Revisiting the
Minnesota Principles
By Doris Rubenstein, PDP Services
An Overlooked Anniversary
Ten years ago, the Minnesota Principles for corporate
citizenship were formulated and published for the first time.
Both the Minnesota corporate community and the world economic
balance have changed dramatically since 1992. Do the Minnesota
Principles still apply and have meaning?
Definitely.
At the time they were formulated, they were described as “a
statement of aspirations, not meant to mirror reality, but to
express a standard against which our often inadequate performance
can be held accountable.”
The developers of the Principles were leaders in
Minnesota’s business community who wanted to set standards for
ethical behavior in an increasingly global marketplace.
What are these Minnesota Principles? Here’s my
summary.
- Stimulating economic growth is the particular contribution
of business to the larger society. Profits are fundamental to
the fulfillment of that function.
Even stalwart
left-wingers (and every good fundraiser with a non-profit
organization) must realize that in order for businesses to pay
taxes or make contributions to worthy causes, they must generate
profits.
Business activities must be characterized by fairness, which
includes equitable treatment and equality of opportunity for all
participants in the marketplace.
Business activities must be characterized by honesty, which
includes candor, truthfulness, and promise-keeping. Most
businesses adhere to this principle and gain little recognition
for it. This principle reaches the headlines when it is ignored
and abused. The recent scandal with the Enron Corp. is a glaring
example of an ethical (and financial) trespass that crushed the
lives of thousands of workers.
Business activities must be characterized by respect for human
dignity. They should show a special concern for the less
powerful and the disadvantaged.
Business activities must be characterized by respect for the
environment. They should promote sustainable development
and prevent environmental degradation and waste of resources.
Of course, examples of how business practices fail to measure
up to these principles remain plentiful.
Here is where definitions and methods can become fuzzy. The
perception of fairness may vary according to one’s particular
position. Is it fair to pay a top executive 200 times the yearly
salary of the lowest-paid worker?
And when it comes to business support for the world’s less
fortunate, the record is spotty. The Council on Foundations and
other non-profit groups report that corporate support of
organizations run by and/or for racial and ethnic minorities
receive a disproportionately small amount of corporate funding,
especially considering the growing demographics of these groups in
our country.
Non-profit groups, such as Minnesota-based American Refugee
Committee, working in international aid and development are at the
bottom of most corporate giving priority lists.
This failure by U.S. business and the U.S. government to expand
humanitarian aid to the Third World, and particularly to Islamic
countries, has been widely blamed as a contributing factor to the
international terrorism crisis.
Yet the fact that Minnesota’s Principles for Business have
been widely discussed for a decade and embraced, with minor
modifications, by diverse cultures from Asia to Europe is cause
for celebration.
The principle that addresses respect for the environment seems
to me to be particularly Minnesotan, and one that has had a
tremendous ripple effect.
I remember my 1994 trip to the village in the Amazonian
headlands of Ecuador where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in
the early 1970s. Texaco had sent representatives into the village
in 1994 to open discussions on drilling in the vicinity.
Texaco’s proposals were roundly rejected by these villagers
who could have had much to gain, since they lived in poverty by
American standards.
What they rejected was the inevitable destruction of the water,
the forest, and the tranquility of the community.
The spirit of these principals motivated the villagers to
reject Texaco’s overture. Even though there was no direct
evidence that they had read the principles, the villagers
under-stood them implicitly. They had observed the environmental
problems spawned by other oil company operations and decided in
favor of preserving their environment…even at the cost of jobs
and development.
The spirit of the Minnesota Principles has been felt on
the micro-scale in my little Ecuadorian village.
On a macro-scale, the Minnesota Principles were adopted
and expanded into the “Principles for Business” by the Caux
Round Table (www.cauxroundtable.org),
an organization based in Switzerland that is composed of and
serves the leadership of business from the United States., Europe
and Japan.
Some names associated with the Minnesota Principles and
the Caux Round Table are ones that many Minnesotans will
recognize: Charles Denny, Jr., former CEO of ADC
Telecommunications, and Win Wallin, former CEO of Medtronic, among
others.
They were able to raise the level of discourse about corporate
citizenship to an exceptional level that culminated in the
creation of these durable documents.
Now that the Minnesota Principles are a decade old, who
is sitting around the table to sing them a round of “Happy
Anniversary”?
It should be incumbent upon the old-guard of Minnesota
businesses who adhere to the Minnesota Principles to
celebrate by rededicating themselves to the Principles in a
public forum and invite leaders of the dozens of companies who
have come into our community in the past decade to join them.
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