Principle 9: Corporate Citizenship (Item 3)

The organization's action to ensure a clean, safe, fair and prosperous society enhances the perception of its value to the community.

Why this is important

You should do nothing that will endanger the community's prosperity, health, safety or cleanliness.

Increasingly, now, the community expects companies to do no intended or unintended harm to the environment in which that community lives.

We can predict that, over the next twenty years, community concerns for its prosperity, health, safety and clean environment will result in a shift in the ethical boundaries yet again. Just as we saw a progressive hardening of community attitudes towards companies which pushed ethical boundaries during the 1980s and 1990s, over the next two decades we will see progressive hardening of attitudes towards companies that seek to take significantly more from the community than the perceived value they add. Especially those companies that appear to do harm, or endanger the health, safety or prosperity of the community.

Do no harm

The fourth part of Principle 9 is that the community expects to be kept safe and not harmed by any company's activities. The community's expectation with respect to Principle 9 has been increasing with each passing year. A company's failure to do so can bring significant repercussions – for the company, its directors and executives. This responsibility is being increasingly acknowledged and tested through the courts in many countries.

• Employees expect the company to provide a safe working environment (physically and mentally and free of harassment)
• Customers expect the products and services to be safe and delivered in a safe way
• The community expects the company, its employees and its products to be safe, behave safely and not harm the community or its environment – intentionally or unintentionally.

Most of this was not evident twenty years ago.

Safety

Consider the interfaces where the community holds the company responsible for safety shown in the diagram below.

For example, the community holds the company responsible:

• when one of the company's products injures someone
• when an employee provides a service or advice which endangers someone (eg a bar worker serves someone alcohol to someone who subsequently is injured or injures someone else)
• when an company sells something (such as a gun) that is subsequently used for harm
• when an company knowingly or unknowingly causes harm to the environment that will in turn harm the community

We have already seen all of these. There will be more and more examples as the community makes its feelings known and tests them in the courts.

Shareholders. Are the company's profits real? Or will they be taken up in litigation costs? Or is the company using shareholders funds to defend criminal behavior by executives?