Can Ethics Really Be This Complex?

This week’s blog’s topic is “is marketing evil?”. Most of you are probably jumping all of this one with an emphatic response of YES! YES, of course marketing is evil!  Let’s slow down for a minute. This type of reactionary response does not represent an ethical means of thinking the question through before jumping to a conclusion. Fortunately, (or unfortunately depending on how you feel about ethics) an ethical response requires some critical thinking before arriving at an answer. Actually even intuition, straightforward inductive generalizations or casual arguments can help arrive at an ethical decision so long as some evidence to support ‘plausibility’ is present in your thinking (LaFollette, 2007, Chapter 9). In some cases, where the ethical issues are truly complex issues (not complicated or simple), a new way of thinking is needed based on complexity science (Snowden & Boone, 2007, p.70).

Marketing can be Simple, Complicated and Complex

Let us begin an analysis of this question with this excerpt concerning a marketing case study from Sayed & Ghazaly (2007):

In the following case study, those questions will be attempted to be answered, and we say attempted because up till now, a judgment about the whole aspect of marketing cannot be pinned down for sure, and thus clarifying the picture for the reader is the main concern, whether the picture turns out all black, all white or something in between, it is better to be left for the individual perspective.

Zoom in on “whether the picture turns out all black, all white or something in between”. For me, this paints a picture of uncertainty, as it should for you as well. For those not familiar with the Cynefin Framework for decision making, if you familiarize yourself with it, it could make decision making a whole lot less complicated than it needs to be (Snowden & Boone, 2007). In fact, it can help understand why the question “is marketing evil” has more than one right answer and sometimes patience is needed to allow the answer(s) to emerge when there is no apparent cause and effect (p. 72). A perfect example of this is the commercialization of cigarettes. At one-time cigarette commercials were not given a second thought as to whether or not they were ethical.

Cigarettes provided enjoyment for those who could not wait for the next ‘smoke break’ or the ‘night at the club’. From a purely deontological or consequentialist point of view, so long as the smokers didn’t interfere with someone who did not smoke, then there was little argument that the smokers’ behavior was unethical (LaFollette, 2007, pp. 31-32). Once there was a link to cigarette smoking and cancer, suddenly there were consequences for both smokers and manufacturers of cigarettes (Mendes, 2014).

Here is an example of a marketing situation that at one time was not unethical, but became unethical after health issues emerged after probing the problem with scientific discovery. Probe, sense, respond (scientific experimentation, consequences in all directions, public warning) that is described in Snowden & Boone (2007) provide a frame that the issue of smoking was really a complex problem, not simple or complicated that needed to be understood before making a decision. The implication is that allowing the manufacturing of cigarettes for public consumption and the marketing of such products without properly understanding the consequences of such actions, was an unethical act. Understanding the Cynefin Framework (Snowden & Boone, 2007) may have prevented the premature deaths of millions of people over the decades.

Ethical Marketing

Ethisphere promotes the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” and has been doing so for 10 years now (Ethisphere, 2016). Pepisco made the list this year, and while reflecting on how Pepsico advertises it’s products, one has to wonder if Pepisco (and other beverage manufacturers) will not suffer the same fate as some of the cigarette manufacturers. Wait just a minute or hold on you say? Like cigarette smoking, drinking Pepisco beverages are proven to be hazardous to our health as well. Anytime we ingest unnatural substances into our bodies, we risk consequences that may or may not be acceptable. Some of these results take time to emerge, like cigarette smoking did. Pepsico and other beverage and food products are no different. In an article on WebMD a study of diet beverages showed that people that drink a diet soda every day had a 48% increased chance of heart attack or stroke than those who drank less than one a day or not at all (Boyles, 2011). While this is not empirical evidence that drinking diet sodas alone increases risk, it is cause for concern and additional studies.

Ethical Takeaway

Ethical decisions can be simple, complicated or complex. Zooming in and zooming out to examine different frames and perspectives is needed to formulate an opinion or make a decision that is sound. There may be more than one sound answer, especially when you are dealing with ethics. Products that we ingest are prime examples of complex issues that requires probe, sense, respond and not sense, analyze, respond (complicated) or sense, categorize, respond (simple) (Snowden & Boone, 2007).

References:

LaFollette, H. (2007). The practice of ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Mendes, E., (2014, January 9). The study that helped spur the U.S. stop-smoking movement. American Cancer Society. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.org/research/acsresearchupdates/the-study-that-helped-spur-the-us-stop-smoking-movement

Sayed, H., & Ghazaly, I. (2007). Is marketing evil? Marketing viewed as a tool. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ethicsbasedmarketing.net/2.html

Snowden, D., & Boone, M. (2007). A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68-76.

Ethisphere. (2016, March 7). 2016 world's most ethical companies. Retrieved from http://ethisphere.com/ethisphere-announces-the-2016-worlds-most-ethical-companies-celebrating-10-years-of-measuring-corporate-integrity-and-recognizing-those-that-excel/