Win-Win in the economy and environmental protection
Our topic is Global Warming which is a hot issue in the last 15 years. After finishing the previous blog, we have an in-depth understanding of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Building with LEED label aim at improving performance in energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources. Hence, it helps to decelerate the pace of global warming.
In Hong Kong, people always focus on the economic value and ignore the environment protection. For example, in the previous blog, we found that HK people only focus on investment value of building instead of their environmental protection level. Hence, the construction company will choose to build the gorgeous house without thinking about the externalities to the environment. They just want to ensure the sales of the building. Therefore, there is a conflict between economic development and environmental protection. In Hong Kong, we found the conflicts are relatively more than other cities. Thus, there is a need for discussing this issue.
To solve the problem, people should be more ethical. They should not care only the business or economic value but also the environment or social responsibility when making a decision. Sustainable development is more and more popular in every area. It promotes the long term development of the society. Global warming is one of the factors that affect the sustainable development. We choose global warming such controversy topic as our moral conundrum because it is very challenging to get a balance between the economic development and the environmental protection. We will see how this issue affected by the particular assumption on human nature. And we will explain the approaches to make ethical decision. At last, we will make suggestion to the organization, government, multinationals and the United Nations.
Are we ethical enough?
In today’s world, the business ethic is really important as it is one of the corporate social responsibilities of a company. Not only does the company make profits, but also needs to bear the corporate social responsibility in order to maintain a good reputation. The businessmen must not scarify others’ interest for making profit which is totally unethical. To satisfying the CSR, one of their missions is to help to maintain the sustainable development of the world. To deal with this, we should work together to solve the problem we are facing like Global Warming.
The stakeholders really can make a difference in the global warming. From the article of “Climate Change, Human Rights Top Sustainability Priorities for Year Ahead”, the author stated that “Stakeholders in China differ greatly from the developed world, where external stakeholders – including NGOs, customers, government, media, and trade unions – drive CSR. In China, on the other hand, the government and consumer are the only two external stakeholders seriously influencing corporate responsibility efforts.” I think it is quite true in Hong Kong and mainland China. For the global warming issue, a part of problem is contributed by the industry in China. Only two main stakeholders, who are government and consumer, voice out regarding the problem. The factories in China, especially in the Southern China, usually have a relatively low level of technology and produce serious air and water pollutions and waste which are seriously affecting the environment. The air pollutants are one of the major causes of the global warming as the pollution, e.g. CO2, are contributing the greenhouse effect. To response this issue, the government set the regulations and law to reduce the pollution caused by the factories. For the customers, as it is directly related to their health, they strongly demand the factory to reduce the pollution. Sometimes, the media play an important role to criticize the factory for the serious pollution. But, we seldom find any other stakeholders in China like customers and trade unions.
On the other hand, in Hong Kong, there are lots of different parties monitoring what the corporate is doing. You can see many NGOs aimed at protecting the environment in order to save the world such as Green Peace. Also, sometimes, the trade unions would criticize the corporate which is damaging the interest of the society. Hence, in this aspect, Hong Kong has done a better job than China.
To implement the business ethics, the company or corporate should bear some responsibility. In the article entitled “Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers”, the author suggest that the company should do the follows to achieve better ethics management:
The organization’s chief executive must fully support the program.
Consider establishing an ethics committee at the board level.
Consider establishing an ethics management committee.
Consider assigning/developing an ethics officer.
Consider establishing an ombudsperson.
Note that one person must ultimately be responsible for managing the ethics management program.I found it is quite useful for the company to execute the ethic management as there must be a lot of moral conundrums occurring in doing business. To deal with this problem, ethic management is really essential. For example, the CEO of a corporate must fully support the programme. Otherwise, the subordinate would be difficult to follow as most of the strategies are set by the top management.
It is a good idea to set up the ethics committee at the board level and the ethics management committee and the ethics officer. The ethics management committee and ethics officer are responsible for executing the ethics management so that it can make sure the management would be effective. Also, the company can train the ethics management committee intensively so that they can be the role model for the company. The ethics committee at the board level would be responsible for monitoring the ethics management committee and ethics officer and make sure they are on the right track.
The ombudsperson is responsible for helping coordinate development of the policies and procedures to institutionalize moral values in the workplace like the code of conduct. He/she would be responsible for interpreting policies in order to resolve ethical dilemmas. Hence, the company can ensure that the interpretation would not be different from different employees. Finally, one person must ultimately be responsible for managing the ethic management programme which can reduce the chance of misinterpretation. That person should not directly engage in the business operation in order to prevent the conflict of interest.
