180. The strange case of the missing business ethics

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Modern business thinking has no time for ethics. True, corporations refer to ethical business, but this is just another product. It is paid lip service, in most cases, as a marketing ploy to attract customers. Some corporations do seem to behave ethically, but not many consistently do. The maximisation of financial returns is the ultimate objective of most businesses and this is widely accepted in society as necessary. But this acceptance is a mistake, the result of an oversimplification early economists made to be able to model economic interactions and the system these build. No universal law dictates this must be the aim of businesses. We could choose to rate and value a business on ethics, or impact on the wellbeing and happiness of stakeholders it interacts with. This is more complex, but would have an incredible effect on our societies. Money has been around so long it is easy to forget it is just a convention to facilitate exchange and, thus, lacks intrinsic merit or substance 

Location: Hereford, UK

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