The Ethics of Causes

There’s a point that seems to be getting lost in all of the current protests and counter-protests against Chick-Fil-A and some of the similar actions we have seen in recent years, which might be described as “blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder” – except that this would offend some of our atheist friends, who would insist that blasphemy is a concept used by theocratic dictatorships to exert control over the ignorant and superstitious. Which is exactly the point, actually: no matter who you are or what you believe, or how innocuous you think any specific cause or charity is, there’s probably someone out there who believes that the same cause or charity is the embodiment of all of the evil in the universe. And sooner or later, if you both live long enough, they’re probably going to come by and stage a protest in your place of business…

Now, I will concede that in the Chick-Fil-A case the cause and counter-cause are highly polarizing, and even an idiot could have predicted that there would be a massive political and social outcry over them, even before the CEO started stirring the pot by calling attention to his affiliation with groups on one side of the issue. Likewise, any company that willingly becomes involved in anything having to do with tax reform, healthcare reform, immigration reform, school prayer, gun control, national identification cards, or reproductive freedom is being disingenuous if they claim not to have been aware that a confrontation might ensue. Unfortunately, not all of the causes a business might choose to support are so clearly inflammatory, and the truth is there will always be a non-zero chance that any given stand you take might offend someone…

For example, if you were a Boy Scout when you were younger you might believe in that organization and offer to sponsor some activity or campaign the Scouts are working on. You’d probably be disturbed to find out that some people would interpret this to mean that you (and your business) are homophobic and anti-gay-rights (due to the BSA membership policies) or that you support predators and child abuse because of the scandal about abuses within the organization being covered up. You might choose to sponsor a little league team because you like baseball and believe in youth sports, only to find yourself at the center of a firestorm because your local league does or does not permit female players, depending on where you live and who the more vocal groups in your community happen to be. Even environmental and public health groups are not safe…

In theory, every manager has a responsibility to the various stakeholders of the business to succeed, thereby providing employees with paychecks, local government with tax revenue, suppliers with sales, and customers with whatever product or service you offer; if the company is publically held you also have a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. But managers are still human, and even leaving aside the enormous publicity and public relations benefits available to you through supporting popular causes, some of us will want to use the power given to us to try to make the world a better place – on whatever dimension we believe is possible. So that brings us to the question:

Do we as managers have an ethical responsibility to make sure that our firm never does or says anything that could offend anyone, anywhere, whether or not their approval or enmity will ever make a financial difference to the company? If so, how are we supposed to accomplish this in a world where anyone might take offense at almost anything? Do we have to make sure that none of our employees publicly support any controversial organizations? How do we do that without violating their civil rights? Should we take steps to make sure that everyone in the world is repeatedly told that neither the company nor any of the people who work for it has ever had an opinion on any subject that anyone could possibly find offensive? Or should we simply do our jobs, run the company as best we can, donate to whatever causes we believe in, and keep that information and all of our other personal beliefs to ourselves?

It’s worth thinking about…

This is a Strategy?

I was wandering around online this week and I ran across an interesting line of speculation about the ongoing Chick-Fil-A fracas, and whether it’s all as random – and psychotic – as it looks. If you’ve been out of touch for the last few years you may not know that this national fast-food chicken chain has a long history of supporting anti-gay political groups, and specifically those opposing same-sex marriage, or that earlier this month Chick-Fil-A’s CEO came out and defended this affiliation, saying that these are the core beliefs of his organization. This has resulted in all of the public outcry you would expect from the left side of the political spectrum, and there are now protests and boycotts being proposed all over the country (or at least those parts of it that have operating Chick-Fil-A locations in them)…

This doesn’t seem like it would be good for business, does it? The exact number of people in this country who identify as part of the group Chick-Fil-A is antagonizing is unclear, as they are still highly stigmatized in some areas, but something like half of all Americans are in favor of full civil rights for members of the GLBT community, if not for same-sex marriage itself, and alienating that much of your customer base seems unwise. Even worse, people in the younger demographic groups – who make up a disproportionately large amount of the fast-food customer base – are more likely to support the GLBT rights and same-sex marriage cause than older people in otherwise similar populations, making this public and political stance that much more likely to damage sales. But what if a change in demographic support was the whole point of the exercise?