Most of the time, the culture in a corporate is playing an essential role in ethics management. By article of “Culture and Conflict, the author mentioned that “Culture – the norms and values of one’s environment – is the lens through which we judge behaviours and characterize people as victims, heroes and villains. Being aware of the culture, in which a conflict occurs, helps us to understand the other party’s motives or intention.” As mentioned above, the value of corporate environment would be greatly affecting the value of their employees. If the top management cannot behave well, the subordinates would follow their practice. Sometimes, the top management of a company would be regarded as a hero in their company. Then, the subordinates would listen to and accept what he said. For example, an owner of a manufacturing factory thinks that he does not concern on the problem of pollution. Finally, the subordinate would have no choice but to follow the instruction from the top management. Then, the problem would be more serious if the management does not change their mind.
Apart from the influence from the top management, peer influence would also be a focus on the ethic management. By the “Why Sensitivity Training Is Insensitive and Patronizing”, the author states that “When people respect each other as peers they are comfortable asking each other for feedback, Employees leverage each other differences when they respect each others’ expertise. We are all working together towards a common goal, not afraid to discuss differences amongst us, and we would seize opportunities leverage each other’s difference as resources to increase productivity, simplify our work and become more profitable.” If the employees in the organization do not have the same goal, say protecting the environment, the management would need to pay much more effort in educating and changing their mind.
What ideas always Step Up in different people’s mind?
In the following section, I would use the cost and benefit analysis to examine one ethical decision making on green building. We made an assumption of amoral perspective. People just mainly focus on their interest and try to maximize their interests. In this ethical decision making process, there are many different people involved such as government, citizen, environmental concerning group.
For the decision of buying a green building, different people or roles would have different view on it. On the citizen perspective, Hong Kong people are mainly focus on investment value (mentioned in the previous blog regarding the green building). They would really pay attention to the value, the view and the interior design for the apartment. The main question in their mind is “whether they can make a profit from buying this apartment?” The cost of buying an apartment of green building to pay more for the cost of acquisition and the quality of building may be lower. Also, they may need to bear a higher maintenance cost in the future. On the other hand, the benefit would be saving the cost of electricity and water. And, they can protect the environment where they are living. Most of the time, they don’t take the environmental factor into consideration.
For the environmentalist, they definitely encourage the purchase of green building which is much more environmental friendly. They choose the green building. The cost for environmentalist is very low and the benefit is to have a better environment.
On the view of a businessman, he might think that it would increase the construction cost of the building as they need to use the material which is more environmental friendly. Hence, it would reduce the profit and be part of their cost. They would choose not to build the green building.
In the government perspective, there is little cost for the government to promote the green building. But, the benefit is to have a more stable society by having a better environment to live.
Therefore, there would be moral conundrum for the decision maker (the citizen) as there is a conflict of interest by different party. Hence, whether they should buy an apartment of green building? I understand it is a really difficult decision. But, I think the benefit of having an apartment of green building would outweigh the cost of that if we analyze in the long term. If I were the one who is going to buy an apartment, I would choose the green building.
Moral has large impact on us
We are now in the middle of the globalization so the commodities difference is diminishing. People can get the identical goods in different countries. However, the cultural difference is varies among countries to counties. Enterprises should aware of the intercultural difference during the entry or running the business. Companies should pay more attention on this issue since the rate of intercultural communications process exist is increasing sharply in the stage of internationalization
Moral affects human beings so much especially in thinking and decisions making. In our pervious blog of Coca Cola, people in Islam boycott the Coca Cola because the United stated supported attacking Gaza. And their actions represent themselves, their identity. ‘I would no longer feel better about myself and I would have to look at my own accountability for my professional and personal life’(Sensitivity Training: Not the Answer for cultural Diverse Workplaces) People in there stop purchasing Coca Cola which means that they disagree what U.S did to them. They want to let the others, especially America, know that they would not resist such actions.
HK’s cultural identity is changing from “Gold” to “Green”
How about the case in Hong Kong? People in Hong Kong all want to be people who are care of the environmental protection. After the movie of “2012” published, HK people may have the same perspectives that it is urgent to save our world now. Otherwise, our earth might be destroyed by our hands. HK people are not only concern about the profit now. All walks of life in HK also have realized the importance of green issues. We are not selfish and want to do something that helps our environment.
We can know that HK citizens changed from profit orientated to be more ethical people. ‘We Labeled people based on how their actions impacts us”(Culture and Conflicts) According to the research of Environmental Levy Scheme phase 2 (Environmental Levy Scheme phase 2, URL:http://www.foe.org.hk/uploaded_files/Research%20and%20Survey/wastes/2009/plastic%20bags%20levy%20survey%20phase%202.pdf), more and more people bring their own shopping bags with them so that we could use less plastics shopping bags which are not bio-degradable. It shows that the moral education via different media is quite successful because of the behavior of HK people has changed. We also realize that our roles has been altered, we should concern more on our environment and do activities that are harmless to our earth.
