There follows my report on the run-up to and the opening of the AGM of DNWE Deutsches Netzwerk Wirtschaftsethik — EBEN Deutschland e.V. held in Berlin on June 15, 2013

I.
As a founder member I requested in a letter of March 9, 2013, that the board of dnwe publish details of the number of those who had left the association recently and their reasons for so doing. The background was the proud assertion at the opening of the Berlin office that new members had joined, contrasted with information I held that there had been departures by persons who were disillusioned. My letter was received but not answered.

I had been surprised at that reception to hear that, although it is constituted as a network and not as a political party or lobby, dnwe had set certain priorities, priorities that had not been discussed or decided in plenum. Those priorities were compliance & integrity, CSR (=corporate social responsibility), and values management.

I have analysed these concepts critically. It is not, I maintain, the task of a network for business ethics, or rather of its administrative officers, to press for a particular policy on these questionable matters, as distinct from allowing open discussion on them and leaving debate — i.e. the free market in ideas — to decide.

Again & again, as here, the officers of dnwe have exceeded their powers, silenced or discouraged alternative perspectives, and have sought to impose their will in disregard of due process.

In my letter of March 2013, I drew attention furthermore to the fact that, in the age of the internet (which did not exist when the statutes of dnwe were agreed), voting for board posts can meanwhile be done most democratically by secure direct remote voting as practised by the North American Society for Business Ethics. The current system is by way of proxies exercised by those attending the annual general meeting (=AGM). But proxies are hard to identify:

The latest directory of members had been published in February 2009 and was therefore completely out of date. Besides, the possibilities for members to get to know each other (e.g. in order to find proxies they trust) were limited (networking has indeed been discouraged, as reported elsewhere on this website). Hence it is difficult or impossible for many members to vote. Professor Dr. Joachim Fetzer failed to address this complaint or provide an updated directory of members. I subsequently submitted a resolution to the AGM held in June 2013 that this deficit be remedied.

At that meeting, the chairman, Prof. Dr. habil. Josef Wieland, a lawyer by character but no ethicist, correctly pointed out that a change in the statutes would have required an earlier submission of the proposal. He failed to note that it could be then properly addressed at the following AGM and that the board, which he headed, had shown no interest in attending to this obvious and urgent change, although the matter had been brought to its attention in good time.
I also submitted a motion that

"all members should be enabled (or indeed required) to post on the dnwe intranet at the least, if not on the public part, a meaningful statement of their personal understanding of business ethics."

This would seem to be essential to an organisation that claims to be a network for business ethics, and indeed, in view of the surprisingly naive conceptions of ethics evidenced by some members, imperative. However, before this motion was discussed, if it was discussed rather than dismissed, I was excluded from the association and had to leave (more on this further below). At the time of writing (end of August 2013) there were no minutes on the dnwe website, nor had I received any information in this regard. I assume that this and other resolutions I submitted to the AGM were rejected out of hand since their general drift was to demand that the board members stop regarding dnwe as their personal fiefdom, put an end to cronyism, and start allowing critical engagement with business ethics instead of using it as a form of public relations or as a forum for their personal commercial interests. The relevant German documentation is available on this website, contra-dnwe.com.

Prior to the AGM the board had written to myself, a founder member, excluding me from the association. I made use of my right of appeal to the AGM, and so the board had to inform all members of the matter. I do not know if this was done.

II.
Although in the past I had triggered donations to dnwe, I had no desire to continue to pay dues so that dnwe could persist in its campaign to the detriment of comprehensive business ethics and in its promotion of the vanity of its leading lights.

When it emerged that, by their own admission on a show of hands, some two thirds of the members attending had not consulted this website, contra-dnwe.com, I did not see any reason to demonstrate respect for this audience, nor, however, was I given time to do so, having been taken by surprise by the announcement by Professor Josef Wieland that I would be accorded only 15 minutes for the appeal (he had prepared, in line with his earlier notification to the board, for half an hour).

I had indeed already been prevented from giving a talk on the nature of business ethics at the conference the previous day although the right to give such a talk had in the past been a prerogative of members (and at this point in time I was still formally a member). Reportedly, the board members responsible for this arbitrary refusal were Frank Simon and Christoph Golbeck. It is instructive that dnwe has never issued to its members calls for papers or even, as far as is known, announced blind peer reviews.

I had been accused of disloyalty because the previous September I had submitted a resolution for the association to be wound up on the grounds that it had, among other things, persistently betrayed the cause of business ethics. The submission of this resolution was held as proof that I had sought to damage the association and, indeed, in his summing up at the AGM, Prof. Dr. habil. Josef Wieland presented this aspect as the legal basis for the exclusion.

Previously, I had in my written demand for an appeal hearing, pointed out the truism that an association must have a purpose over & above its own existence (“ein Verein ist kein Selbstzweck”). This subtlety would seem to have been beyond the legalistic intelligence of a Prof. Dr. habil. Josef Wieland. At any rate, at no time did dnwe see fit to address the grave and extensive accusations made on www.contra-dnwe.com in August 2012, matters that it had proven impossible to discuss within the association.

The matter of loyalty is a curious one. At the reception mentioned above, Wieland had thanked the guests (including many newcomers) for their loyalty to the association although at no time did he deem to make mention of what business ethics is for, or why it is important, and what the point of the loyalty to dnwe, as opposed to the cause, might be.

