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