Concerning environment protection= our cultural identity?
However, HK people might concern more the environment but this is not enough to add this component to our cultural identity. Why? People started to use less plastic bags not equal to that we entirely care about the environment. The reason of this might be they have to pay 50 cents for the bags if they take any one of that. Therefore, it’s still the basic nature of cost and benefit which is very common among HK citizens.
When we look at the organic foods, it is not very popular in HK. We all know that it’s good for our health and also the earth. But we always struggle with the organic foods and normal foods. Is it really worth to pay extra for the organic foods? That’s what in people’s mind. We can see the result by their decision. People usually pick the cheaper one, especially under the economic downturn, as the quality between these is similar.
We can conclude that the decision making is not constant when it comes to the large degree of benefit issues. HK people would like to choose the options that are benefit to them and save their costs. Our pervious Blog stated that “According to the research of Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong 2007(Monitoring of Solid Waste, Environmental Protection Department URL: https://www.wastereduction.gov.hk/en/materials/info/msw2007.pdf), which is done by Environmental Protection Department, more than 40% of daily home wastes could be recycled. This survey revealed that Hong Kong citizens do not pay much effort to environmental protection”. It is because it would be very trouble to classify the garbage at home and put it somewhere until certain quantity accumulated. Therefore, we always like to receive the benefit rather than sustain our stand on moral. So it is too early to say this component has added to our culture identity which represents HK people are "green"
Individual identity shows what kind of person we are. Some individuals might be able to sustain their moral stand but others are not. It is depressed that the former group is still not the majority in HK. HK people desire to be environmentalist. But our actions are not consistent enough. It depends on the nature of issues. Although we won’t have exactly the same norms with others, “In a workplace or society that is diverse, we need to be comfortable with differences” (Sensitivity Training: Not the Answer for Cultural Diverse Workplaces). We should compel different roles of people to do more on green since it generates a lot of opportunities which is valuable to invest. And different industry, especially building industry in HK that we’ve mentioned in the last blog, should be able to predict there are plenty of green opportunities exist in coming future and not to focus on the quantity of cost they have to invest in developing green businesses. The green profit is unpredictable and incredibly tremendous. The video in the following shows that green business is entirely profitable.
If we really want to change the HK culture which is care about “green” issues, all individuals and institutions in HK should do something that help creating this new component and add it to our culture. Therefore, HK people will eventually change the human nature from cost and benefit to moral rights. If we do so, we could tell the public that we care about our environment.
Let’s be more ethic
Organizations
Communicators should be the conscience of the organization. First, organization may start to hire employees who practice ethics (Louis C. Williams, Business ethics: an oxymoron? Communication executives explore the black, the white and the gray, Dec 2002). By doing so, organization will carry out less unethical behavior. For example, in our case, if an organization hires someone who concerns more about the environment, he or she will consume less paper, electricity or other resources. That will result in less energy waste and less pollution. Global warming will be slow down. Company will also benefit from these.
According to E. Ronald Culp, managers in the organization should hear concerns come from employees, investors as well as customers. Every manager and every employee should be responsible for the moral behavior of company. They should apply their conscience to everything they do (Louis C. Williams, Business ethics: an oxymoron? Communication executives explore the black, the white and the gray, Dec 2002). Just like Carter McNamara said, managers and employees could make decisions together. By having decision making process in group, the credibility of decision will be increased and unfair bias will be reduced. More ethical decisions will be resulted (Carter McNamara, Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers).
Ethics need to be woven through the entire organization. Organization should make everyone understand that there is no tolerance for unethical behaviors which violate the standard and make sure everyone enforce them. (Louis C. Williams, Business ethics: an oxymoron? Communication executives explore the black, the white and the gray, Dec 2002)
It is suggested that organization may establish an ombudsperson in helping with the development of policies and procedures in order to institutionalize moral values in workplace (Carter McNamara, Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers). For example, in Hong Kong, organization may have some guidelines. For example, if there is no one in the room, please turn off the light; or if you open the air conditioner, please keep the temperature at about 25℃. These all help to ease the phenomenon of global warming as well as to lower the cost of operation.
Then, what about in global perspective? How organizations can improve their ethical communication as there are different standard in different countries?
Clarke L. Caywood said that because of the Internet society, the cultural variances are diminishing and ethical standards in one place are now similar in other geographic locales. What Clarke suggested is to set the bottom line (corporate) standards at the highest bar which set across countries concerning bribery, transparency, environmental and social issues (Louis C. Williams, Business ethics: an oxymoron? Communication executives explore the black, the white and the gray, Dec 2002).
For example, when environmental regulations, like regulations governing the emission of pollutants, dumping of toxic chemicals and so on, in host nations are inferior to those in the home nation, organization should take the higher standard instead of the lower one (Charles W. L. Hill, Global Business Today, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, p.131) . What important is that organization should set the standard and let everyone inside the company know and follow it. That will help to improve the ethical intercultural communication.