Over the past week, as folks on the left have been organizing protests and calling for boycotts, there has been a response from right-wing political leaders who are jumping on this situation to curry support from their ultra-conservative supporters. We’ve already seen former (and possibly current) presidential candidates calling for a “Day of Appreciation” for Chick-Fil-A and urging like-minded people to support the company by purchasing more product. As a direct result, people who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Chick-Fil-A under any normal conditions are showing up, having their pictures taken, tweeting and blogging about the situation. Meanwhile, millions of people who had never heard of Chick-Fil-A before (and have certainly never eaten there) are talking about the company and debating what they think they’re doing…

Now, it may seem a bit far-fetched to believe that the company had intended such an effect all along; it certainly assumes a much greater understanding of psychology (and a great deal more intestinal fortitude) than we normally associate with the fast-food industry. But competition in that industry has been intensifying in recent years, leading to such unexpected moves as Taco Bell attempting to introduce upscale entre choices, McDonald’s offering salads and high-end coffee products, and KFC trying to promote itself as health food. And while it may be optimistic of the company to assume that they will receive more business from new ultra-conservative supporters than they lose from more liberal folks, very few companies in this country have ever lost money betting on small-minded, reactionary bigotry…

The question of whether all publicity is good publicity remains in dispute, but it’s hard to deny that in this case Chick-Fil-A has gotten millions of people to pay attention to them for the price of a press conference. Is this a devious strategy to increase sales, a Machiavellian publicity stunt, or just the political ranting of a group of people who don’t seem to understand that sometimes asserting your personal beliefs (however sincerely) is bad for business? What do you think?

Helicopters Ride Again?

I’ve written about the so-called “helicopter parents” in this space before – people who constantly hover around their children, attempting to do everything for their offspring long after this has ceased to be appropriate (or even sane). In recent years this has become a popular topic for Internet humor and scorn, as we all seem to enjoy reading about people who have gone completely off the deep end in their efforts to be the ultimate parent. Some of the worst of it occurs in education, where we’ve seen confirmed cases of parents trying to lobby teachers for better grades for their children – when said children are college seniors and Federal privacy laws prevent their teachers from telling the parents anything…

I’ve been spared the worst of this in my own experience; my communications with parents have been limited to making arrangements for students who have been injured or hospitalized (or in once case detained) to make up work or exams. I’ve had a few arguments with students over grades I’ve given – including one rather surreal experience in which I had to explain that all essays are graded subjectively, based on the grader’s opinion on how well they answered the question – but even those are fairly rare. I remember what arbitrary and opaque grading is like for the student, and I try to make mine as transparent as I can. But apparently this isn’t always the case…

A story off the Albany Patch website tells the story of a high school junior whose parents are suing the school after a teacher decided to drop his grade for the year from an A+ to a C+ after he missed a single chemistry lab to attend a family event. Prior to that point, the student’s grade in the class had actually been above an A – it was a numeric 106% including extra-credit work – and the absence was excused in advance. Of course, the teacher and the school both claim that the student also failed the final exam, but curiously the actual exam papers seem to have vanished – and the school is refusing to allow the kid to re-take the exam, since it has been too long and he could have been preparing this whole time…

Now, if that wasn’t enough to convince you to call shenanigans on the whole thing, you should also know that the teacher in our story was “requested” to take an early retirement last year, following a number of similar complaints over the past few years. It doesn’t help that the parents in our story were repeatedly assured by the school and later the school district that this was a minor administrative matter, and it would all be cleared up internally – right up to the point where they refused to do anything about it or permit any compromise solution (like a re-test). It’s almost enough to make you believe that they’re trying to cover something up…

