Kudos to Dove for its Campaign to Real Beauty
Comment
With no doubt, I am as sick of the whole financial crisis as you are. News on the minimal progress (or not) of acts to help revive the economy is getting on my nerves and I am glad that you brought up the actions of a company that walked the ethical path. Dove’s self-esteem fund, Campaign for Real Beauty (see left), definitely injected a positive note into the business realm. I agree perfectly to your description of a particular beauty ideal, “a swizzle stick with foot-long lashes, artificially bronzed skin, a perpetually windblown mop of hair, kamikaze nails and teeth that look like well-glazed sugar cubes. Even professional models don’t really look ‘like that’ until they’ve been worked over for hours by a small army of stylists, then digitally edited, airbrushed and distorted into ‘perfection’.” Dove made a bold move to free ladies out of beauty stereotypes and promoted the idea to embrace all definitions of beauty.In fact, adding on to your encouraging discussion as well as relating to a recent post on my blog about the inattention to ethics and social responsibility in many MBA programs, I would like to bring up evidence on the escalating awareness society has on corporate social responsibility issues. A growing phenomenon known as the “ethics pledge” had drawn society’s notice on the subject. The Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility originally from Bentley University, Massachusetts, advocates the idea “to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job one consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which one works.” The organization provides materials and resources to teach students how to set up on-campus campaigns and helps students navigate tough choices that might come across during their careers, while keeping in mind commitments to ethics and social responsibility. More than a hundred schools and colleges are using the pledge.
Another pledge which is catered to business leaders, the Business Ethics Pledge, founded by Shel Horowitz, begins with “I pledge allegiance, in my heart and soul, to the concepts of honesty, integrity, and quality in business.” It allows leaders to sign electronically and advertise their businesses online by making the ethical vow. The pledge was established based on the belief that “businesses are more likely to succeed when they base themselves in ethics—in honesty, integrity and quality.” It is about changing the world and creating a climate where businesses are expected to behave ethically, and the fact that executives who try to drag their companies into the unethical swamplands will find that nobody is willing to carry out their orders. Of course, these ethics pledges are not and will not be the cure to economic turmoil. However, by encouraging pledge of allegiance to change the culture of doing business may not be such a bad idea. Just like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, it has to start somewhere.
Ethics of Supporting Your Local Economy
Comment
Your post brought about sound arguments against encouraging the public to support local small businesses instead of contributing to national corporations’ economic activities, with response to an article in the Wall Street Journal: How the Locals are Trying to Save Small Businesses. However, I am hesitant to concur in your reasoning. First, you assumed the idea of supporting local businesses to be people’s notion that “economic benefit to own community is more important than economic benefit to other people’s communities,” and that “stores and factories and jobs in your own community might well be more important to you than stores and factories and jobs in other people’s communities.” It seemed unfair to presume that was the attitude behind the public’s campaign of “buying local” (see right). Helping local small businesses contributes to the national budget just as it would if the money goes to national corporations. In addition, I believe the campaign could even boost national spending in the sense that it arouses the public’s emotional connection with its own community, hence more willing to spend in support of local businesses.
Second, you suggested if every community engages in “buying local”, there will be “little change in net purchasing, but there could be serious reductions in efficiency and hence net decrease in total utility.” Yet in fact, I would say the campaign serves as a means to encourage and promote purchasing from local merchants, not by any means forcing people to do so. Using the example in your post, yes, the campaign suggested people in Town A gets good shirts and lousy pants, while people in Town B gets good pants and lousy shirts. However, it did not impose a rule saying people in Town A cannot buy pants from Town B and vice versa. If there is a need, people are free to spend their money however they desire. I believe the campaign acts as a medium to draw people’s awareness to locally produced products and encourages merchants to learn from each other to increase their products’ competitiveness in the market. For the sake of illustration, going along with your example, the campaign allows people in Town A to recognize the existence of businesses that produce pants locally as well as gave an opportunity for those merchants to learn from Town B’s quality pants production. All in all, I definitely understand your concerns, however, I do see a lot of positives that come along with “buying local”.
