The article "The third phase of business ethics" is originally a speech of Andrew N. Liveris, Chairman and CEO of The Dow Chemical Co. The main purpose of the given lecture was to assure young people, providing examples from his own practice, that business ethics, especially its modern version, is an extremely important phenomenon for every business strategy, as well as for society and environment. Liveris tried to illustrate that successful business model consists of profit achieved with a conscience which involves the constant work in three fields: Health, Environment and Safety. However, the most important idea was to deliver the message to the audience that every person, no matter what his role in the whole organization is, can make a difference.
The speaker describes the evolution of business ethics dividing it into the three phases. First phase, the Great Awakening, started in 1970s when the pressure on governmental, business and other fields was at its peak. Liveris describes this period with words of General William Saxby: "any means are acceptable in achieving profits and that the crime is not in doing but in the getting caught." All this led to the first changes in the companies' policies and strategies. This was the time of the first international conference on business ethics and the founding of the Center for Business Ethics in Bentley University. The great corporations developed the lists of codes and behavioral models that were supposed to ensure the coordinated cooperation in order to protect the planet and conduct business all over the world.
As the companies were growing, began the second phase, which Liveris calls "The triple bottom line". This was the period between the 1980s and 1990s, and it can be characterized as the coordinated teamwork of organizations for the benefit of Environment and Society. Andrew Liveris cites President Bush saying that "there is no capitalism without a conscience" and there is certainly no privileges without obligations. As the result, companies began to get more involved and were developing programs that covered the three sections: Environment, Economics and Society. However, the designed programs were still something separate from the business itself.
This is where begins the third phase, The Great Integration, which finally unites obligations and profit in the business model. This is the period when companies, like Dow, began to act not only in real time, but also invest in the future. Describing the significant progress comparing to the second phase, Liveris gives us an example of the project that takes place in India, where Dow and WaterHealth International work together with the purpose to provide more than 10 million people with clean water. Unlike it was during the second phase, Dow not only sponsored the project, the organization also joined WaterHealth International in order to ensure the whole idea will be carefully implemented in live. This is the main goal corporations achieved and learned during the third period of the business ethics evolution, the most important is to get involved and to care.
This article has the direct relation to the Organizational behavior concepts course as it describes the public perception and behavior within the evolution of business ethics.