I can’t speak for anyone reading this post (assuming that anyone is reading this post), but if that was my kid being screwed over by the school district I would exhaust every other avenue there was, and if none of the others worked I’d call a lawyer, too. And I’d look into the possibility of criminal charges (fraud and conspiracy are both criminal offenses; so is perjury), which is much worse than the parents in our news story are doing. I don’t know if they’ve got a case – I will caution anyone who might be out there again not to take legal advice from bloggers without a license to practice law. But I wouldn’t call these folks helicopter parents…

Amazon Invades

Previously in this space we have discussed the ethical issues associated with Amazon, and specifically in the harm they can do to local businesses and the stakeholders associated with those companies. No reasonable person is going to argue that a successful business model should be suppressed just because it gives its inventor a competitive advantage – that’s the whole point of having a business strategy in the first place – but any business that destroys other employers, bankrupts potential customers, and eventually eradicates entire population centers in which it has no operations of its own is not a sound business model. Even if there are no government sanctions or consumer boycotts taken against such a company, eventually it will eliminate enough potential customers to destroy itself, and who’s even mentioned monopoly effects yet?

Several factors have helped to prevent Amazon from reaching that critical mass, the most important one being the tendency of people to wait until the last moment to purchase things. Even with overnight shipping it is still faster to go to a real-world retail outlet to make a purchase, and you also avoid the issues of breakage during shipping and the shipping costs themselves. But what would happen if Amazon expanded its network of distribution centers, purchased its own fleet of trucks, and started offering delivery straight to your door on the same day – and at rates comparable to what you would spend at a brick-and-mortar retailer for the same product?

A number of online news sources have been reporting recently on Amazon’s plans to open new distribution centers and/or expand existing facilities in Texas, California, Virginia, and New Jersey, and increase the number of delivery vehicles available in each of these locations. With the right logistic arrangements and a modern mechanized warehouse system those four locations alone would given them the ability to deliver to anywhere in the Philadelphia – New York Corridor, anywhere from Baltimore through the Carolinas, any of the major Texas population centers, and anywhere from San Francisco to San Diego in the same business day. The only remaining questions would appear to be whether Amazon can operate such a system efficiently enough to remain competitive with existing real-world retailers, and whether we feel that this type of operation is any more ethical than their existing business model…

Employing their own distribution center workers, truck drivers, maintenance people (mechanized warehouses and fleets of trucks both require lots of maintenance) and support units will require Amazon to employ hundreds (or thousands; depends on who you ask) of local people, and purchasing electricity, diesel fuel, food and drink, and anything else they have to get locally will make Amazon part of your local economy, and those profit centers will contribute to the local tax base. Having an Amazon delivery center in your community shouldn’t be any different from having a Wal-Mart distribution center or any other kind of major warehouse operation there, and at least some of the benefit will remain there instead of going off to some corporate headquarters many hours away. But, as is the case with Wal-Mart, Target, or any other large retailer, we still have the issue of how this will affect local businesses…

Having your employer go under because Amazon built a real-world delivery center nearby isn’t functionally different from having it succumb to Wal-Mart or CostCo, or simply implode under the rotten economy; either way you’re still unemployed, angry, and unable to purchase anything even if you wanted to. Having local distribution centers will not change the fact that Amazon is still wiping out small businesses; if anything, being faster and more convenient will only make Amazon’s inherent menace that much more dangerous. All of which leads me to believe that we will be revisiting this issue again soon if Amazon goes through with these plans…

Whether we want to or not…

Coffee to Go

Have you ever been driving along and almost had an accident because the driver in front of you managed to spill their coffee – either during a cellular phone call or just because they couldn’t manage to drink and drive at the same time? Did you consider writing to your Congressperson to request stronger distracted driving laws? Or just to your local government to demand an ordinance that would require the police to pour hot coffee down the pants of anyone who causes an automobile accident in this fashion? Well, if this is one of your personal pet peeves, you may want to consider moving someplace where they have reliable public transportation, because in the 2013 model year Fiat is releasing cars that offer the world’s first onboard espresso machine…

