Perhaps more poignantly for multinational corporations or international corporate citizenship, this discussion of locality touches on the complexity of global supply chains. In a long value chain that encompasses continents, should a company be responsible for all the activities along that chain or are there different degrees of responsibility? What about different degrees of complicity? If one’s end-product fulfils an important social need and the corporation itself plays a key societal function, does this reality allow for parts of the production process to be “dirty”? Palm oil is one example. It is ubiquitous in everyday consumer products and is an industry of national importance to some developing countries, yet its production capacity seems to rely on mass deforestation. Or what about the links between Uyghur slave labor and the production of solar panels?
Placing myself in the shoes of a business owner who must grapple with uprooting an entrenched, complex global supply chain amid absent laws and regulations, it seems that the solution is neither as simple as halting the production of these products nor as straightforward as ignoring the ethical issues along the chain. In pondering this question, we return to the same problem: is it morally permissible for our hands to be dirty in the conduct of such business? How dirty is too dirty? What makes us complicit, and if so, how much? Where do we draw the line between influence and complicity? These questions, it seems to me, must remain at the forefront of our minds when “doing business,” particularly given the ease with which we rationalize and justify our actions.
The Role of Redemption?
Pushing this thinking one step further, I cannot help but ask another question: what about redemption? Assuming that a business finds itself complicit in moral harm—as we have learned that nearly all the major German companies were through their involvement in the Holocaust, from Bosch (which is currently 90%-owned by a charity) to BMW—what happens next? What is the correct and proportional remedy? Some may well argue that there can be no such remedy for the evil perpetrated during the Shoah. I would concur, and that seems only to push the question further. What might redemption look like for a business? Individuals can forgive and be forgiven. Can we say the same for businesses? I don’t have the answer yet, but the question remains.
So, what do we do then? Returning to the things that have shaped me, I find myself challenged but inspired to uphold the values of love, community, and loyalty in ways that mitigate insularity and prejudice—and in so doing, seek an understanding of business and a practice of leadership driven by these considerations. Is this an impossible task? Are these qualities inherently at odds? I think they are not, though they can be. And in the gap between “not” and “can be” is where I believe we find our agency.
Claudia Kwan was a 2022 FASPE Business Fellow. At the time, she was pursuing her master’s in business administration at Harvard Business School.
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1. Walzer, Michael. “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands.” War and Moral Responsibility, 1974, pp. 62–82., https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691238234-005.
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