This was selected as Best Answer

An interesting strategy may be to be trustworthy.

How can you make a dead rat smell good? The whole rat needs to be changed out for a better solution. Most answers execs are seeking would merely be perfume.

The problem is that we reward people for selfish behavior. We are in a competition paradigm, so that often the attitude is self-interest and corporate interest in competition with the interests of humanity. That is taking the competition paradigm too far. Ethics are determined to be self-interest only, as if magically ethical obligations to humanity disappear at the corporate veil.

Bottom line: 80% of your answer is to BE trustworthy, and since they haven't even got that part down, we are just dealing with the window dressing.

A movement, however large or small, is based on such things as the book Redefining the Corporation. The paradigm switch is that a corporation must be a contributing part of humanity, not a self-serving cancer upon it.

1. Stop rewarding CEOs for failing.
If someone like Ken Lay or an AIG exec fails, the hell with them. They claimed to be worth milllions a year for being business geniuses, so if they go down with the ship, that is the flip side of the same deal. Why does it appear execs are just a bunch of fellow back-scratchers covering each others asses? Could it possibly be....because they ARE?
2. Pay equity. CEOs are E M P L O Y E E S. If they want to get rich, do something original. Take a real risk. CEOs propagate a myth they are geniuses far beyond us. No, they are simply people who do something different, and who generally couldl be easily replaced. AIG execs said they couldn't be motivated without these big failure bonuses, yet someone is supposed to be happy working at the 7-11 for $8.00 an hour. If all Ayn Rands followers left for the hills they would quickly find nobody gave a damn and we had leaders and followers and they had no staff.

3. Long term thinking. I know a business consultancy firm that stopped dealing with execs because 3/4 of them were only concerned with their image and profits. Now they deal with small business as the owners are more sincere.

4. Never reward a company for serving itself at the EXPENSE of humanity or the environment. Sure they can negotiate a fair price, but not pollute EVERYONES water or take EVERYONES natural resources as their own. Many corporations have a "polluted water? Good, we can sell water too..." mentality.

5. Replace the Any Rand, Adam Smith paradigm of self-interest = good with a Value Economics mentality that you profit fairly only by serving humanity. Self interest of Smith always ends up with masters a la AIG who become all powerful and servants who have to pay all their income just to have a house. It is the game of monopoly. AIG had Boardwalk and Park Place and nobody could pay the rent anymore. Replace "Profit=good" with "Service to humanity, at a fair profit = good."

6. Remove corporate personhood. Corporations have been given HUMAN rights...and THEN SOME. AIG has MORE rights than you or me.

When we live in a world where someone is seen as more deserving of a million-dollar bonus for shoving money around than a worker is of being able to afford a house and health care, it is a sick economy indeed. It was festering for years and finally, and rightly, came to a full diseased boil.

We are in a system where if someone fails in an economic competition, that is just too bad in a competitive world (unless you are an AIG exec in his welfare line).

I propose Value Economics. The premise is that you are rewarded for true service, and that all parties in an economic transaction, such as workers who have no home ownership or health care, must be fairly rewarded.

We will trust when we are treated in a trustworthy manner.

Links:

• http://www.bevaluable.com

posted April 21, 2009