We'd Mix Water in the Milk

Yesterday me and my friend were sitting on the bench at our usual tea kadai. The evening traffic was humming, the masala vadai was hot, and I had a brilliant idea.

Sunil: Va macha, nama oru tea kadai business start panlaam!

Me: Business-ah? Aiyo, venam da. Suthama mudiyadhu. First day-la namma paal-la thanni mix panna aarambichiruvom [We’d Mix Water in the Milk]. I can’t earn without telling lie now day’s

And just like that, our argument started.

Sunil: Enna da ipdi solra? It’s all about the culture you set. Oru chinna tea kadai-la namma nalladhu panna mudiyum

Me: Chinna kadai seri da. But scale aaga aaga? Look at Boeing. They were rushing planes out the door to meet targets, and then a whole door plug flies off mid-air on that Alaska Airlines flight! Pressure, macha. Pressure eats ethics for dinner.

Sunil: Adhu oru company-oda problem, da. Everyone isn’t like that. You just have to build a reputation for being trustworthy.

Me: Trustworthy ah? Ask Wells Fargo about trust! Millions of fake accounts opened just to hit sales quotas. It took them 8 years to get out of the regulator’s punishment box. They didn’t care about trust; they cared about their targets.

Sunil: Okay, okay, bad example. But that’s a culture problem! The great management guru Peter Drucker always said, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. If your culture is strong, you won’t cheat.

Me: Culture-ah? Volkswagen had a great engineering culture! But what did they do? They built ‘defeat devices’ to cheat on emissions tests for years! For what? Market share! Their brilliant engineering culture was used to create a brilliant cheating culture.

Sunil: That’s just pure greed. The top guys should be held responsible. Look at that crypto fellow, Sam Bankman-Fried. He talked all about ‘effective altruism’ and ended up with a 25-year jail sentence for an $8 billion fraud. System worked, he got caught.

Me: He got caught after the money was gone! That’s the point! The game is structured to reward the greedy. Remember what Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning economist, wrote back in 1970? He said a company has ‘one and only one social responsibility… to increase its profits.’ That one line became the rulebook for generations of CEOs!

Sunil: But that’s such an old way of thinking! Even the most hardcore capitalist, Warren Buffett, warns, ‘It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.’ That’s the real bottom line.

Me: Reputation is a long-term game, da. Quarterly results are a short-term war. Look at Purdue Pharma pushing opioids, or Johnson & Johnson fighting thousands of cancer lawsuits over their talc powder. Did they think about their 20-year reputation when they were chasing those sales figures?

Sunil: Illa da… There has to be a better way. There are companies that try.

Me: Oh yeah? Oru nalla example sollu.

Sunil: …. (I paused for a bit, thinking.)

Me: See? I’ll give you one, just to be fair. Patagonia. The founder, Yvon Chouinard, literally gave the entire $3 billion company away and said, ‘Earth is now our only shareholder.’ They funnel profits into fighting climate change. They changed the entire scoreboard.”

Sunil: Aama! See! It possible! You just proved my point!

Me: (Takes a final sip of his tea) Onnu… I gave you one example. You’re forgetting Boeing, Wells Fargo, VW, FTX, Enron, Theranos, BP’s oil spill, Uber’s ‘Greyball’ software, Facebook’s privacy fines… the list goes on and on. It’s one kuthu vilakku in a massive, dark room. So, I’ll say it again. Ethics in business isn’t impossible. It’s just… almost impossible. It’s like playing a video game on ‘Nightmare Mode’.

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The chai got cold, but the debate is still hot.

So, I’m turning it over to you. What do you think? Is my friend a cynical realist, or am I a naive idealist?

Drop your verdict in the comments:

Possible! Ethics and profit can go hand-in-hand.

Impossible! Ethics always gets eaten for breakfast by profits.

It’s complicated. Depends on the leader, the culture, the industry…

Let the debate continue!

#BusinessEthics #CorporateCulture #Leadership #Debate #SouthIndia #Entrepreneurship #MakeInIndia