Our new ethical challenge

Editor's note: Ian Hodge is a regular columnist for Business Reform Magazine, the leading Christian business magazine with over 100,000 readers. Each issue of Business Reform features practical advice on operating successfully in business while glorifying God.

Whoever said business was easy was either a liar or a fool. Business is a challenge. That’s why it pays well.

But nothing challenges so much as the ethics of business. I have written on this before, but in this instance I’m going to explore some ethical challenges. They occur frequently in business, and there are no glib answers.

The first ethical challenge was created by Charles, excellent business manager and engineer. He began working as a business consultant but took a dislike to his employer who he felt did not carry enough integrity in their business dealings. Charles, a Christian, was hoping his employer ? non-Christian ? would bring the kind of ethical standards he had to the market place.

When he resigned his position, Charles had enough bad opinion of his employer that he did not entirely trust them. So, when he resigned he held on to the company laptop computer and printer until they paid him his final wages. Now the company had no record of not paying out its staff, even its disgruntled staff. But Charles made the computer system a condition of his final wage payout.

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The company responded that since Charles had decided to hang on to his computer, he could keep this in lieu of his wages and that was the end of the matter. Charles, naturally, was not entirely happy with an outcome he had not anticipated. He did get to keep the computer, but at the expense of his outstanding wages which, fortunately, were not much more than the value of the computer system. But he thought the company would naturally bow to his demands. It made no such concession.

In January this year an Australian employee working in Indonesia was jailed for six months for stealing. He kept the company car while negotiating his severance pay. The result was a jail term, an unexpected conclusion for the employee.

Did Charles act in the right way? Was he attempting to blackmail his employer? Was the employer’s response the right one under the circumstances? Did the Indonesian government correctly apply the laws concerning theft? These are the kind of ethical questions that occur regularly in business and challenge everyone to make a right decision.

Bob was an executive in a religious non-profit organization. He took the work because he wanted to work in a Christian environment and had sought out the particular organization to work for.

But he had not even started in the job when a female member of the board of governors called him about issues of management. Bob did not hear the warning bells. For as soon as he arrived in the position, he found this board member determined to be the de facto executive officer and tell him how to manage the company.

Three weeks into the job and Bob was asked by the governors to fire a staff member. He refused. The governors had been running the company themselves while seeking a replacement CEO, so he felt that if this employee was to be fired they could have done that before he took up the position. He suggested that until there was a board directive to fire the person he did not have to do it, and carefully advised the board they should not make such a directive because of possible legal ramifications.

The board naturally made no formal directive. Bob kept the staff member on because he found no reason to fire the employee, but in the process Bob obtained a reputation as someone who would not do as he was told.

In this instance, the matter did not end there. This was a religious organization. The board of governors thought they should be obeyed whenever they spoke, even if they did not make formal directives. Bob was clearly not acting as a Christian in his capacity as executive officer, they thought. A female member of the board (the one who liked to control the CEO) prepared a paper arguing that employees, especially the executive officer, were slaves of the board. The employees should jump whenever a board member commanded. Refusing to jump would not be an option. The only legitimate question was to ask, “how high?”

Eventually Bob and the organization parted company, but not before the relationships that should occur between Christians had broken down quite dramatically.

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The end result was a business that was so preoccupied with in-fighting that it missed the purpose of its existence. It was there to serve people in the community. The board of governors was more interested in playing petty politics than they were in setting goals for the business. In fact, the board, made up of clergymen and housewives, had very little insight into business and needed Bob’s expertise to make it work. But their religious zeal and their desire to control the CEO in an inappropriate manner truncated the growth of the organization.

Should individual board members be permitted to give private directives to staff? Should the CEO have sacked the staff member on the board member’s request without a formal board directive? And are employees slaves of the board of directors or are the board members, along with the rest of staff, subservient to the members and shareholders of non-profit and for-profit organizations?

You would think, given that Christianity has been around a long time, that answers to these questions would be easy to find. No such thing. While Christianity has been around a long time, it seems that it is necessary for each generation to find the answers to ethical questions all over again. Learning from the past does not seem an option.

Ian Hodge and Business Reform are able to offer a range of services that will educate business owners in all aspects of management, services that include our very own do-it-at-home (or at the office) study material. The first series of lessons on finance is now available. For further information, send an email to [email protected]. Learn to develop and maintain management practices that will give your business every chance of success.