Globalisation Disputes: Markets attack Ethics ''' Ethics break in Markets

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Globalisation DisputesMarkets attack Ethics ...
Ethics break in Markets
Whats To Be Done About Management
Ethics? Symposium 16 December 2004

• Eduardo Ibarra-Colado
• Organization Studies Research Group
• UAM-Iztapalapa, Mexico

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1. Modernity Three Forgotten Ideas
1. Modernitys origin the invention of America
(the modern self and the other)
3. Its not the same to think reality from the
Centre than from the margins The silence of the
Other
2. Modernitys project is based on an ethics of
domination the Conquest of the Other
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What is Globalisation?

• It isnt the triumph of reason

• It really is the current exacerbated stage of
  modernity

• instrumental reason carried to its limits

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Limits of Modernitys Project of Domination

• Speculation

Production
profits vs. well-being
consumerism vs. basic needs

• Shrinking markets

• The visible hand
• controls free trade

• Irrational consumption
• of energy

• Movements of capital Big Corps.

• Environmental destruction

• External debt IFIs

Domination
Violence
Destruction

• Control of peoples aspirations

• Discipline and obedience

• Regulation of power relations

• Enlightened ignorance

• Legitimation of free
• market society

• Standardization of mind

Knowledge
Democracy
fear and emotions vs. projects
How to... vs. Why
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Limits of Modernitys Project of Domination
Hypothesis today the world faces the
limitations of the use of force to perpetuate
domination, since the mutual capacity for
destruction has been superimposed upon the
capacity for domination.

• Dilemma the irrationality of domination is
  found in the annulment, for one side as well as
  the other, of any possible future.

Opportunity Globalisation is that historical
moment of modernity in which domination ceases to
be viable, but it also brings us the opportunity
to build a new ethics.
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2. Building the Corporation
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The Privatisation of the Corporation Its Legal
Recognition as a Person

• 3. Protection of privacy
• Secret information
• Limited liability
• Protection of managers
• Protection of the rights
• of the shareholders
• over the power of
• managers
• Governance structures

• Protection of private property and freedom
• Free exercise of corporate power to act in its
  own best interest
• Limited state to preserving individual freedom
  and protecting free competition

• 2. Freeing corporations from any social
  responsibility that isnt legally mandated.
• The best interests of the corporation
  principle.

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The Corporation as a Person Some Consequences

• Economy and society swap positions, placing the
  private interests of the individual over the
  well-being of society

• Deregulation of the economy vis-a-vis regulation
  of State intervention in the economy, limiting
  public control over private actions

• Establishment of legal rules to limit the right
  of society to oversee after corporations

• All these open the door to corruption, fraud and
  unethical behaviours.

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3. Constitutional Order, Liberalism and
Corporate Power

• The constitutional order has been the way to
  transform the liberal principles into operative
  terms.

• This system and their modifications explain the
  increasing power of corporations.

• Liberalism gives the doctrinal support to
  legitimate corporate power and its marginal
  ethical content.

• It facilitates the consolidation of the private
  corporation as the main organizational form of
  economic activity in modernity.

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The Fingers of the Invisible Hand Markets
Attack Ethics
Operative freedom
(means instead of ends)
Naturalization of inequality
(Darwinian adaptation)
Marginal ethics
(rules of conduct to fulfil
individuals own marginal utiliy)
Disarticulation of social fabric
(individual solutions and ego-ism)
Dissolution of politics and the public sphere
(disappearing society and general interest)
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Globalisation Disputes The Conquest of Modernity
vs.

• Liberalism Market domination
• (XIX Century, 1970s onward)
• Reason as calculability
• Market over Politics
• Corporations as the main power
• Marginal ethics individual freedom

• Welfarism State domination
• (1st World War 1970s)
• Reason as well-being of society
• Politics over Markets
• State as the main power
• Totalitarian ethics state regulation and security

And the winner is Globalisation? (1989 to the
present day)
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4. From Liberalism to Neo-liberalism

• Asymmetries of globalisation types of
  neo-liberalism
• Neo-liberal protectionism
  Neo-liberal self-destruction
• the centre
  the margins

• Privatisation
• public inefficiency induced in order to sell at a
  low price.

(capital escape)
Private corporations

• Deregulation
• destruction of institutional regulatory settings

Free Trade Agreements

• Monetary stability
• destruction of the Welfare State, informal
  economy, poverty and exclusion

• Flexibilisation of work
• precarious work, de-unionisation, unemployment

IFIs
(external debt)
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5. There Are Some Alternatives Ethics Break in
Markets
respecting differences and alternative
modes of existence

• From a modern ethics of domination
• to a
• Trans-modern ethics of responsibility

negotiating minimum agreements that
guarantee equity and justice for everybody
Challenges of our global present for the
recognise the effects of the modern project

• inhabitants of the centre

reject the Anglo-Euro-centrism
Accept the mestizo condition

• inhabitants of the margins

Accept the impossibility of returning to the
past
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Ten Propositions for a New Ethics

• 1. Ethics support is the reflective protection of
  life

10. In this trans-modern world there is
space for everyone
2. The goal of life is the well-being of humankind
3. Dialog, participation and reflexion are
the foundations to building a new ethics
9. Society must regulate corporations,
protecting life to build a free
(diverse) global society, without the
production of victims
4. Freedom of individuals is a basic value
of society its unnegotiable limit is
the protection of life
8. Therefore, managers are at the service of
the people under the principle of best
interests of society
5. The well-being of humankind must be fulfilled
by the exercise of individual freedom via
cooperation
7. If corporations are the mean to fulfil
that end, then they are essentially
social/public entities
6. Wealth is only a means to the end the
economy is at the service of society