Government
It is important to have top management support when improving ethical intercultural communication. One of the six key roles and responsibilities in ethics management that Carter McNamara mentioned is that organization’s chief executive must fully support the program (Carter McNamara, Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers). For a country, top management support should be given by the government.
Government should do some legislation for punishing unethical behaviors. For example, in Hong Kong, government has already legislated that if one parks his or her car, he or she should switch off the engine of the car in order to lower the fabricate of CO2. That is not only benefit to the earth, but also passersby.
In global aspects, government of each country can have regular meeting to discuss more about the issue of how to solve the problem of global warming. Since the conferences, like G8 or G20, are usually talking about the economic and political issues rather than environmental issue, it is advised that those leaders should discuss on how to be more ethical and find more ways to save the earth, such as reducing the percentage of producing pollution. These are not only save the earth, but also provide a better environment for us to live.
Multinationals
Nowadays, ethical pattern of behavior and effective communication within a company are the key to success. The importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is going up. Companies, especially multinationals, should pay more attention to CSR.
CSR refers to the social obligations of a corporation to look after the interests of its external stakeholders while protecting its own corporate interests. It includes concerns like environmental protection, community service, fair employment practices, and philanthropy (Guffey and Du-Babcock, Essentials of Business Communication, p.426)
As Kasper Nielsen mentioned, companies are now facing increasingly higher expectations from the general public across the different aspects of their business, so multinationals should pay more efforts on CSR. They may focus on strong governance practices, positive working conditions, and the most important one is to support the needs of communities and the environment which suggested by Chirs Pinney (Peggy Connolly, Disney And Microsoft Top CSR Index).
For example, according to our reader, 3430Vincent, Coca-Cola has used new technique which can reduce the use of aluminum by about 5% and advocated the use of recycled aluminum in making its cans. Currently, she has used about 60%of the worlds’ recycled aluminum. That really helps to save resources and energy, and reduce waste. As a result, the effect of global warming will weaken.
Furthermore, they may join the BSR to develop sustainable business strategies and solutions. BSR, Business for Social Responsibility, is the world leader in corporate social responsibility research and consulting. To know more, you may click the following link to find the information, http://www.bsr.org/index.cfm (BSR, URL: http://www.bsr.org/index.cfm.)
By having CSR, multinationals can create a good image to public together with protect the environment. They can try to gain more business value, at the same time, to save the environment.
United Nations
For United Nations, she should try hard to promote green concept to the world and increase the awareness of saving the earth.
She may try to encourage countries to protect the environment by providing incentives, on the other hand, discourage countries to destroy the environment by punishing and legislation.
Besides, she may create some E-labels to the world or ratify the existing E-label. That helps to promote and improve ethical intercultural communication. For example, United Nations may ratify the LEED, the Green Building Certified, which evaluate the building in six categories, like sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, material and resource, indoor environmental quality and innovation design. She may enforce countries to use the label and follow its standard. Therefore, heat islands effect, water usage will be reduced, reuse of existing materials will be increased and CO2 emissions will be under tight control. It will ease the influence of global warming.
References
Climate Change, Human Rights Top Sustainability Priorities for Year Ahead
Culture and Conflicts ( http://www.hodu.com/culture.html)
Why Sensitivity Training Is Insensitive and Patronizing (http//www.hodu.com/sensitivity.html)
Louis C. Williams, Business ethics: an oxymoron? Communication executives explore the black, the white and the gray, Dec 2002
Carter McNamara, Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers
Charles W. L. Hill, Global Business Today, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, p.131
Guffey and Du-Babcock, Essentials of Business Communication, p.426
Peggy Connolly, Disney And Microsoft Top CSR Index
Environmental Levy Scheme phase 2
(URL:http://www.foe.org.hk/uploaded_files/Research%20and%20Survey/wastes/2009/plastic%20bags%20levy%20survey%20phase%202.pdf)
Monitoring of Solid Waste, Environmental Protection Department
(URL: https://www.wastereduction.gov.hk/en/materials/info/msw2007.pdf)
BSR, URL: http://www.bsr.org/index.cfm
Pictures
current controversy
(URL:http://current.com/images/pods225x225/current_controversy.jpg)
cultural identity
(URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/priyalegoh/3663646303/)
what we can do about global warming
(URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26323050@N02/2919227667)
videos
Why business has to make life better - values matter. Corporate ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Motivation, leadership, marketing and management impact. Cause-related marketing and winning war for talent. Conference keynote speaker
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTE5zd-qk-s
How to Be Green At Work
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5RlwMzQiQg
Can a "Green" Business Also be a Profitable One?
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OEZMVB2n4o
