Just Rewards: The Case for Ethical Reform in Business

Barbara Jones McLellan specialized in economics and ethics in Vancouver.

David Olive is a business journalist for Toronto Life, Canadian Business, and the Globe and Mail. In this book, he has pulled together current (through mid-1987) Canadian and U.S. events which demonstrate good and bad ethical business behaviour. The bibliography reveals that his research has been original and extensive, and the book effectively paints a picture of the public perception of business ethics since the 1970s.

Olive’s approach to such an undertaking is to present case after case of “greed” at work within corporations, in the stock market, and in government, with an emphasis on its effects upon innocent third parties. He does this first with U.S. examples, then with Canadian, and finally with examples beginning from ancient Babylonian practices, in an attempt to show that greed is not a new historical phenomenon. Switching to a positive emphasis, Olive describes various corporations which exhibit positive ethical behaviour and how they do so.

He also discusses the pros and cons of ethics as a more explicit part of MBA training, of radical reformers in the business world, and of alternative investment options now becoming more sophisticated and commonplace in North America. The appendices provide the actual texts of various court rulings and corporate ethical statements, as well as the names of ethical investment funds and information networks in Canada and the U.S.

Just Rewards contains the overall viewpoint that all decisions made in the business world are ethical, whether positive or negative. This is all too often missing from popular approaches to ethics. But has he made a “Case for Ethical Reform in Business”? This is not as clear. The logic of the book contains a fundamental ambiguity in that, for all its underlying research, it does not take the further step of explicitly stating whether anyone can be asked to behave in a positive ethical manner in the first place. Olive’s approach is a circular one which eventually debilitates the book. He wants to make clear that he is not a business-basher. He therefore appeals to corporations on the grounds of motivations which he thinks will be accepted without debate: positive ethical behaviour with an eye beyond simple short-run profits for particular management groups will improve public confidence, increase consumer support, and thus monetarily benefit the company which acts this way. At the very least, it will prevent the occasion for an increase in government “regulation and intervention.” Basically, the appeal is still on the basis of the profit motive, which is itself graphically established as the cause of the cases of abuse in the first half of the book.

This leaves the reader with a fundamental ambiguity. What is ethical? Why act this way? How are positive ethics to be maintained? Olive does not answer the first question. He leaves this to the individual to determine. For the second, he draws on cultural consensus, yet does not explicitly state what that is. And concerning the third, he himself relies on regulation and intervention, this time enforced by companies and schools.

In general, then, this book can be read as a beginning. This is seen in the historical section, which jumps to sweeping conclusions in interpreting the course of business ethics through time. A more thorough historical perspective is the next place to go after having worked to understand the events of the present.