Morals in business, are consumers or CEOs more accountable? What is the youth doing?
- Isabella Perez
- Jun 14, 2024
- 6 min read
Brian Berkey, a professor at the Wharton School specializing in legal studies and business ethics, has made an unconventional choice by opting for a flip phone over a connected smartphone. His decision is informed by extensive research and data analysis. One of the key influences on Dr. Berkey is the work of Vikram R. Bhargava, a former PhD student from his department. Bhargava co-authored a significant study titled "Ethics of the Attention Economy: the Problem of Social Media Addiction," which was published in Business Ethics Quarterly.
It is preoccupating to see how our society is becoming more addicted to new technologies such as social media. Even more, to know that many companies are actively deciding to make their technological products more and more addictive each time. It is terrifying to realize that their goal is literally to keep people staring at the screen as much as possible in an exploitative manner, especially if we can understand how technology such as social media can become addicting. As we are scrolling through social media and watching reels or TikToks about a group of people dancing to a kung fu panda-themed song, our brain and neurotransmitter receptors are flooded with dopamine, which gives us little “highs” of instant satisfaction, that our brain likes, so this makes us continue our mindless scrolling. The problem with this is that as our brain gets used to receiving dopamine during social media use, it stops producing its natural “feel good” neurotransmitters such as endorphins, and begins relying on social media for dopamine production and reception. This is what causes social media and smartphone use to become so addictive. This is something that has happened at least once to all of us who use a smartphone. We watch a funny short video, and we like it, so we keep scrolling, and 10 minutes pass by and we say “5 minutes more won’t harm!” and the next time we check our watch, it has been 30, 40, or even 50 minutes. While superficially it doesn’t seem worrying, the use of social media can become as maladaptive and dysfunctional as any other addictive disorder as it affects our mental health, as well as our normal performance on tasks. I have to agree with Dr. Berkey that these technologies, aside from the problems of privacy and security, are harmful to our society making people addicted to instants of dopamine as any other drug does and causing anxiety and depression, especially in young people, and in some way, I get why Dr. Berkey has a flip phone. But aside from worrying, it is important to recognize that CEOs and entire companies are behind these apps, purposefully making their services and products addictive, reinforcing phone-checking habits, and using emotional triggers with no moral concern.
However, I have to agree with Dr. Berkey that consumers play a vital role in holding companies accountable for ethical development. We, as consumers, or even shareholders of a company, have the power over the products we are buying and using, and the product ethics and ESG analyses that we are demanding. Government regulation lags far behind when controlling the release of new technologies. The idea of business ethics in technology is still ripe, just as it is in ESG adaptation, but we need to educate ourselves on this topic so that we can understand how to approach our business models more ethically and act more responsibly as consumers or shareholders. With this, I also need to recognize how much I agree with Amy Sepinwall. According to her, when we are talking about business ethics is much less about what we should do, but it is more about asking ourselves, what is the social goal of our companies? How can they practice inclusion of women and other marginalized groups? What is their environmental or social responsibility? If we can base our companies on these questions, we could approach our business models from this perspective more effectively than if it was just a plain and simple list of actions we must follow. It must be found in the hearts of companies and their CEOs through these questions.
“Sometimes I think it’s easiest to define business ethics not as what someone ought to do in business, morally speaking, but instead what are some of the typical questions that we should think about related to business and ethics,” notes Sepinwall. “Some of those include: What should the purpose of a corporation be; should it be run just in the interest of shareholders or in the interest of wider society? How should managers treat their workers, from equality in the workplace to the degree of oversight over employees? What is a fair distribution of profits among stakeholders? What are corporations’ obligations to the global poor if they have particular competencies, expertise or even drugs that are too expensive for people in developing countries to afford? How should we understand the market and the limits of the market? Even if people are willing to buy certain things, does that mean they should be bought and sold, like organs or surrogacy?”- Amy Sepinwall
When we are talking about business ethics, according to Sepinwall, is also important to ask, what are the rights of business owners compared to the rights of consumers? As businesses are in some ways morally responsible for environmental and public health issues, they are also responsible for social matters such as discrimination. Are businesses excluding people from their markets because of their sexual orientation, gender, or religious beliefs? While anti-discrimination laws sometimes prevent such scenarios from happening, they are only providing a floor on which businesses can guide themselves, however, some things are not legally required to do, but they are still morally important. To achieve this, we, young leaders, have to find our moral values in ourselves and how can we implement them in our companies to overcome bias in the workplace and markets, as well as stay open-minded and willing to change our ways of thinking for the common good.
A very little time ago I had a debate with a workplace psychologist on whether inclusion laws in companies were discriminatory or not. Even though the answers seemed pretty clear and easy to conclude, it was amazing how she was able to articulate her answers to state a strong argument for my question. First, we need to understand that even though it might feel discriminatory to “favor” certain marginalized groups in the workplace what we are trying to reach is equality, a world in which no one is given more or fewer opportunities because of their gender, or sexual orientation, we need to realize that we are not in that world yet. Women and other marginalized groups have been discriminated against in the workplace for hundreds of years, and still, some people don’t see women or members of the LGTBIQ+ community capable of doing the same jobs with the same or even more passion and compromise that men do. Many people nowadays, mistake these laws and think that you are going to be favored and given a job at a company just because you are a woman, when in reality there are many other requisites you need to fulfill to be employed, not merely the simple fact of being a woman. Such laws are there because we need to stabilize the balance between the opportunities given to men and women and other groups and try to replenish years of setbacks of equality in the workplace, and laws are crucial for this to happen.
I agree with Dr. Sepinwall that young social entrepreneurs and leaders nowadays are seeing business as a force of good to address social and environmental issues. Nowadays we have a lot more access to information about the climate crisis and social issues, such education and information about the problems affecting our society nowadays is very important because by informing themselves people can get inspired and encouraged to be part of the change by choosing a specific issue and focusing on that. Through my Wharton research journey on businesses with environmental and social initiatives, I have been able to discover many amazing youth-led startups whose main goal is to create a positive change in our planet. Some of them are Repurpose Global, Rising C-Suites, Paul’s Table, and many other businesses that have decided to contribute to our environment by promoting a circular economy, offering opportunities to high schoolers with novel ideas, and trying to change meat production and the vegetarian food industry.
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