Purpose of Business

As with any other organization, a business is created to fulfill a specific purpose, and that purpose is significant in that it drives the behavior of the individuals who carry out the activities of the business. Also as with any other organization, there are those who are involved with the organization, but do not actively support its agenda or interests, but are driven by ulterior motives. In doing so, they act as individuals - and while the business may ultimately be held accountable for their behavior, it cannot accurately be stated that their actions are driven by the purpose of the business.

Ostensibly, the purpose of a business is communicated through its mission statement. Hence, it would seem reasonable to consider the ethics of a business according to the behaviors encouraged or required by its mission statement, and presume that if those who act to serve the business do so in a manner that is true to its mission, then its actions are as ethical as the mission of the business - specifically, that if a mission is good, then any action undertaken in pursuit of that goal is also good by virtue of its intention. However, this does not stand under scrutiny.

To begin, most mission statements are multifaceted, listing a handful of different goals. While the goals expressed in a mission statement are most often positive, or at least intended to be positive, there may be synergy or conflict among the individual goals. If the ethics of a mission are to be evaluated, a separate evaluation must be performed on each goal, and the results compounded - presuming that a goal may be assessed.

It's also worth noting that the choice of goals is arbitrary: there is no singular goal that can be said to be true of all businesses, as each company has its own mission, and its own goals. While it can be said that "to generate a profit" is a characteristic that distinguishes a business from other forms of organization, and that a profit motive is always present, it may not be the primary goal for a business. A business may be formed to manufacture a product, with profit being a precipitating or secondary goal. This is evident when companies continue to operate at a fiscal loss, though there is generally an interest in returning to a profitable state at some future point - but failure to generate profit does not derail the company's pursuit of its primary goal.

There is also the problem of the veracity of a stated goal: a business, like a person, may profess to have noble goals, but the actions they undertake may not be in line with those goals. In some instances, the business may act to achieve prerequisites to that goal, or it may act to achieve an undisclosed goal. For example, I have noticed that most mission statements do not include "to make a profit" or any variation thereof. This does not indicate that profit is not a goal. More likely, it was deemed as self-evident and therefore unnecessary to mention in the mission statement.

There is also the problem of the mutable nature of mission statements. A "mission" is a vague notion to begin, often used to describe goals that cannot be achieved (or that the business knows will not be achieved) as a means to perpetuate the existence of the business as a profit-making entity. Also, a mission will change over time, just as a business may change or evolve. It is not uncommon for businesses to update their mission statement, and this may occur many months or years after the organization has changed course, or that the mission may be changed in advance of undertaking any action to pursue a new direction. In both of these instances, there will be disagreement between the written statement and the actual mission of the business.

As such, the very nature of a mission statement and its lack of reliability is in then accuracy and comprehensiveness of that statement at any given time. It would seem a safe conclusion that the mission statement, like any other professed set of values, is unreliable, and that the actions of the business must be evaluated to determine the ethics of the organization, as derivative of its actions.

I already have the sense that this needs further consideration: in the consideration of ethics, it was noted that ethics do not apply directly to an organization, but to individual actions, which would seem to preempt this line of logic entirely. But in the sense that an organization can be deemed to be ethical as a consequence of its actions (and not vice-versa), perhaps it makes sense to retain until the foundational matter can be reconsidered.