Hard Like Water: Ethics in Business

Hard Like Water, an innovative study of business ethics, has two principal goals: ''to show the extent to which ethical values penetrate into business'' and ''to stress the social character of business''. Thus, each chapter begins with ''old tales'' of unethical or amoral business practices and then moves on to ''new tales'' about companies for which ethical social values are central to success. The business-related disasters and failures that make the news--the Westray mine explosion; the Exxon Valdez oil spill; the Barings Bank collapse--are shown to be the direct result of firms'' failure to follow ethical values. And these old tales are contrasted with the success stories of proactive firms like The Body Shop, Falconbridge, and Hewlett-Packard, which ethically see themselves as part of society--and act accordingly. In this book Vincent Di Norcia presents four core ethical values--life, welfare, honest communication, civil rights--and performance maxims such as the need to do no harm, to solve the problem, and to seek the common good, which are necessary for modern businesses to achieve long-term success. Downsizing, Dr Di Norcia emphasizes, may bring a company short-term profits, but the long-range effects on people, on society, and on the company can be harmful. Hard Like Water, which includes numerous tables and illustrative material and a glossary of key terms and phrases, examines ethical business values as they relate to ownership, management, organizational culture, employees and work processes, marketing, technology, the environment, society, and the international community. The conclusion looks to the future and the role ethics must play in business decisions if we, as a society, are to survive.