'Walking the walk' on global ethics.

• Author: Duerden, John
• Position: Business ethics

It is possible to find practical solutions to tough social and ethical business problems, but you have to work at it.

The issue of ethical conduct only assumes meaning when it is fitted to a clear and honest view of the world as it is - not as we might wish it to be, not as our own relative affluence distorts our view, but the way it is and the way it will be. And, perhaps most important, the way it could be.

While the world is getting smaller, it's not coming together. Millions of people around the world crave American symbols, but lack the means to acquire them. They have no purchase on the dream that you and I take as a birthright. This is all happening at a time when true political vision is in pathetically short supply. It is globalization from below. That is in some ways the tragedy.

And that is the challenge. For if our political leaders lack a game plan, the free market will find one. That brings me to the subject of ethics, but it is also one of economics. It is about how global companies must rise to the challenge of providing opportunity where there is little; it is about globalizing the dream - the hope that all people share of improving their lot in life.

No aspect of this issue is more difficult to deal with than business ethics in a global context. Ethics is a tough enough subject when we confine it to right here in the U.S., where hostile takeovers, insider trading scandals, restructuring, and downsizing have posed their own ethical quandaries in recent years. Business people are under the microscope as never before.

But, the struggle for ethical conduct gets even more complex abroad. While great ethical challenges remain for us here in America and in my native country, the U.K., the world outside our borders presents some unfamiliar and daunting challenges - provoked by very different values and cultures, very different governments, regulations, and ways of communicating and doing business.

The ethics of doing business in foreign countries is framed by two potentially conflicting positions - what is an acceptable business practice in India, China or Vietnam for the Indians, Chinese or Vietnamese may not be acceptable to me, John Duerden, an Anglo-American businessman, or to you. My ethics, values, and moral standards - like yours - are shaped by my own cultural frame of reference. What is all right in Thailand may not be all right in Stoughton, Mass., or London, England, and some things may not be all right at all, anywhere, anytime. Resolving the ethics of potentially conflicting cultures, the "gray" areas, is of critical importance to us all as we globalize our businesses.

We have learned many lessons - too many times, it seems, the hard way. The most important, basic, enduring lesson of all, I'd argue, is simply this: Ethics only work in a business sense when they are totally grounded in an organization's culture - indelibly.

While I won't claim that we are perfect in all that we do, we believe that at Reebok we are building a vision and charting a course that we think will work for us, and that will ground these standards in our organization.

As a public company, we have an ethical responsibility to build value for Reebok's shareholders - but not at all possible costs. What we seek is harmony between the profit-maximizing demands of our free-market system and the legitimate needs of our shareholders, and the needs and aspirations of...