1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:03,410 Thank you, Steve. Well, thank you for coming. 2 00:00:06,420 --> 00:00:10,800 I was feeling pretty good about this until Steve then mentioned that I'm going to read the paper. 3 00:00:12,660 --> 00:00:22,229 This is more a collection of thoughts that have come out of the work that I do around business 4 00:00:22,230 --> 00:00:30,810 and its relationship to climate change and other basic challenges of the 21st century. 5 00:00:32,460 --> 00:00:42,420 And for anybody that has taken an interest in climate change, sustainability, resource constrained economies and all these things, 6 00:00:42,720 --> 00:00:53,730 it will be quite apparent that there is a strong ethical dimension to this, or at least the issues are often portrayed in an ethical way. 7 00:00:57,570 --> 00:00:59,610 The title, the intriguing title. 8 00:01:00,930 --> 00:01:13,020 One of the strange things about business, I think, is this love hate relationship that we have developed with it on the one hand. 9 00:01:14,610 --> 00:01:19,050 Obviously, we look to business to provide goods and services. 10 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:28,290 Sometimes we get very worked up about the idea that the private sector is going to provide public goods. 11 00:01:29,730 --> 00:01:37,260 The current debate around the reform of the National Health Service or the current debate around the Big Society is an example of this. 12 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:41,130 Why are these things being privatised? Do they need to be privatised? 13 00:01:41,610 --> 00:01:46,110 What does the private sector offer and always think? 14 00:01:46,380 --> 00:01:59,880 I'm currently preparing my panel for the march on March 26th, and it does occur to me that we were not to blame. 15 00:02:00,060 --> 00:02:04,710 It was the public sector that was to blame, and yet it was the private sector that was to blame. 16 00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:09,990 And yet we are being asked to embrace more and more the private sector. 17 00:02:12,480 --> 00:02:17,100 So we have this kind of thing of we do we love business. 18 00:02:18,030 --> 00:02:23,969 We love the things that it brings. We love the shops. We love the fact that the electricity arrives on time. 19 00:02:23,970 --> 00:02:30,060 We love the fact that that we can move around transport wise. 20 00:02:30,060 --> 00:02:33,240 We love the fact that we can communicate with each other very freely. 21 00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:37,650 We like the innovations that the private sector brings and so on and so forth. 22 00:02:37,860 --> 00:02:46,139 Even indeed, despite certain things going wrong with the financial sector, certain fundamental things going well with financial sector, 23 00:02:46,140 --> 00:02:56,700 we do actually like the fact that the banking system doesn't lose our money incredibly often, certainly not as often as it historically did. 24 00:03:00,180 --> 00:03:05,130 So we have this very ambivalent relationship now. 25 00:03:08,330 --> 00:03:11,530 There's two things behind Mr. Burns here, that interest trade. 26 00:03:11,570 --> 00:03:20,820 One is the idea that this this gentleman, this Scott millionaire is so rich. 27 00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:24,140 How on earth could he possibly be a normal person? 28 00:03:25,850 --> 00:03:36,860 Would it actually represent is how much money I would have if I had a dollar for every time I have said I work in business ethics and people say, 29 00:03:36,860 --> 00:03:41,810 isn't that a tautology? I would be a very rich person indeed. 30 00:03:44,170 --> 00:03:50,290 But there is a field. There is a long established field of business ethics. 31 00:03:50,770 --> 00:03:55,060 And I'm just going to. In order to understand what the challenges of the 21st century, 32 00:03:55,510 --> 00:04:01,810 I want to give a bit of a backdrop to how business ethics itself has been interpreted and how it has evolved. 33 00:04:03,250 --> 00:04:13,390 So one meaning the way we talk about business ethics is that there are objective ethical perspectives on business itself. 34 00:04:14,500 --> 00:04:19,410 They can be pro business. I love capitalism. 35 00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:25,110 Just look at what growth brings to our society. 36 00:04:27,150 --> 00:04:40,420 Or it can be very anti-business. With the protests, protests against capitalism many times. 37 00:04:40,930 --> 00:04:46,960 Many of you will remember the riots in Seattle in the late nineties, early 2000s. 38 00:04:47,590 --> 00:04:53,230 This whole movement against the World Trade Organisation and the whole idea that the one 39 00:04:54,940 --> 00:05:01,780 functioning governance body that we have for a globalised era is the World Trade Organisation, 40 00:05:03,430 --> 00:05:14,740 which seems to be putting, putting a flag in the sand that says what we value above all is, is business. 41 00:05:15,460 --> 00:05:18,400 A business pretty much is used interchangeably with capitalism. 42 00:05:18,760 --> 00:05:24,800 I mean, business itself actually is very resilient to different political economic systems. 43 00:05:25,150 --> 00:05:29,410 So you do have business tree capitalism. 44 00:05:29,410 --> 00:05:34,900 Obviously, you have business working quite successfully under national socialism and so on and so forth. 45 00:05:34,930 --> 00:05:40,630 But by and large, what I'm talking here, I am talking about business within the capitalist system. 46 00:05:42,220 --> 00:05:48,610 The second meaning is the idea that business is made up of individuals. 47 00:05:49,210 --> 00:05:53,410 And individuals are moral beings. They bring in particular values. 48 00:05:53,410 --> 00:06:00,700 They often feel very uncomfortable. When I am teaching business ethics to business school students. 49 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:05,200 One of the things that comes across is they are very uncomfortable about, as they put it, 50 00:06:05,380 --> 00:06:10,510 talking their values in and outside the building whenever they go into work. 51 00:06:13,050 --> 00:06:21,090 And so as individuals with an ethical perspective, taking those ethical perspectives into the business environment, 52 00:06:21,390 --> 00:06:26,970 not surprising they would draw on established ethical theories, 53 00:06:27,330 --> 00:06:35,430 whether that be Aristotle or John Stuart Mill, John Rolls or any other of the systems that they are part of. 54 00:06:39,140 --> 00:06:43,210 And this we see this in practice. 