CityView

09/28/2006

Business ethics

By Brenda Fullick

Ben & Jerry's founders Ben Cohen will talk to Central Iowa business leaders about being more socially responsible

Traditionally in the American business world, there's been a perception that ethics and bottom-line practically are two very different things.

"I think a lot of business people do believe that," says Ben & Jerry's cofounder Ben Cohen. "But there's a growing number of business people that realize that's a false choice, that you can be profitable and socially beneficial at the same time."

Cohen will be in Des Moines during the first week in October to encourage members of Iowa 's business community to use their skills and influence to support environmental and social causes to benefit the greater good.

"Most business people are really good people," Cohen says. "It's just that they've been taught that business can't address these problems, that business can't factor in social concerns.

"There's a lot of business people that divorce their business life from the rest of their life," he observes. "They'll be in businesses that are having negative social effects, then when they're home in their personal life, they'll be volunteering for social service agencies."

Cohen and partner Jerry Greenfield will speak publicly at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, at Drake University 's Knapp Center , 26th Street and Forest Avenue , as part of the Bucksbaum Lecture series. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The lefty entrepreneurs will be talking about today's unmet social needs, and ways that businesses can meet those needs while still making a profit. They hope to inspire business people to use their skills, credibility and influence to advance the common good, and they use the history of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream to prove that good ethics can actually be good for the bottom line.

The presentation is entitled: "An Evening of Social Responsibility, Radical Business Philosophy and Free Dessert for All."

From the very beginning, Ben & Jerry's has carved its niche as a progressive company, saving money by recycling and minimizing wastes, finding that businesses can do well by doing good.

Cohen believes that other business people can find their own ways to help the environment and social causes. Many of them are not CEOs, so they're not calling the shots, he admits. "They're in a situation where they're not permitted or encouraged to factor in social concerns with their business decisions.

"But they do, as business people, have a tremendous amount of expertise," Cohen insists. He's hoping to harness that expertise and help conscientious business people find their voices on behalf of the greater good.

TrueMajority.org

Cohen has been working with Iowans for Sensible Priorities, a local group connected with a national organization he formed, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. It's a movement that uses visual props - primarily an interactive bar chart consisting of stacks of Oreo cookies - to demonstrate the percentage of the federal government that is earmarked for the Pentagon.

Cohen is taking a special interest in Iowa because it's first on the presidential caucus schedule. Cohen hopes to encourage Iowans to shape the national debate rather than letting politicians decide what the issues are. "Instead of just sitting around listening to the politicians yammer on, ... Iowans really have the power to get politicians to listen to them."

This is the first year of a seven-year Sensible Priorities campaign to make Iowans aware of how their tax dollars are spent. Even though politicians say they care about things like families and education, they end up voting to spend more than half the federal budget on the military. "Once people are aware of it, they want to shift how the money is being spent - quite a bit," Cohen says.

Cohen will give his Oreo cookie demonstration at Drake. He'll also do a presentation about the U.S. atomic weapons arsenal using BB pellets, with each BB representing 15 times the power of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima .

The BB demonstration - a video of which is online at www.TrueMajority-Action.org - is a chilling demonstration of how large the U.S. atomic weapons arsenal really is.

When people simply read the numbers on a page, Cohen says, "it just doesn't make an impression. But when you hear those BBs drop, it really brings it home."

A values-led business shift

When Ben & Jerry's first started selling ice cream in 1978, the idea of values-led business was radical. But Cohen sees more and more companies realizing that socially and environmentally ethical choices can be good for business.

"I think things definitely are shifting. There's certainly a growing movement toward socially responsible business," he says. In the early 1980s, Ben & Jerry's was a pioneer, with no literature to support socially responsible business concepts. "Now, the bookshelves are brimming with books and articles and magazines on the issue."

That trend is reflected partly in the number of Fair Trade businesses that are finding ways to make profits without exploiting peasant farmers in Third World countries. But it's also more than that.

It can't hurt Ben & Jerry's corporate profits that BenJerry.com is loaded with online games for kids, including interactive activities that teach them about issues like global warming. The Web site has a section designed especially for children doing research papers for school, and it incorporates an easily understood historical timeline to show kids how the company made decisions through the years to waste fewer resources while having an excellent time.

Adults may be more attracted to the online games, demonstrations and animated cartoons at www.TrueMajority- action.org. For instance, there's an Operation game, just like the game Americans played as kids. The nose still lights up and the buzzer still sounds when players accidentally hit the metal edges. But this time around, players are asked to remove the diseased body parts from President George W. Bush.

The brain you're removing online is Karl Rove. The defective heart is represented by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

TrueMajority.org organizers initially expected to attract a fairly young membership, but it turns out that the average member is in the 40s. Cohen speculates that younger adults are preoccupied with starting their families and careers, but older adults - many of them business leaders - are ready and able to make a difference.

"There's probably hundreds and thousands of business people out there," he says. "There's some that don't care. There's some that don't think business should be involved and that sort of thing.

"And there's a bunch that do care." CV