Rural locales such as the Redwood Coast tend to foster responsible corporate behavior because of the special sway they wield over environmental policy, a Berkeley expert on corporate ethics said in an interview with Humboldt State University.
Professor David J. Vogel, the nationally-recognized author of "The Market for Virtue," contends that small rural communities are more likely to have substantial impact on the harvesting of natural resources and issues such as forestry conservation and wildlife preservation.
"I think that is a very important dimension of corporate responsibility," Dr. Vogel said in the interview.
Rural areas"willing embrace of sound conservation practices translates to a broader conservation ethic that in turn spawns a growing conservation market," he added, "particularly niche markets pursued by small companies like those found on the Redwood Coast. They produce organic foods, specialty coffees, herbal teas, and environmentally responsible footwear, !http://now.humboldt.edu/inline_images/lecture1_1.jpg! outdoor clothing, rugs, and other products. They successfully market their ethical values as well as their goods."
"Responsible business behavior can be profitable as well as ethical," he argues, citing the future benefits Humboldt County stands to reap from eco-tourism "or anything involving agricultural and natural resources. There are enormous opportunities for rural communities to capitalize on what I think is a modestly-growing consumer interest in purchasing more responsibly-produced products."
Dr. Vogel traveled to the Humboldt State University campus Mar. 28 to deliver the 14th annual Chung-Watson Lecture Series in Business Ethics address, named after HSU Professor Frank Watson, who mentored HSU alumnus Po Chung, founder of the Asian branch of DHL Express. Mr. Chung established the lecture series in 1990 and his name was added to the title when the HSU Alumni Association honored him in 2005 as a Distinguished Alumnus.
In his lecture on corporate social responsibilitycompanies voluntary self-regulationProfessor Vogel called attention to the proliferation of codes of conduct in the past five to 10 years, involving a major share of world industry. The codes regulate everything from coffee, chemicals, and electronic products to apparel, labor conditions, financial services, energy, and diamonds. A United Nations global compact now has 3,000 corporate signatories, and resources devoted to ethical investment funds, which attempt to screen companies and shun those perceived to be unscrupulous, rocketed to $179 billion in 2005 from $12 billion in 1995.
Yet, the spread of self-regulation is no guarantee that companies will behave ethically, Dr. Vogel underscored. Consumers, employees, investors, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and government can press hard for ethical business, but there are also enormous constraints imposed in a capitalist culture ruled by maximum profit, the pursuit of uninterrupted growth and expansion, high velocity development and the desire for instant economic gratification, as manifest in quarterly earnings reports.
He compared corporate conduct and personal behavior, depicting both as a mixed bag of the responsible and the ruthless. Illustrative, he said, is Exxon Mobil; it may be the most hated company on earth and is widely considered the Darth Vader of the environmental movement because of its resolute opposition to actions to combat climate change and curb dependence on fossil fuels.
Yet the company's management and bookkeeping are models of probity, he said.
Professor Vogel's pivotal conclusion: the market for virtue is circumscribed.