Notwithstanding, loyalty would seem to be a matter of honour at dnwe. So much so that, at the AGM, I proposed it be incorporated into the dnwe mission statement. No-one (apart from my companion, Petra) seemed to notice the sly reference to the forbidden motto of Hitler’s SS.

Loyalty has been sorely missing in the other direction.

High among the charges brought against me was the assertion that I had been hurtful to various fellow members.
Indeed.

It is to be hoped that I succeeded, although I doubt that any hurt cut deep enough for its addressees to reflect and reform. This said, the hurt probably consisted merely in the addressees having their arguments ridiculed or their shallowness exposed.

Meanwhile, harm in the form of rampant disregard in German business for straightforward principles of corporate governance has increased under the watch of dnwe. There are widespread violations of which the dnwe “expert” on German corporate governance, Professor Josef Wieland, would seem to know nothing. How could he, since his “expert” colleague Professor Joachim Fetzer had suppressed reports on the subject? (dnwe is fond of “experts” and “expertise”. Until I ridiculed them, they even used “expert” in their e-mail addresses.)

III. DNWE and the market in indulgences:
dnwe is named as an "ethics" network. In fact, it has proved to be a magnet for many who imagine that it will bestow a blessing or a springboard for their careers as consultants or academics. It has long been clear that virtually no members have any serious interest in ethics, nor even a concept of what this might be beyond the repetition of platitudes or the rawing up of codes and the like, whether legalistic or abstract. Many would seem not even to have much conception of business.

There has never been any mention in the dnwe literature of moral growth or maturity; of moral courage, e.g. steadfastness in the face of bullying and disparagement; of resistance to group-think; scant mention of the moral autonomy of the individual within corporations; of the importance of the exercise of judgement; of discussion of when rules must be overruled.

Nowhere has there been talk of individual managers being blacklisted or expropriated for egregious moral failings. But then, of course, there is nowhere the thought that fake or superficial business ethicists should be called to account.

III.
In German, a distinction is often made between Unternehmensethik, which is corporate ethics at the ground level, and Wirtschaftsethik, which is at a more general level. dnwe has shown itself to be uninterested in micro-economic ethics. I have heard it mentioned disparagingly in dnwe circles. For example, small-time traders are shortchanged daily by big business, but Professor Fetzer rejected the proposal for members to be allowed to discuss this on the intranet.

Not, on the other hand, that dnwe is interested in discussion or even communication of forward-looking ideas on the grand scale of macroeconomics either. For example: I suggested that members like might to know about and discuss the Health Impact Fund devised by Thomas Pogge (Australian, of German ancestry). It would have cost nothing. Prof. Dr. Joachim Fetzer chose to prevent the mere existence of this novel concept being publicised on the dnwe-Intranet. Perhaps he had in mind that one member of the Kuratorium (=oversight & advisory body) is head of the Novartis Foundation, whose paymasters might object; perhaps he had other reasons; probably none at all. Maybe his therapist knows something.

IV.
At the AGM in June 2013 I was cut short by Professor Josef Wieland and so prevented from dealing with any of this. A vote was forced prematurely.

At the beginning of my address, I had asked the assembled members (mostly young people who may well have become members only in order to attend the preceding conference at a reduced rate, or otherwise have membership credited on their CVs) whether they had actually consulted this website www.contra-dnwe.com. Only a third raised their hands. If I had been more astute I’d have demanded they leave, and indeed that all those leave who had spent less than hour perusing the site.

I had requested that the vote on my exclusion be held at the end of the meeting. This would have enabled me to intervene in the debates and the audience to have formed an impression of my stance. But this proposal was refused. (I was, granted, not in my best form that day.)

Before the vote, I requested that this be done by name. There was a short discussion about how proxy votes would be treated. Prof. Dr. Josef Wieland pointed out that there would then, in years to come, be a record of how the individual members present had voted. The matter was held to a show of hands. About two thirds of maybe fifty present were against standing up and being named for posterity!
Except for one young woman, who abstained, all voted to exclude me.

It is against this background, but also the background of the many other failings of dnwe documented on this website, including transgressions undisputed by dnwe now a year after initial publication, that it is permitted to draw certain conclusions:

Deutsches Netzwerk Wirtschaftsethik is NOT a network, despite its name: Networking has been prevented. The narrow concept of business ethics that dnwe propagates is tailored to the commercial interests of its leading members. These have got themselves elected by underhand means, having resisted the obvious electoral reforms that the internet has made possible. Alternative conceptions of business ethics and critical treatment, for example, of the dnwe preference for business ethics as public relations have been suppressed. Upstanding and committed members have left, while others have declined to join, leaving a majority who evidently are lacking in moral courage and have no serious interest in ethics — except of course for what lip-service to ethics can do for their careers and doubtless their self-image.

In view of how dnwe has developed in recent years, the word “Ethik” in the name is an abuse of words. The subject matter dealt with, for example at most conferences, has been political economy and legalistic, sometimes sociological. The German word “Ethik” and the English word “ethics” do not refer to compliance with the law or lawlike codes. If this were so, there would hardly be any need for the ancient word. By assisting publicly in the abuse of the word, dnwe has set itself again a core tradition of western civilisation. The Chinese Sage Confucius is quoted as saying that, if you want to destroy a civilisation, first set about destroying its language.

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