Risky business

Today every workplace boasts codes of business ethics. But as long as 10 years ago, it was clear that ethics were a symptom of a wider aversion to risk

Below is the introduction of the Demos Quarterly article ‘Risky business‘, click on the link below to read the full article.

On the computer screens of giant American corporations, a new kind of display is spreading. At the press of a mouse, you can click on to company help when moving house, company help if having a child, company help in planning retirement. Click an option in the left hand column if you want advice about events in your personal life; click on the right to discuss events in your career. There is also a company call centre to take your enquiries with the help ofcomputer-aided telephony.

In the new enterprise culture being pioneered in America, the Human Resources (HR) department has, like many other bloated staff functions, been subjected to business process re-engineering. Now many tasks in HR have been shifted downward to the level of the strategic business unit, and, more significantly still, to the employee. In the face of today’s insecurities, it has more than ever before become the responsibility of the employee to look after his or her future pay, conditions, promotion, health, education, insurance, pensions and all the rest. Meanwhile, slimmer HR departments find themselves, like everyone else, having to do more with less. They run spreadsheets which track every point of contact between themselves and the employee: from a routine payroll enquiry to the losing of a company badge.

As ever, Information Technology (IT) mediates relations between business and employee. But IT has grown up like this only as a symptom of a wider political economy of risk at the workplace. And in this economy, business ethics will play a vital role, for reasons we shall explain.

To open and download a PDF version of the FULL article, click on this Risky Business link.