Customer Satisfaction: The Weakest Link of Business Ethics
The author presents a few consumer cases, which serves him to argue that customers frequently are victims of corporate arrogance and preponderance. In case of conflict between consumer expectations and corporate interests, corporations tend to put immediate profits above fairness, solidarity, the spirit of service or other non-material moral values. The power of corporations seems to be so immense to-day that we can talk about a form of corporate tyranny. Business companies resemble absolutist states of the past. In this context, it is difficult to imagine how the “principle of gratuity and the logic of gift”, a key proposal of the Encyclical Caritas in veritate, could be embraced by the business world. Gift, gratu-ity and communion require flexibility, prudence and freedom in decision making on the side of cus-tomer assistance and ground floor managers, which is an impossible prerequisite in a highly vertical-ised, centralised and standardised corporate world. The author warns that the arrogance and tyranny of corporations may become a source of human estrangement and oppression in the long run, as well as it may become a means of a “servile state”. The author finishes claiming that the profit motive is not al-ways the best incentive for corporate performance and that excellent business leadership is matter of balance between following rules and using common sense. He asks whether it is really possible to be efficient, profitable, prudent and humane in business at the same time?
Key words: business ethics, Encylical Caritas in veritate, consumer satisfaction.
Información Filosófica 2010; 14; 1
DOI: 10.3308/2010.003
The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the World Wide Web at: http://www.philosophica.org/public/pdf/IF101-bazela.zip
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