55 00:06:43,220 --> 00:06:53,570 We see this panning out in a number of different circumstances. We see Bernie Madoff, the the American guy behind the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. 56 00:06:54,230 --> 00:07:07,370 Here he is being arrested as an individual acting unethically and that not just the law, but society as a whole condemns that kind of practice, 57 00:07:07,520 --> 00:07:19,340 even at the same time as it praises and encourages the kind of entrepreneurship, the kind of rush for wealth that Madoff symbolises. 58 00:07:19,580 --> 00:07:24,260 This is the gentleman behind Polly Pick in a similar situation. 59 00:07:25,100 --> 00:07:29,510 And it's not just about people being caught out. It's also people taking a moral stand. 60 00:07:29,900 --> 00:07:34,160 So this lady here was the woman who blew the whistle on Enron. 61 00:07:35,060 --> 00:07:38,360 This is the lady who blew the whistle on WorldCom. 62 00:07:39,200 --> 00:07:44,090 People taking an ethical stand that goes against the interests of these businesses. 63 00:07:46,400 --> 00:07:54,979 Moving on from that, within ethical theory, we find that we know from the ethics of individuals to then say, 64 00:07:54,980 --> 00:08:03,050 well, we can aggregate ethical individuals and that becomes the ethics of the business itself. 65 00:08:03,650 --> 00:08:07,550 So rather than think of who I am as a whistle blower, 66 00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:15,230 that somehow all the ethical values that we bring into the workplace here and that silhouette is meant to be a factory. 67 00:08:16,010 --> 00:08:27,350 Each of us brings in our ethics, and so the workplace becomes a forum, a context within ethical, within which ethical issues are played out. 68 00:08:29,270 --> 00:08:36,080 And out of that, we have an ethics emerging that is not simply the ethic of an individual, 69 00:08:36,470 --> 00:08:41,570 but it's something that is the result of the aggregate of individual ethics. 70 00:08:42,290 --> 00:08:44,929 So we have coming from that, 71 00:08:44,930 --> 00:08:53,690 we have organisations making statements about their ethical stance as we treat others as we would like to be treated as such. 72 00:08:54,470 --> 00:08:57,770 We do not tolerate abusive and disrespectful treatment. 73 00:08:58,070 --> 00:09:02,210 Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don't belong here. 74 00:09:03,560 --> 00:09:16,440 The kind of thing that clearly makes a very strong stand about the values of business and the idea what company companies. 75 00:09:22,570 --> 00:09:28,600 It was annual that was in its statement in the year that they won the Corporate Responsibility Award, 76 00:09:29,080 --> 00:09:32,800 which is the most corporately responsible company in the world. 77 00:09:33,070 --> 00:09:36,160 And that was the year before they became the biggest bankruptcy in history. 78 00:09:37,690 --> 00:09:44,440 So I don't believe what you read necessarily. But companies do have these strong statements. 79 00:09:44,440 --> 00:09:50,350 And what this symbolises I mean, clearly, this is a lot of B.S., 80 00:09:51,040 --> 00:10:00,250 But what it does symbolises the feeling within companies that you do have to make to speak out an ethical space. 81 00:10:02,380 --> 00:10:10,600 And that leads us into the fact that business becomes a forum, a field where power, 82 00:10:11,080 --> 00:10:16,960 responsibility and duty relationship between means and ends and business. 83 00:10:17,370 --> 00:10:21,400 Business is purpose. Purpose. All of these things play out. 84 00:10:24,030 --> 00:10:28,319 But it's not simply I go into business or league. 85 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:31,680 I go into the university and I have my values. 86 00:10:31,950 --> 00:10:39,960 But that the ethical space, the ethical context, the subset of society of business is a is a moral agreement, 87 00:10:41,580 --> 00:10:48,870 which, as with any societal more moral arena, does not mean that it is always 100% ethical. 88 00:10:49,260 --> 00:10:53,970 What I mean here is a moral arena is a space where these things are played out. 89 00:10:57,800 --> 00:11:01,850 Coming from that. We have the fourth mainland. 90 00:11:04,820 --> 00:11:13,250 That business itself wants to be recognised as a moral and ethical entity. 91 00:11:17,730 --> 00:11:22,680 This is a very strong argument, particularly in the US. 92 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:41,040 It's become a strong argument in the US, partly because because of this gentleman and partly because Amendment 14 to the American Constitution. 93 00:11:45,220 --> 00:11:48,550 Which was about guaranteeing the rights of slaves. 94 00:11:53,860 --> 00:12:09,590 That property could not be seized. That has been taken by business itself to say we have rights, we should be treated as an ethical being. 95 00:12:11,090 --> 00:12:22,430 We can dispose of of what we own prior to that in the States. 96 00:12:22,640 --> 00:12:35,570 Also in Europe. The idea was that business would often chartered East India Company would be an example of that. 97 00:12:36,140 --> 00:12:46,070 It was chartered to do certain things, it had certain functions and at the end of its charter that organisation, that company ceased to exist. 98 00:12:47,390 --> 00:12:59,630 So you didn't have a company like Unilever or a company like Cadbury that went on in perpetuity. 99 00:13:00,020 --> 00:13:08,090 You had companies that were limited by charter to perform certain functions for a limited amount of time. 100 00:13:08,150 --> 00:13:16,840 So a classic example of that was the rights to operate turnpikes on roads, and you have that permission for a certain time. 101 00:13:17,120 --> 00:13:21,980 You owned the turnpike on the road. You could collect the revenue for that, but that was all you could do. 102 00:13:23,900 --> 00:13:33,500 With the Dred Scott case. This is this is the man that was at the point of this was with the Dred Scott case. 103 00:13:34,010 --> 00:13:47,910 What it said was. When it was when it was repealed, what it said was the people have the right to dispose of their. 