You can pick up the original story from the “Drive On” column on USA Today online if you want to, but the basic story is fairly straightforward. Fiat is coming out with a larger, four-door version of the infamous 500 model that will feature a built-in espresso maker (Lavazza is the prime contractor for the machine, if it matters) in an installation designed by Fiat exclusively for this purpose. Why, exactly, you would want the option of making any kind of coffee in a conventional passenger car (especially a small one) while driving is not clear from the article; nor is the issue of how the driver is expected to operate an espresso machine while driving without having some form of accident. But it must be acknowledged that this is the first (and so far only) production car that you can use to make coffee as well as just going to get some…

Now, if you’ve been with us for any of my ranting about differentiation strategy and cutting through the clutter in the marketplace, you’ve probably already figured out why Fiat is bothering with a stunt like this. I don’t know if espresso makers in cars will be a big hit in Italy – I don’t actually know how European drivers feel about making drinks while driving – but most places in the world having a feature that none of your competitors has even considered is an excellent way of demonstrating how different your product is. “If the engineers at Fiat were able to put a functional espresso maker into a car,” the line of thought goes, “Then the rest of the vehicle must be amazing!” One could imagine Toyota engineering a soft-serve ice cream machine into its minivans, or Mercedes-Benz putting a microwave in a touring car, or Ford putting some unholy monstrosity that makes hamburgers, fries and milkshakes in an SUV…

I kid, of course, but it’s still a serious point. All of the other companies that make cars are going to have to come up with something wilder and more innovative than an onboard espresso maker or fall behind Fiat in different, unique, or bughouse crazy designs – just as you would have to reply to anything completely new and different your competitors came up with…

Assuming the new feature works as advertised, of course. And also assuming that all of the people who buy it don’t end up creating traffic accidents – or being arrested for distracted driving…

Who is Harmed?

I wasn’t originally going to post a counterpoint to yesterday’s cui bono discussion, but then I saw the case about the atheist activist who is suing a Pennsylvania restaurant he has never actually visited because of its standing Sunday discount for anyone who brings in a copy of their church bulletin, and I thought we should at least consider it. You can find the original story on the Penn Live news site, but the facts of the case are pretty simple: a restaurant owner noticed that business was slow on Sunday, and since the establishment is already a favorite of local clergy, decided to run with the theme and offer anyone who brings in a church bulletin a discount on Sunday dinner. The owner has stated that it doesn’t matter what denomination the bulletin is from, or even if the patron actually attends the corresponding church; anyone is welcome to cash in on the deal. But apparently that doesn’t do it for the militant atheist in our story…

The person behind the lawsuit is a member of a Wisconsin-based group calling itself the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which claims that its mission is to educate people about the Constitutional separation of church and state. They’ve turned up a number of times in the last few years, protesting anything that they feel infringes on that guaranteed freedom – they are the ones who filed suit over the Pennsylvania Legislature declaring 2012 the Year of the Bible, according to the linked story. The problem here seems to be that either these folks aren’t clear on what the separation of church and state actually means, or else they’re so anti-religion that they want to destroy all public mention of any faith except their own (the belief that there is no deity and therefore all of the world’s religions are invalid)…

The Constitutional provision to which they’re referring doesn’t say that you can’t have any public mention of religion; nor does it recognize the right of Americans to exist in a space completely free of religious observance, music, iconography, or anything else. The Constitution prohibits Congress from adopting an official State religion, or from interfering with the rights of Americans to practice whatever form of religion they believe in; it does not protect anyone else from being bothered by that practice. Thus, a mandated religious practice enforced by the State – be it mandatory school prayer or display of religious iconography in public buildings – is Unconstitutional, and is routinely ruled as such by the courts. Denying access to a place of public accommodation to someone on the basis of religion might be an issue, but the owners are correct in pointing out that the discount they are offering is no different from the Senior discount offered by many restaurants – or from the discount I used to offer to Veterans when I ran a service business in Los Angeles…

