Broken Hill Proprietary, Ltd - Financial Success - Case Study Example

Running Head: Business society Business Society [Name of the writer] [Name of the institution] Business society Broad and comprehensive visions of environmental justice are possible, though always open to new political challenges and shifts in the arrangement of human societies and in environments themselves. The vision of environmental justice can be understand by taking the question of justice in a particular conflict of interest, that between the mining giant Broken Hill Proprietary, Ltd. (BHP) and the traditional landowners of an area on the Ok Tedi river in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Ethical decision-making is becoming a vital framework in an organization. Firms are starting to understand that they have a wider responsibility to the communities within which they operate. It is said that there are two kinds of responsibilities in a firm – commercial and social. Commercial responsibilities involve manage a business successfully, generating profit and satisfying shareholder expectations. Social responsibility on the other hand is being aware of the issues being presented in the community and the working environment. In the light of all these arguments, it was very difficult for Paul Aderson, the Chief Executive Officer of BHP, to take decision when he was presented four options for the company by study. There is rich literature on environmental ethics and many texts start by posing questions that assume a societal, or even global, frame. The big questions usually address the capability of the earth's resources to support its human population, the capability of the biosphere to absorb human wastes, the quickly increasing rate of extinction of non-human species, the exploitation of the environment of the poorer nations to preserve the lifestyle of the richer, the systematic discounting of the interests of generations which have not even come to this world, the enormous injury to the forests and seas, the industrial use of animals. Against all these explanations are counter-posed abstract ethical formulations (Drengson 1980). Conclusions are then drawn about the type of society and morality we have to build up to prevent these things occurring: the society of ‘our common future’ (Brundtland Report 1987). Wittgenstein revealed by means of various thought experiments that abstract philosophy often leads to unresolvable paradoxes and challenges. In the same way, abstract considerations of justice quickly lead to contradictory alternatives. Michael Walzer (1983) and Jon Elster (1992) are among those who have ideas that different conceptions of justice are used in practice in different circumstances. Some writers have warned against the decontextualized use of meta-ethical ideology in dealing with environmental issues. This observation raises the issue of universalism versus moral relativism. If there is no single conception of justice, can there be a universal conception of justice? A situated ethics need not lead to ethical relativism, nor does it need the abandonment of universalism, properly understood. The point of departure here, then, is not the big picture of world’s common future, but examples of real and public disagreements over the environment, examples such as the attempted discarding of the oil rig Brent Spar in the North Sea, nuclear tests by France in the Pacific, and the mining by BHP in PNG. Needless to say, these are examples of environmental conflicts in the recent past — and sometimes disasters (Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, the drying of the Aral Sea) — that have been happening with growing regularity over the years. Environmental justice or injustice lies at the heart of such differences, revealed as sociopolitical conflict over the distribution of environmental degradation and economic benefit between communities and nations. In contrasting all instances of environmental unfairness, there are arguments that it is best to focus first on real disputes and then attempt to demonstrate how the social-institutional conditions can be created for a range of conceptions of justice to enter into the good solution of these problems. The broader effort against social forms that produce environmental injustice, for example biospheric destruction and the maldistribution of environmental risk, should begin as engagements with specific ecological conflicts in which questions of environmental and ecological justice are intertwined. When BHP planned to build the mine, it focused more on the commercial responsibilities rather than social. The Ok Tedi River was one of the last untouched wilderness areas in the world where civilization was still at its basics. Building the mine looked attractive to the shareholders and government as large profits could be made. On the other hand, lack of social responsibilities bought a very poor return on this business. In the late 1970s the Ok Tedi environmental controls were not planned carefully and not much thought was put into it. During project construction, it became obvious that the assumptions on which those designs were based on were incorrect. Media reports of the time blamed the government for being voracious on not building a sufficient waste dam. This led to larger amounts of tailings residue being dumped into the river, bringing devastating changes to the environment. Carelessness does not stop here. Instead of hurriedly correcting this environmental disaster, complaints from landowners were simply ignored by the government and the BHP management. This sparked extensive controversy and media attention in Australia and PNG. The negative publicity of BHP could have been avoided if the company was to take a positive or accommodative approach. A corporation should treat all its demands seriously, regardless of which group has brought it up. The mining company did not