Business Ethics Magazine Recently Awarded the Chroma

Business Ethics magazine recently awarded the Chroma Technology Corporation, a Vermont-based manufacturer of high-tech optical lens products, the "Living Economy Award" as part of the 16th Annual Business Ethics Awards. The Living Economy Award is offered to the company that best exemplifies "the living economy with practices of employee ownership, fair wages, and environmental stewardship," (Business Ethics). One of the key reasons why Chroma earned the accolade was due to its unique official salary structure: no employee earns less than $37,500 and none more than $75,000; therefore, no upper-level management official makes more than twice as much as anyone on the shop floor. Chroma's unique salary structure in part reflects my vision of corporate business ethics and the values I would like to embody as a professional. There are other reasons why I admire Chroma's policies. They employ an egalitarian meeting format modeled after the Quakers; they ensure environmental sustainability and energy-efficiency in their plant; and the company is entirely owned by employees, who are not at risk of losing their jobs. Chroma therefore provides an optimal corporate role model for the development of a sound approach to business and financial ethics. My value system reflects the ideals that are exemplified by Chroma Technology as well as by individuals who I believe embody morality in action: obvious influenced include Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. My personal code of ethics was developed over time in response to such diverse influences as my community, my family, my culture, my peers, my teachers, and the media.

Of course, my value system extends beyond pay structure and economic integrity. For example, I also firmly believe in gender and racial equality in the workplace and elsewhere; prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping should be discouraged and ideally, eliminated. I admire those companies that promote ethnic and cultural diversity within the workplace and those that boast women and people of color in positions of power. I have made a personal commitment to work only for those corporations that reflect this core value, as well as core values such as equitable pay structures and a dedication to promoting local and sustainable businesses. I would not want to work for a company that I knew had treated its workers unethically in any way and therefore I feel that company ethics can and do reflect personal ethics.

Individual employees have a responsibility to promote their personal ethical codes through their actions in the workplace. For example, the way employees treat coworkers and the way they treat their friends and family members extends into how they treat colleagues and customers alike. I don't think that personal ethics and professional ethics differ all that much; they are both based on the same fundamental principles of integrity, honesty, and cooperation. I also believe that executives and upper-level management officials have a special and weighted responsibility to embody ethical and moral policies. As role models for their employees and as representatives of the company as a whole, managers and executives especially need to promote ethical action, policy, and decision making within their respective companies.

Written codes of ethics are meaningless without actions to back them up. Every company publishes its codes of ethics on their website and in official company literature. However, few of them actually practice what they preach. Similarly, religious communities attempt to codify and canonize ethics; all too often religious people act hypocritically and against their moral codes. I can think of countless examples of ways that individuals have used the Christian Bible to actually support unethical behavior. For example, anti-abortion activists have killed doctors in the name of morality. I have witnessed the discrepancy between written codes of ethics and unwritten ones in more personal situations. For instance, I know a woman who was being sexually harassed by her new boss. The company had a strict sexual harassment policy, and in spite of that and the fact that she had worked there in good standing for five years, she could not prove her case and she eventually quit.