Morality’s Place in Business

Organizations are challenged on their moral compass by customers and employees alike.

Modern organizations feel a growing need to satisfy more than just the monetary gains of owners, stakeholders, and employees. In general, people are becoming more aware of aspects like gender equality, racial equality, environmental footprints, animal rights, et cetera. This entails the need for a moral compass in an organization.

The issue with morality is that different people adhere to different viewpoints they consider to be moral. In a large organization, you have to deal with not just the moral viewpoint of the leadership, but also of the employees, and of stakeholders. As we’ve seen in recent years, especially employees of modern, agile-minded organizations like Facebook and Google have not taken this moral compass lightly.

In 2018, huge numbers of Google employees participated in the Google Walkouts, in which they literally walked out of the office building and demanded concrete changes from the company, including a commitment to end pay inequality, a transparent sexual harassment report, an inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct, and to elevate the Chief of Diversity to answer directly to the CEO and create an Employee Representative. Some — but not all — demands have been met since…