104 00:13:51,620 --> 00:14:03,330 Dispose of their goods. And so for companies, suddenly they picked up on this and they said, well, you know what, we're going to look at it, 105 00:14:03,350 --> 00:14:09,320 we're going to follow the story, and we are going to we are going to have to be treated as individuals. 106 00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:16,129 And the fear of the difference between that is that whereas I as a person, I have the right to own things. 107 00:14:16,130 --> 00:14:21,350 I have the right to free speech, if I have the right to vote in elections and so on and so forth. 108 00:14:21,560 --> 00:14:27,590 These are all rights and responsibilities the companies themselves do not have in the States. 109 00:14:27,890 --> 00:14:31,640 But you see it filtering through in Europe and elsewhere. 110 00:14:32,060 --> 00:14:43,670 It's very noticeable in the States. You have this idea that's been going on really since the 1800s of fighting for the 111 00:14:43,670 --> 00:14:47,810 rights for companies to be recognised as ethical entities in their own right. 112 00:14:48,110 --> 00:14:51,950 And the fear that is out of this, you get some kind of Frankenstein monster. 113 00:14:55,770 --> 00:14:59,490 But the consequences of this today are that. 114 00:15:04,080 --> 00:15:13,530 A company like BP. Regardless of the individuals, a company like BP becomes liable for its actions as a cover entity. 115 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:18,480 This, by the way, was a genuine BP advertising slogan. 116 00:15:25,230 --> 00:15:33,610 Google in China. Google has said it has got into, well, 117 00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:38,700 making the announcement that it would withdraw from China because the government was insisting 118 00:15:38,700 --> 00:15:43,920 that it hand over confidential information and not confidential information to Google, 119 00:15:44,220 --> 00:15:51,690 but confidential information about Google's users. And Google made the stance that this was immoral. 120 00:15:51,900 --> 00:15:55,890 Google took that stance as an as an ethical entity. 121 00:15:56,100 --> 00:15:59,340 Google famously has the slogan Do No Evil. 122 00:16:00,540 --> 00:16:02,819 Nike is a very interesting one. 123 00:16:02,820 --> 00:16:12,920 This is Nike swoosh, because Nike actually ended up in the Supreme Court on an issue about whether a corporation is an Achilles heel. 124 00:16:14,100 --> 00:16:17,970 The way it did this was a case called Kashi versus Nike. 125 00:16:20,250 --> 00:16:23,870 This was in the mid 2000. 126 00:16:23,910 --> 00:16:26,970 It began in the California Supreme Court before that. 127 00:16:27,510 --> 00:16:30,810 What it was, was that Nike? 128 00:16:33,470 --> 00:16:38,630 Nike was produced. Nike was involved. So let me take a step back. 129 00:16:39,380 --> 00:16:45,200 Anybody that knows about the history of Nike will know that Nike was under great 130 00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:52,850 pressure because the production of its sports shoes from the early 1990s onwards. 131 00:16:53,330 --> 00:17:00,140 There was allegations about child labour, particularly about very low wage labour in countries like Indonesia. 132 00:17:01,160 --> 00:17:04,970 Nike first denied this was happening, but over a period of time, 133 00:17:05,780 --> 00:17:15,290 Nike began to try and take these things seriously and in its corporate responsibility report, which came out alongside its corporate report. 134 00:17:15,350 --> 00:17:18,350 So it's got it was intended for the shareholders. 135 00:17:19,190 --> 00:17:28,690 It said we are combating and abusive labour practices in the factories that produce 136 00:17:28,700 --> 00:17:37,670 for us and we have succeeded in raising workers wages and bringing out child labour, 137 00:17:38,030 --> 00:17:43,010 forcing out child labour, Marchesi said. No, you didn't. 138 00:17:43,070 --> 00:17:46,250 Here is the truth. There is still child labour in these factories. 139 00:17:47,120 --> 00:17:52,760 There is still workers working for less than the minimum wage, and he can prove it. 140 00:17:53,030 --> 00:17:56,240 So he said this was false advertising. 141 00:17:58,100 --> 00:18:01,999 Nike responded and said it wasn't advertising. 142 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:06,680 It was free speech. And with free speech you can say whatever you want. 143 00:18:06,680 --> 00:18:08,270 It doesn't matter whether it's true or not. 144 00:18:11,700 --> 00:18:20,130 Until that point, corporations have not asked to be considered ethical entities with the right to free speech. 145 00:18:21,930 --> 00:18:27,240 This was the first time the case eventually went up to the Supreme Court. 146 00:18:27,660 --> 00:18:33,760 The Supreme Court sent it back to the California court and Nike settled out of court. 147 00:18:33,780 --> 00:18:40,770 So the whole thing was not resolved, I think, to the chagrin of a lot of people in corporations who actually wanted a solid ruling. 148 00:18:41,460 --> 00:18:50,700 But the point here is that it's part of this trend for companies to be seen not as the aggregation of the ethics of individuals, 149 00:18:50,700 --> 00:18:53,710 but to be ethical entities in their own right. 150 00:18:53,730 --> 00:18:56,070 And that goes back to the Dred Scott case. 151 00:18:57,480 --> 00:19:05,400 From that, we see people like R.G. Kowal coming up with, okay, how can we define business as an ethical and ethical entity? 152 00:19:06,360 --> 00:19:09,480 What are the different parts of that ethic? 153 00:19:10,560 --> 00:19:20,370 So like Cheeto came up with the pyramid of corporate responsibility, and it's got these four components. 154 00:19:21,540 --> 00:19:30,480 You've got economic responsibilities, the responsibility to produce goods and services that society wants at a profit for investors. 155 00:19:32,220 --> 00:19:37,240 That's one dimension to that ethic. You've got legal compliance. 156 00:19:38,460 --> 00:19:45,390 You've got to obey the law. You've got the ethical responsibility which goes beyond the legal, that goes beyond the economics. 