have a full understanding of all the stakeholders they needed to satisfy. The people downstream of the mine were ignored and forgotten. The chief executive officer of BHP once sated that: “You cannot simply look at the technical, the economic and even the environmental aspects of a mine.” In order to make a more moral choice and have a better understanding, BHP needed to have consulted with more various groups of people and communities. The environmental disaster was large, almost certainly irreparable, and largely unpredictable. The ecosystem of the Fly River has been distorted by the sediment, and if claims that the river system is now biologically lifeless are exaggerated, the future consequence of the dumping is mainly unknown. There has been no independent environmental monitoring of the environmental harm. The only evaluation is done by consultants hired by BHP. It is the public knowledge, however, that there is no fish in some parts of the Ok Tedi river, that the area of rainforest disappearing from the sediment will expand much further along the river flood plains as mining continues, and that the bed of the river has been raised by more than a meter of polluted silt over seven years. In an ethical dialogue nobody can argue about justice without option to the universal application of principle. In an anthropological or sociological discourse, one can explain what justice means in different social and cultural contexts, and one would expect differences of understanding. But in an ethical dialogue, people should advised to behave in a certain way. One should offer the same advice in similar conditions or he will himself be guilty of unfairness. It cannot be assumed that different cultural conditions alter the circumstances of common humanity. Just as theories in science have to be internally consistent to make sense in the discourse, so moral principles must be universalizable: “Every expressively veracious judgment, whether in the fields of theoretical or practical reason, has to be universalizable” (Bhaskar 1993). It has to be so for the reason that if not there can be no discussion. Nonetheless, general principles appear from the experience of particular conditions and cultural contexts. Both morality and ethics are the terms which have come from the same base, meaning the customs of a society. From the customs of our western world (though not from that world alone) have emerged three abstractions — desert, rights, and need — that are extensively regarded as the bases of justice (Miller 1976). According to Miller these foundations of justice is incommensurable. To him they are simply alternative conceptions of justice. Aradical pluralism of conception seems unavoidable. A warning has come from Harvey (1993) who said that “the application of any universal principles of social justice across heterogeneous situations is certain to entail some injustice to someone, somewhere”. Davy (1996), similarly, is of the view that in situating dangerous waste facilities, different stakeholders demand to rival and incommensurable ideas of justice. This is to say nothing of “deep ecologists” who say that the non-human world is also morally considerable (Hayward, 1994). Naess (1989), for instance, says that “the maxim 'live and let live' suggests a class-free society in the entire ecosphere, a democracy in which we can speak about justice, not only with regard to human beings, but also for animals, plants and landscapes”. So let us review the foundations of justice. Are they incommensurable? The appearance of human rights as the foundation of justice in western societies in history stemmed from the transcendence of cultural norms. The creators of the thought of natural rights, or human rights, had to avoid their own culture, which insisted that all moral values came from God. Immanuel Kant and John Locke said that humans were created by God and that they ought to obey God. But they then argued that God had given humans the use of reason and that the law of God is the law of reason. In conclusion, the value of a company will not only be derived from its financial success in future. The value of a company will also be drawn from how well it distributes some of its wealth back to the stakeholders and the community, and as well as how it contributes to both environmental and social issues. Making ethical decisions has a positive impact on both the company and the community. By demonstrating leadership in balancing commercial and social responsibility, corporations can be regarded as an employer of choice. References Bhaskar, R. (1993) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. London: Verso. Brundtland Report (1987) Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press and World Commission on Environment and Development. Davy, B. (1996) Fairness as compassion: towards a less unfair facility sitting policy. Risk: Health, Safety, and Environment 7:99-108. Drengson, A. (1980) Shifting paradigms: from the technocratic to the person-planetary. Environmental Ethics 3:221-240. Elster, J. (1992) Local Justice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Harvey, D. (1993) Class relations, social justice, and the politics of difference. In M. Keith and S. Pile (Eds.) Place and the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge, pp. 41-66. Hayward, T. (1994) Ecological Thought: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kant, I. (1892) Kant's Kritik of Judgment. London: Macmillan. Lake, R.W. (1996) Volunteers, NIMBYs, and environmental justice: dilemmas of democratic practice. Antipode 28: 161-174. Miller, D. (1976) Social Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Naess, A. (1989) Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle. Trans. D. Rothenberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walzer, M. (1983) Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. NewYork: Basic Books. Read More