What started this course

After teaching business ethics for many years I began to realize that a person's view of business affects their view of business ethics just as much as their view on ethics.  The thought struck me as I was watching the film Goodfellas.  In this clip between 24 and 42, the narrator explains how the mob boss can take out loans he has no intention of repaying, using a legitimate business as collateral. This is how you buy a 200 dollar case of booze on credit and sell it for 100 dollars and keep the cash.  At 41 the narrator tells us this is pure profit.

Nonsense.  Profit is a value adding activity that takes place through trading.  What this clip is describing is no more profit than mugging an old lady and claiming the quarter you got was pure profit.  It does, however, indicate that criminal activity likes to pose as business activity because, in some way, the language of business provides some sort of moral defense e.g. "don't blame me, I'm just doing business".  This lead me to want to investigate more of what business is and, very importantly, what business is not.  The beginning thought that led to this course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtjyqgZAUk&feature=related

Competition and War

The phrase " Business is all about doing what must be done to get ahead." is quite common.  The thing to remember that "competition" is a large category.  War is one type of activity that falls within the category "competition".  Business competition also falls within this group.  The underlying question, then, is do these two types of competition overlap.  Perhaps, for a very very tiny slice of certain business they do.  Here I am thinking of the business of being a mercenary or some types of security firms.

even here, though, violence is part of the business, but it is not how even these endeavors compete with other mercenaries or security firms.  Getting hired means competing on price and qualiy - the overwhelming majority of business activity is like this.  Thus, it is not doing "anything" one must do to get ahead.  Killing a competitor is murder, not business. Only certain types of competitive actions are actually business.  The key in this clas is to figure out what type of acctions count as business and what do not.

Bill