157 00:19:45,390 --> 00:19:51,120 And it says you've got certain obligations as a corporation to be a good citizen. 158 00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:59,700 And then you've got discretionary ones which boil down to philanthropy and how 159 00:19:59,700 --> 00:20:03,089 much money you're going to give Oxford University for that chair in business, 160 00:20:03,090 --> 00:20:10,950 ethics is important. The audience that knows anyone that would like to endowed chair in business ethics. 161 00:20:11,280 --> 00:20:25,930 I'm available. And so out of this, we come back to with business emerging as an ethical entity in itself of the last hundred years of law. 162 00:20:27,810 --> 00:20:34,620 What form of ethics, what moral system are we actually talking about? 163 00:20:35,070 --> 00:20:42,059 And there's a lot of books you can go and find. You can go and find the Aristotle, Aristotelian perspective on business ethics. 164 00:20:42,060 --> 00:20:45,510 You can go and find Descartes on business ethics. 165 00:20:45,570 --> 00:20:47,520 Know not Descartes wrote himself about. 166 00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:56,280 So can you help writing himself about business ethics, about the Kantian perspective on business ethics and so on and so forth. 167 00:20:56,280 --> 00:21:04,410 But really the one that stands up, if you think of business as an ethical entity, really the only one that stands up is utilitarianism. 168 00:21:08,470 --> 00:21:21,780 It's. I'm out because you see that there are these moral values that are inherent in business, in business, in a modern capitalist society. 169 00:21:23,790 --> 00:21:27,810 Some of these are reflected in law. Some of them are reflected in company law. 170 00:21:28,590 --> 00:21:34,770 Some of them are norms. Some of them are about to do with businesses license to operate. 171 00:21:35,070 --> 00:21:38,250 But put them all together. And they become the system. 172 00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:42,780 The duty to generate jobs, wealth and products. 173 00:21:44,580 --> 00:21:48,450 It's a very, very much about an end result. 174 00:21:49,410 --> 00:21:52,800 It's not about everybody. 175 00:21:53,940 --> 00:22:04,499 It's not as if you haven't got the you have you couldn't really introduce a rules in perspective into that. 176 00:22:04,500 --> 00:22:13,170 Even even if you were talking about Maxim, I actually mean the duty to obey the law, the right to extract to profit, 177 00:22:13,170 --> 00:22:17,790 the right to own and dispose of assets to rights, commoditized goods, products and labour. 178 00:22:18,090 --> 00:22:22,260 I mean, this is this is particularly important one, not often a very stated one. 179 00:22:22,260 --> 00:22:28,500 And we business ethicists love to talk about behaviours. 180 00:22:30,210 --> 00:22:38,070 They're almost fearful of talking about things like this, whether this is actually an acceptable right. 181 00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:47,820 So when it comes to the head, this comes to the head as a more as a business society type thing. 182 00:22:49,650 --> 00:22:51,300 So you have well, 183 00:22:51,390 --> 00:23:03,240 if I've got the I feel I have this right as a business to to commoditize products and to put what's inside the example of commoditized labour. 184 00:23:03,810 --> 00:23:10,220 So I pay you your wages. Once you've paid your wages, you're not beholden to me. 185 00:23:10,230 --> 00:23:16,730 I'm not beholden to you. I can sack you. I've got no longer term responsibility, at least under the law. 186 00:23:17,310 --> 00:23:23,520 Or there might be certain things about a lot of periods. 187 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:29,020 And but essentially I can treat you as labour, as a commodity. 188 00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:34,380 It's a very Marxian idea of what commoditization is. 189 00:23:38,120 --> 00:23:39,440 We don't question that. 190 00:23:40,460 --> 00:23:54,800 You will hear on the news almost every day that whether we are talking about the A or the Royal Mail, the Royal Mail is in conflict with its workers. 191 00:23:57,300 --> 00:24:03,500 What do we mean by the road map? Well, we've made these courses for the newspaper. 192 00:24:03,660 --> 00:24:06,750 So, yes, Royal Mail management is in conflict with its workforce. 193 00:24:06,990 --> 00:24:10,500 It's never presented work that is presented as Royal Mail. 194 00:24:11,190 --> 00:24:15,000 Being the company is in conflict with these workers, 195 00:24:15,270 --> 00:24:21,480 which de facto in that statement and in the common way that we look at things, the workers are not part of that company. 196 00:24:21,510 --> 00:24:26,610 They are a commodity that can be disposed of. You can lay them off. 197 00:24:26,610 --> 00:24:30,089 You can move the factory overseas and so on and so forth. 198 00:24:30,090 --> 00:24:34,800 And in fact, you may be punished by your shareholders if you do not do that. 199 00:24:38,990 --> 00:24:45,560 Now from this, what we are seeing with this is very much the ethics of neoliberal capitalism, 200 00:24:46,670 --> 00:24:50,390 whether we're talking about Nozick, whether we're talking about Ayn Rand, 201 00:24:51,890 --> 00:24:59,300 and it's summed up by Milton Friedman, The only social responsibility of a law abiding business is to maximise shareholder profits. 202 00:25:02,180 --> 00:25:11,989 In fact, I was listening to the radio yesterday and there was somebody on the radio from 203 00:25:11,990 --> 00:25:16,819 the interview perspective on the radio who presented this to somebody they were 204 00:25:16,820 --> 00:25:22,670 interviewing as a statement of fact that this was the only possible thing that you 205 00:25:22,670 --> 00:25:27,010 could ever think about with faxes in business schools and in senior management, 206 00:25:27,020 --> 00:25:35,350 in business itself. There's a lot of questioning about whether this is accurate anymore, not in terms of common thinking about business. 207 00:25:35,360 --> 00:25:37,220 This is still a very common way of thinking. 208 00:25:37,490 --> 00:25:49,030 This these ideas, one, two, three have become the norm of the way that we think about business, particularly in most of the OECD countries. 