Profit or virtue

To choose virtue over profit is easier said than done. It is a thorny choice for many a businessman because corporations from conception to inception are designed with one motivation - profit. This is not to argue that profit is pejorative or dishonorable, I think, for the most part, profit affects or weakens the choice for what's right and what's not. Again, it is not my argument that companies should exist not for profit.

My case is that companies must come to terms with their own values and principles at the outset before they get organized. There is a need for deep reflection as to how their values and principles could survive in the midst of a very stiff competition -- a need to assess their primary motivation when making business decisions and their willingness to abandon gain or even compromise survival for the sake of ethics and fairness.

The inconvenient truth about getting started into business is that we always start with the wrong foot. We think of opportunities, of market potential, of gain and competition and spend a lot of money in feasibility studies without ever cogitating how challenging the venture can be to the virtues we hold dear and keep. The mindset has always been "Money first" then fix the virtues later. And by the time when the choice between profit and virtue need to be resolved, the fate of what is truly virtuous is left to the opinion of the majority of its board.

A case in point is contractualization of employees. A practice common in factories at the processing zones. While it is virtuous to regularize employees for social reasons, companies take advantage of contractualization on the pretext of providing short-term jobs. The contractual employee may be very happy -- at least for the next three to five months. But far happier than he is are his employers whose virtues have been either forgotten or abandoned and who profit from his temporary job -- no benefits to pay and no salary increases to worry about.

Many firms also mistakenly assume that corporations primarily exist not to acquire virtue but to acquire profit. The most virtuous thing that they can do is to simply comply with civil regulations. Period. Their proponents argue that statutes that govern businesses are more

than enough to enable corporations to behave responsibly and that the need for virtue is not only redundant but practically unnecessary.

While laws provide the framework for profit organizations to act responsibly, it does not however make any of them “ideally responsible.” Corporate virtue, still, is a quality that must be sought and acquired to be responsible in the truest sense. My argument is that laws serve only to provide the minimum requirements for a company to behave responsibly. In this situation, companies cannot be considered ideally responsible if they use these very same laws to overprice a government contract or to monopolize a business.

A virtuous company is not only conscious of its legal obligation but consciously acts to the dictates of its conscience. Hence, profit is primary to the business when it diligently meets the criteria of fairness. It is secondary when it places above the welfare of others before its own.

One may think that such corporations exist only in utopia but many of the popular brands we know are striving and starting to become one. Starbucks, Citibank, McDonalds, Mark and Spencer and PepsiCo are just but a few to mention. For the same-minded people, they are what they call “good corporate citizens.”

Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative undertaken by the consulting firm Arthur D. Little concludes that: “Companies that take corporate citizenship seriously can improve their reputations and operational efficiency, while reducing their risk exposure and encouraging loyalty and innovation. Overall, they are more likely to be seen as a good investment and as a company of choice by investors, employees, customers, regulators and joint venture partners. . . . The range of

business benefits that can result should be sufficient to make any forward-thinking organization see increasing corporate citizenship as an integral part of good business management.”

Indeed, it can now be said that it is not a choice between profit and virtue…there is profit for virtue.

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