What might the public at large expect from an association that has the work Ethics in its name? What is generally understood by a network? There are some things the public does certainly not expect.

For instance, in a network, networking between members must be facilitated, not hindered, which is what has happened at dnwe. Discussion must be encouraged and not — as at dnwe — suppressed. Insights and experience, arguments and counter-arguments must be remembered and not left to be forgotten, as happens when whole debates are deleted from the dnwe-intranet rather than, at a minimum, being archived.

The moral requirements demanded of people who claim to be working in the area of ethics must be higher than those that may be commonplace in politics, business or academia, rather than lower as has happened at dnwe. Anyone presuming to be engaged in an ethics association must, at least in this function, conduct themselves above reproach.

For instance, it goes without saying that, when discussions are held, people must put their cards on the table: producing proxy votes, previously held secret, at the last minute to reverse a consensus is not acceptable.

There must be no sidelining of members or secretly canvassing for offices, or awarding such offices, behind the backs of the people who put in the work on the ground. The requirement to observe a netiquette must not be abused in order to censure intranet posts that are simply unwelcome or critical.

When the board requests members to submit opinions and ideas, it must be seen to have actually considered these, and not convey the impression, as has happened, that the submissions have been left unread. In the case of criticism or indeed of constructive proposals, the board must express a position on these: it must not simply ignore them. Its position must be expressed such that all members can take cognisance thereof.

Emails sent by board members, or their proxies, in matters connected with the association are not subject to secrecy. If they contain contentious material, the member may, and indeed possibly must, publish the material. The excuse that has been made that these are personal messages subject to a (fictional) personal privilege itself betrays the failure of the officers to stand by their words and deeds. A message does not become confidential simply by attaching a standard text to it.

There must be no attempts at exclusion, for instance, as has happened, on the grounds that someone has many years of experience in business. Indeed, in the area of ethics and business ethics, mature reflection such as may come with age should enjoy special esteem.


Democratic shortcomings

In the internet age voting must be by secure electronic means, for instance,
as has been done for many years by the US-based Society of Business Ethics.
The present procedure with proxy votes, that may have been justifiable in the mid-nineties, is no longer defensible. Should it be maintained, the assumption must be that this is for tactical reasons in the interests of a minority rather than in the spirit of democracy.

It is not the task of the board to dictate what is to be discussed, whether it is the subject of an annual conference or discussions in the intranet. By so doing the board suppresses systematically a hundred other topics which are likely more pressing or more interesting for the members.

When publications are planned with the funds of the members, the latter must be informed in good time so that they can submit articles. It is not acceptable to simply ignore contributions or to reject them on artificial grounds. The purpose of publications is not to serve the vanity of an in-group.

The board must implement the resolutions of the general assembly and not, as has happened, just ignore them.

All of the charges implied above can be supported with evidence. The documentation, except where the board has had it deleted from the intranet, is contained elsewhere (mostly in German) on this website.

The author was a founding member of dnwe.




IV. Other failures of dnwe officers
(i)
As mentioned above, elections have generally been conducted in great haste, and always without any proper debate among candidates on policy issues.

It is totally unclear how people come to be chosen for membership of the Kuratorium [supervisory body]. I consider that at least one current member is, by character, unsuited to such an appointment. Most are simply inactive.

(ii)
A survey of dnwe-members was conducted early in 2011 by the consulting firm Roland-Berger. I have examined their report in an essay of 2400 words “Schlimmer als ein Fehlgriff: Die Roland-Berger Studie,” which at the time was was published at the now discontinued website www.CSR-Skepsis.de .

The survey report by Roland-Berger is replete with nonsense sentences (illiteracy), logical non-sequiturs, and to crown it all with a key arithmetical error (innumeracy). Its conclusion is that, because 53 (sic) members of a total of 633 (sic) were in favour of addressing the target group “media and the public”, this is what must be done. As it is common knowledge that consulting companies generally come up with the solutions they are instructed to produce, the conjecture is warranted that this absurd result was contrived in order to please those in the board and supervisory body who pressed for Roland-Berger to be hired in the first place. Governed by hubris, who would not wish to be exalted into media status?

Such stratagems may be common practice among politicians, among media consultants, even among lawyers: in business ethics they are desecration.

(iii) Published drivel Two prominent members of the Kuratorium, Klaus M. Leisinger and Josef Wieland, published in 2011 together with the theologian Hans Küng a high-profile, dual-language book “Manifesto Global Economic Ethic” [sic] with the well-known dtv publishing house (where on another topic I have also been published).

[I later wrote a review, partly satirical, of this worthless book, which can be found here, in German, at http://www.contra-dnwe.com/deutsch/zensur.html together with a full account of the lame excuse for the refusal to publish by the then editor Professor Monika Eigenstetter. An English version of the review is at http://www.contra-dnwe.com/english/cook.html. This is, I believe, one of the best pieces I have written in German.]

dnwe publishes at great expense a glossy quarterly journal, Forum Wirtschaftethik. The physical legibility of this magazine has been repeatedly criticised by members, to no avail.

It would seem that the main concern among those in charge at dnwe is that the journal should look cute graphically. The quality of the writing, if one perseveres, generally reflects the physical illegibility, with little of substance (although apparently Forum Wirtschaftethik counts officially as an academic journal such that publication here counts for those seeking academic advancement!). In a word, Forum Wirtschaftethik is not designed to be read.

Much the same can be said of the dnwe book publications, that are too voluminous to be amenable to close analysis. Of a dozen contributions in one recent collection, two or three are readable and substantive, the rest are turgid. Nor, would it seem, have they had any impact. Has anyone ever actually struggled through the stuff?

(iv) Anecdotal

Once, one member (meanwhile re-elected to the executive board) together with colleagues at her big audit firm invited me personally not once but twice to comment on the bright brochure they had issued on socially responsible investment. When I finally replied in detail some weeks later, attacking the intellectual and moral pretensions of the brochure, the lady and the two others failed to even acknowledge receipt (they had definitely received it). When at a dnwe meeting she was challenged in person (after avoiding eye contact for ten minutes or more), she said to me that I should consult a certain professor for a reply to my objections, implying that his objections must be matter of my own shortcomings. Yet she herself is listed as an author of the “study”.

It should be said, leaving aside this particular case, that it is common practice that companies invite comment and (allegedly) criticism but, when the feedback is more demanding than they had reckoned with, they fall silent. No company is obliged to invite comment (or necessarily to reply to unsolicited comment), but surely, if they do, then they are surely obliged to furnish a response.

(v) And so on.
I have other examples. An accusation of character failings is not easy to document in an objective manner, but it is often possible to indicate a trend. One acquaintance, a lecturer in business ethics, mailed to me at the time of writing (here translated):

As you know I have decided to no longer engage actively. I can no longer suffer the mentality of the people who have the say, or tolerate the sight of the unused potential of such a network. DNWE is against anything happening, against anyone making anything happen. The network is dead, and it will remain dead...