209 00:25:49,030 --> 00:25:57,400 So there is there are differences in Continental here. I am talking quite a lot about the the Anglo-Saxon model and. 210 00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:10,250 And what that leads us to is this kind of the fifth meaning that capitalism itself is a moral construct. 211 00:26:11,780 --> 00:26:23,629 If we go back to meaning one business is seen as something that is is morally judged by society, 212 00:26:23,630 --> 00:26:26,450 it's either very good or it's very bad or something in the middle. 213 00:26:26,810 --> 00:26:32,389 But actually, capitalism itself is a moral construct of the meaning of life and business. 214 00:26:32,390 --> 00:26:38,660 Within that is, as Drucker called it, the representative institution. 215 00:26:40,730 --> 00:26:46,130 And the conditions of that neoliberal capitalism under that is that growth is essential, 216 00:26:46,250 --> 00:26:52,750 competition is essential, free flow of capital trade, labour is essential, and the rule of law is essential. 217 00:26:52,750 --> 00:26:58,820 Those are two things that you've got to have in order to deliver that that idea of capitalism. 218 00:26:59,060 --> 00:27:11,460 These are the absolute must haves. So that brings us nicely, if you like, to the end of the 20th century. 219 00:27:13,870 --> 00:27:23,440 That was pretty much if you looked at any books on business ethics up until 2000, that's pretty much the perspective that you get. 220 00:27:23,470 --> 00:27:28,390 You would have one of those five main interpretations of what business ethics was. 221 00:27:29,170 --> 00:27:33,630 So now let's look from the C-suite where where all the executives hang out. 222 00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:47,080 Let's have a look at what they're looking at today. We've seen in recent times a lot of discussion about water. 223 00:27:48,580 --> 00:27:57,370 And this is just a quick diagram of the changing water availability and the red bits mean extreme stress to hear of. 224 00:27:57,370 --> 00:28:01,780 It's high stress. You can see if you go from 1960s. 225 00:28:04,340 --> 00:28:10,460 2020 is predictions for the 25th is more and more water stress. 226 00:28:11,540 --> 00:28:17,150 You are sitting in business. You are not really worried about the idea of a finite planet. 227 00:28:17,930 --> 00:28:24,410 This is one of the examples where a finite planet is affecting everyone and it is affecting business. 228 00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:29,210 It is affecting business because just look at what's happening with the floods. 229 00:28:30,630 --> 00:28:40,880 Well, you know, when we talk about the floods in Australia and so on recently, but this this is not one off. 230 00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:47,030 It's not the kind of thing you can instantly attach to a very recent climate change. 231 00:28:47,030 --> 00:28:50,690 It's some. It's a trend that has been going on since 1950s. 232 00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:55,520 Always upwards, always upwards. More and more and more flood events. 233 00:28:56,420 --> 00:29:07,250 And that's something that for a business that is very dependent on stable supply chains, very dependent on the growth of urban areas. 234 00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:12,920 This is something that is going to matter to you as an executive. 235 00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:18,230 It is said that Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, 236 00:29:18,620 --> 00:29:25,520 the thing that got him thinking about sustainability was Katrina and the and the floods that have been. 237 00:29:27,940 --> 00:29:34,690 And that's one of a number of changes in our ecosystem that you are observing from the C-suite. 238 00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,420 You're also looking at the demographic change, 239 00:29:37,420 --> 00:29:49,629 the fact that we've gone from two and a half billion people in 1950 through to where are we now, 6.1 billion today and a projected 9 billion. 240 00:29:49,630 --> 00:29:55,810 And so 9 billion and change by 2050 is thinking about that. 241 00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:04,090 What does it mean for me as a business? Right. If opportunity, lots more people are going to go out and don't go out and buy my widgets. 242 00:30:04,660 --> 00:30:08,080 Is that good news? Well, now, hang on. Where are those people going to be? 243 00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:13,209 Are they going to want the same widgets? Am I going to get enough raw materials? 244 00:30:13,210 --> 00:30:15,220 My widgets, because my widgets growing, 245 00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:21,460 the raw materials come from farmlands and people are starting to move into the farmland and so on and so forth. 246 00:30:22,780 --> 00:30:29,979 And this is one of the big changes is that my markets are going to shift into much more in the developing countries. 247 00:30:29,980 --> 00:30:33,820 The population growth is here in the developing world. 248 00:30:34,060 --> 00:30:37,360 It's not here in the markets that I understand. 249 00:30:37,750 --> 00:30:42,220 These are now saturated markets and they're not going to get any bigger. 250 00:30:43,540 --> 00:30:51,910 Here is where my growth is going to be. But a lot of those people there are going to be relatively poor. 251 00:30:52,090 --> 00:30:56,110 A lot of them are going to be on less than 2.9 billion people on less than $2. 252 00:30:56,250 --> 00:31:02,100 A lot of them may not want to go out and buy my widgets and so on. 253 00:31:02,100 --> 00:31:07,840 And so it's a change. I won't go into the details of what that change means, but it's a change. 254 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:16,230 Here from my perspective, but I don't think I'm completely off the wall in this my perspective. 255 00:31:16,230 --> 00:31:20,070 This is the biggest change. Here we are today. 256 00:31:20,340 --> 00:31:25,080 Greenhouse gas pollution, tons of CO2 or equivalent emissions per year. 257 00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:29,820 And you know the famous things Australia, the United States, Canada, 258 00:31:31,230 --> 00:31:38,370 all off the charts with only the slim hope that, hey, we're not doing quite as badly as United Arab Emirates. 