Now, I’ll admit that my credentials in Constitutional law aren’t better than any other kind, and suggest that you consult with someone who does have a license to practice law before you make any business decisions on this issue. But as far as I can tell, the complaint of someone who is not now and has never been a customer of a business regarding a discount that the owners have selected to increase business has no more merit than the lawsuit we saw last year in protest of Ladies Night at a bar, and neither the activist nor his Foundation have any standing to take action on behalf of the State or its citizens. And even if this suit does make sense from a legal standpoint, it’s still hogwash from a business standpoint…

We have a great tradition in America called “voting with your feet.” If the theme, or decoration, or business practices of a local company offend you, then don’t do business with them. If enough people are offended enough to stop doing business there, the owners will either have to change their ways or go under, and in either case they won’t be bothering you anymore. But demanding that everyone in your community refrain from any behavior that could possibly offend your sense of “religiosity” makes no sense of any kind – and destroying a local business because its owner does not share your religious beliefs is functionally no different from bombing a company you consider infidel. Let’s hope the atheists in our story realize that they have become the very fanatics they claim to oppose before anyone gets hurt…

To Whose Benefit?

There’s a Latin term, cui bono, which means “To whose benefit?” or “As a benefit to whom?” and is sometimes used as a legal term suggesting that the entity responsible for a crime may not be the obvious offender. For example, if a candidate for political office is using those lawn signs you sometimes see to create greater name recognition, and those signs keep disappearing, it is possible that this is just the work of vandals who like stealing signs. However, it is also possible that this is the work of a political rival who wants to frustrate the advertising campaign to his or her own benefit, or the work of the sign company, which can then sell the original candidate more signs (possibly the same ones) to their financial benefit, or even the work of poor people who use the signs for firewood to the benefit of their own comfort. It’s probably best to ask who stands to benefit the most…

If the political rival has a massive lead in the polls and has nothing to lose from a weak rival in the race, it is unlikely that the theft would benefit him or her very much. If the original political candidate has already spent his or her advertising budget and can’t buy any more signs, it’s probably not worth the theft and/or fraud charges for the sign company. And if it’s the middle of the hottest summer on record, the poor are probably not stealing firewood. But if stealing campaign signs has taken the place of shooting a member of a rival gang or spending time in jail as the act needed to find acceptance in a local gang, then it seems likely that one or more would-be gangsters are benefitting by stealing the lawn signs…

In the case of the Illinois pro-gun group that crashed the Chicago Police Department’s gun buyback event last week, I’m really not sure who benefits – or of whom they think they have taken advantage. Like must such programs, the buyback event is a no-questions-asked arrangement where anyone who shows up and turns in a gun gets a $100 Visa gift card, and anyone who turns in a BB gun or similar weapon gets $10. There have been problems in a number of cities (not just Chicago) where local gun dealers have abused these programs by buying up old, damaged weapons for less than $50 and turning them in for money, but this is the first time of which I’m aware that someone has used a buyback program to get more guns – and promote their use…

According to an article in the Sun-Times online, a group calling itself Guns Save Life gathered up a bunch of non-working, junked weapons and exchanged them for gift cards, which they plan to use in purchasing new guns (and other materials) for a National Rifle Association shooting camp. The group’s president was openly critical of the buyback program, claiming that no criminal would risk going into a police presence, and that only innocent citizens would be giving up guns in this program. On the other hand, the camp’s operations would train a new generation of gun owners on ideas like safety and responsibility. What I can’t fathom is how the pro-gun people believe that this deception benefits anyone other than themselves – and why they can’t see the harm in their actions…

Even if we accept that they’re right – that only innocent gun owners are giving up their guns – the abuse of the buyback to fund their camp operations is still taking money away from law enforcement and crime suppression in Chicago. Meanwhile, bragging about this rip-off is antagonizing everyone who isn’t already an NRA supporter, making the entire pro-gun movement look like a bunch of liars, jerks and con artists, and encouraging the folks in Chicago to both figure out to prevent such abuses in the future and also to take more anti-gun measures. It’s hard to see how this benefits either the gun lobby or Guns Save Life; one could hardly cast the pro-gun community in a worse light if they spent a year thinking about it…

It’s almost enough to make you wonder who is actually abusing who here…