259 00:31:42,030 --> 00:31:46,470 So you've got this about 25 tonnes of emissions per year. 260 00:31:48,420 --> 00:31:56,450 And then you've got places like India, India, China saying, hey, we want to make more. 261 00:31:56,460 --> 00:32:01,500 We want to be up here as well. Either these guys are going to come down or we're going to go up. 262 00:32:02,220 --> 00:32:09,750 We want to work. You know, we would make more. And yet all these scientists to say emissions are a bad thing. 263 00:32:14,660 --> 00:32:21,980 Well, the fact is, if we were to allocate a budget for carbon emissions, it would happen in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. 264 00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:27,470 It would have to be about five gigatons of an across the board spread across. 265 00:32:27,650 --> 00:32:30,799 Everybody in this room would get there five gigatons. 266 00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:34,970 So for the space, you're going to go from 25 down to five. 267 00:32:37,350 --> 00:32:42,600 Between now and some people still say between now and 2050. 268 00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:48,120 Realistically, we're probably now talking about 2040. Do you got to do that? 269 00:32:48,780 --> 00:32:55,380 But also China, all its aspirations, India, all its aspirations can only go up that much. 270 00:32:57,120 --> 00:33:00,180 They've got about one. You get some surprising. 271 00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:06,030 So here you are. You've got your markets growing here. This is where you're going to be. 272 00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,300 But they can't wait more. 273 00:33:13,220 --> 00:33:14,660 And put that in another way. 274 00:33:14,810 --> 00:33:22,760 If all the world this is what illumined luminosity in 1996 and you can see lots of the lights on in the States, lots of lights on in Britain. 275 00:33:23,100 --> 00:33:31,540 You can see that we are in Oxford. How lights on that and not too many lights on in Indonesia over here quite a lot. 276 00:33:31,580 --> 00:33:34,880 And in Japan, what if all the world was to be as luminous of America? 277 00:33:35,900 --> 00:33:40,550 This is what it would look like. How do you get the energy to do that? 278 00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:46,430 Put that another way. This is our carbon intensity. 279 00:33:46,790 --> 00:34:00,260 The so the emissions that we have for GDP per dollar of GDP, and this is what it was in 2007. 280 00:34:00,530 --> 00:34:05,780 Carbon intensity goes carbon emissions by per dollar. 281 00:34:06,620 --> 00:34:11,150 And here we are. The world average is 7.768 grams. 282 00:34:11,390 --> 00:34:22,250 UK we are 347. Japan did a little bit better 244 if all the world just carried on with its trend income growth. 283 00:34:22,970 --> 00:34:27,170 So no closing of income gaps, just carrying on with trend income growth. 284 00:34:27,860 --> 00:34:31,450 We would have to get that carbon intensity down to 36 grams per person. 285 00:34:31,940 --> 00:34:40,850 If everybody in the world does 9 billion people by 2050, we're going to be have the same incomes, the same standard of living as we do in the EU. 286 00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:42,980 We've got to get back down to six grams. 287 00:34:45,390 --> 00:34:52,010 You get confused in the numbers, get confused about whether climate change is real, get confused about anything. 288 00:34:52,010 --> 00:34:57,350 But if you are in business, if you are in the C-suite, this is something you have never had to face before, 289 00:34:57,860 --> 00:35:02,259 that you are going to grow as a company because all you can do is grow. 290 00:35:02,260 --> 00:35:06,770 And that's what we will have to do. You're going to grow and your at the same time, 291 00:35:07,100 --> 00:35:16,730 you're going to have to get your consumers reducing their carbon intensity by astronomical amounts by 2050. 292 00:35:17,810 --> 00:35:29,060 So if you're in the C-suite in 2010, you've got the old values of corporate growth, shareholder value, obey the law, meet customer needs. 293 00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:34,130 This is where it gets interesting because now you are doing that. 294 00:35:34,850 --> 00:35:38,150 You're looking for prosperity in a resource constrained economy. 295 00:35:39,380 --> 00:35:44,270 You're looking at success in emerging and poor markets where you may not have had to really focus before. 296 00:35:45,500 --> 00:35:51,140 You're looking what to do to establish a license to operate when the legal infrastructure is weak. 297 00:35:51,170 --> 00:36:03,140 One of the things that Milton Friedman says is companies should go out and make profits within the boundaries of the law in a global society. 298 00:36:04,370 --> 00:36:08,510 The difference is in the strength of sovereign law. 299 00:36:08,930 --> 00:36:17,780 I'm going to be very clear today. And so you are going to very often going be have to maintain standards, even though the law itself is weak, 300 00:36:18,170 --> 00:36:25,670 because if you don't, then activists, other governments will be and you might do bad things in Ecuador. 301 00:36:25,790 --> 00:36:27,799 You get away with it because the law says this. 302 00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:35,480 But some smart American lawyer is going to have you in court in New York, and you've also got the public desire for more Medicaid services. 303 00:36:35,780 --> 00:36:40,350 Now, historically, this is where we were. 304 00:36:40,730 --> 00:36:44,209 This was our conventional. This is the external environment. 305 00:36:44,210 --> 00:36:49,940 We the business is you. So far, the growth goes up, carbon goes up, price goes up, com goes up. 306 00:36:50,540 --> 00:36:54,110 Where we are now is the hope that growth will keep going up. 307 00:36:54,920 --> 00:37:03,930 Carbon comes down. The problem becomes that as carbon comes down, what on earth happens to us? 308 00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:11,170 So what we're betting on at the moment is this that we can decouple economic growth. 309 00:37:11,190 --> 00:37:16,680 Well, carbon growth. Well, this may be the other. 310 00:37:17,940 --> 00:37:21,270 This one doesn't exist anymore. You've written that off as a business, 311 00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:31,890 yet this is the one that you were most used to you when you went to management school as a as a as a as a budding executive. 312 00:37:32,370 --> 00:37:35,670 You and when you went became part of the private sector. 313 00:37:37,050 --> 00:37:44,880 You had a political, legal, technological, social, economic system that all supported a strategy of growth. 314 00:37:45,180 --> 00:37:49,290 And everybody Council of Government said you were doing the right thing. 315 00:37:49,290 --> 00:37:53,279 The public say you were doing the right thing. A few people [INAUDIBLE] and bombed about it, 316 00:37:53,280 --> 00:38:01,250 but generally everything was bubbling along because what was happening internally was congruent with the external environment. 317 00:38:03,190 --> 00:38:12,760 And he's got this thing bouncing. I think this would also remain true if we managed to do this. 318 00:38:14,020 --> 00:38:22,089 Well, this goes up. This comes down essentially. That is that is the the big bet that is being made on geoengineering that we can 319 00:38:22,090 --> 00:38:26,559 carry on the way that we're living because we will come up with something really, 320 00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:32,470 really smart technologically. That means that we can keep on spending carbon markets going out of fashion. 321 00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:36,610 Then we can carry on. The external environment doesn't really shift. 322 00:38:36,850 --> 00:38:41,230 There are certain things that shift, but it's not a major shift. Everything remains congruent. 323 00:38:42,700 --> 00:38:49,000 But the real question is what happens when our external environment moves because of resource constraint, 324 00:38:50,290 --> 00:38:57,760 because we don't find that geo engineering solution, because of demographic shift, because of ecosystem shift, with the growth in floods, 325 00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,890 the shortages of food, the food crisis, the food prices and so on and so forth. 326 00:39:05,170 --> 00:39:13,030 The this has moved over here. And yet we have political, legal, technological, social, economic system that really still is focussed on this. 327 00:39:14,620 --> 00:39:25,000 So it's this is not followed the changing external environment, in which case Australia, your growth then just starts to spiral out of control. 328 00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:37,880 So what does business do in that kind of situation? Well, it could look to government to provide leadership. 329 00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:44,720 So we've got two very green oriented leaders here. 330 00:39:46,070 --> 00:39:50,840 Any idea who the top one of the bottom lines of the negative. 331 00:39:51,170 --> 00:39:54,980 Which one? But someone. The Governator has got to be on Schwarzenegger. 332 00:39:55,520 --> 00:40:06,370 So one can really help Cameron. This was what they said afterwards. 333 00:40:08,670 --> 00:40:13,650 The forensic, relentless focus on growth is what you will get from this government. 334 00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:26,210 I always want to see cranes everywhere. 70%, 25%, which is the 75% I want a have. 335 00:40:27,870 --> 00:40:35,990 This is my last year. Well from New York, I take that. 336 00:40:38,130 --> 00:40:43,640 Yeah, pretty much. Huh. You get the picture? Urban planning applications, wind farms. 337 00:40:43,670 --> 00:40:49,340 The thing that we're all talking about, this is the thing that's going to save us. 25% of those applications were approved. 338 00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:54,740 There's a great part. Anybody that wants to go on this trip this summer, they go out to Horse Path. 339 00:40:55,700 --> 00:40:57,840 The road between Wheatley and Horsepower, 340 00:40:58,530 --> 00:41:08,480 I think is brilliant because you come down this hill and there's all these signs that say, Please, no windmills in horsepower. 341 00:41:08,750 --> 00:41:13,070 These little signs point about something when you see this and it's great and you come downhill. 342 00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:18,620 The backdrop for this is pylons. Pylons, as far as the eye can see, 343 00:41:18,830 --> 00:41:25,990 the people for most are defending the right to have pylons because pylons are aesthetically pleasing the wind farms. 344 00:41:27,020 --> 00:41:31,430 Sorry, that was a complete diversion, I think. Just you wonder sometimes. 345 00:41:31,820 --> 00:41:38,070 But we are happy to have applications from other supermarkets and other major infrastructure which has no green component. 346 00:41:38,180 --> 00:41:48,800 So what was this? Any idea? This was a site I'll give you to give you a bit of background that this conference was the theme of the conference. 347 00:41:51,930 --> 00:41:56,550 Big Society could be. The Big Society are on the right path of who does it. 348 00:41:56,940 --> 00:42:00,010 It was the Conservative Party conference. Green Growth. 349 00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:06,720 Please find any thing there that is about Green. I challenge you. 350 00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:11,070 Child benefit, government costs. Benefits. 351 00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,700 Osborne There was no mention. 352 00:42:14,700 --> 00:42:27,239 In fact, there is a great sign tucked away on Google somewhere where this is actually a little film clip where this journalist goes and looks for the 353 00:42:27,240 --> 00:42:35,160 green growth part and comes to a little room at the back of the Conservative Party conference and it says Councils Green Growth Council. 354 00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:43,500 So we've got this situation here where we've got to get from somewhere like this down to somewhere like this, 355 00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:51,840 actually down to that if we're going to have an equal kind of distribution and that's the situation, where are we going to do that? 356 00:42:52,230 --> 00:42:56,460 Are we going to get to decarbonisation 2000? 357 00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:06,540 The goal was to decarbonise 2% per annum. We achieved 2.8% per annum from 2000 until about 2007. 358 00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:14,280 Who? So we missed it by 1.2, let's say about this, the equivalent of 13.4 gigatons. 359 00:43:14,970 --> 00:43:22,170 So basically, if you've got China and the USA to turn off all their lights for a year, we can play catch up. 360 00:43:23,130 --> 00:43:26,580 That's all it would take. Just get them to turn the lights off. 361 00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:32,010 That meant the way we came into 2008, we had a goal of 3.4%. 362 00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:41,920 We didn't achieve it despite the recession. The target now, the latest two figures, and these are the figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers. 363 00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:51,280 The latest figures are that we would need to decarbonise at 3.8% to avoid exceeding 450 parts per million of emissions. 364 00:43:51,610 --> 00:44:02,890 450 parts per million is the cut off point for most people between manageable carbon change, climate change and catastrophic climate change. 365 00:44:03,970 --> 00:44:10,130 We have wasted ten years again coming back to so that. 366 00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:18,820 So maybe if government isn't there to sort this out, maybe technology, maybe people will invest in this post-COVID. 367 00:44:19,720 --> 00:44:25,360 You know, when the numbers get really, really, really big and they are talking billions and you just lose all sense. 368 00:44:26,110 --> 00:44:29,139 This is my new denomination of currency. 369 00:44:29,140 --> 00:44:36,130 This is the parts of Caribbean three past. Caribbean three has a budget of $300 million. 370 00:44:38,410 --> 00:44:47,320 That is exactly the same as the amount of money that Britain is going to invest in new forms of alternative energy. 371 00:44:48,100 --> 00:44:54,520 Our commitment as a country is the same as the budget for the poorest Caribbean three. 372 00:44:57,370 --> 00:45:01,480 Kind of weak, isn't it? So the. 373 00:45:02,380 --> 00:45:06,220 So there is, I think, a good argument to say we're in this bin. 374 00:45:08,290 --> 00:45:16,839 We don't know what's going to happen with that growth. We are in a situation where we are in conflict with our external environment because 375 00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:22,900 we're asking business to carry on doing all this stuff to maintain its old values. 376 00:45:23,500 --> 00:45:35,110 And yet we're not providing any solution about how it can grow, what the impacts of free flow of capital, trade and labour is going to be. 377 00:45:35,500 --> 00:45:42,940 And we're not finding any solution about how to create a rule of law, at least business on its own. 378 00:45:42,970 --> 00:45:47,680 In wrestling these big, big challenges for the 21st century. 379 00:45:49,240 --> 00:46:01,480 And that brings us to meaning six, which is really to be determined are we going to have a future for business of prosperity without growth? 380 00:46:01,990 --> 00:46:06,060 And if you read the books of Tim Jackson, for instance, you will see that. 381 00:46:06,070 --> 00:46:09,930 Bill McKibben They talk about that. What we have why is growth? 382 00:46:09,940 --> 00:46:18,820 We growth is invested in things that help society rather than is simply about consumption no matter what. 383 00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:22,870 Are we going to redefine the corporate purpose in the way that, say, 384 00:46:23,170 --> 00:46:27,760 fair trade or social enterprise wants to be, where the emphasis is not on profits. 385 00:46:27,970 --> 00:46:34,930 It's about using the management practice and the thinking of business, but for social, environmental purposes. 386 00:46:35,590 --> 00:46:40,200 Or are we going to get into something like engineered spending, the anathema to the neoliberal, 387 00:46:40,210 --> 00:46:46,240 so that you will find ways of controlling or engineering the consumer spend? 388 00:46:46,240 --> 00:46:49,870 It's not about reining it back. It's saying spend on some things and not on others. 389 00:46:50,920 --> 00:47:00,010 And so somebody like one of our local franc in luxury thing that talks about consumption taxes, 390 00:47:00,010 --> 00:47:07,690 a lot of talk about consumption tax cuts in the right wing and the left when a lot of economists on both sides actually like consumption tax, 391 00:47:08,260 --> 00:47:19,880 but politicians hate it. If we come back to our C-suite, it means each of these are possible horizons for business. 392 00:47:20,210 --> 00:47:21,980 None of them are very comfortable. 393 00:47:23,210 --> 00:47:33,800 The business is seen as inherently unethical moving forward because it defends this old paradigm that is not congruent with the external environment. 394 00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:41,300 That business becomes some kind of ethical leader in taking on these challenges. 395 00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:51,200 It comes at the forefront of the new paradigm. Business becomes a follower of a new emerging form of ethics, whatever that may be, 396 00:47:51,980 --> 00:47:59,510 in which case, followership or business is a representative institution of the new paradigm. 397 00:47:59,510 --> 00:48:08,030 The business plays a central role because governments and other institutions are not up to the challenge. 398 00:48:09,530 --> 00:48:18,170 It is likely to be one of these or a mix of these that they are all there to play because there is no clear. 399 00:48:19,730 --> 00:48:28,160 We are really at a stage of of uncertainty and a very great deal of confusion about how to move forward. 400 00:48:29,330 --> 00:48:39,920 One thing is for sure is that what we are trying to do at the moment is the equivalent of rolling the dice in an attempt to win a cricket match. 401 00:48:40,100 --> 00:48:48,230 We are simply playing the wrong set of games in order to try and win the game that we think we're playing. 402 00:48:49,070 --> 00:48:50,090 It's never going to happen.