Eager to offer investors as transparent an account of enterprises’ ethical policies as possible, I’ve started looking into incorporating an optional ‘ethics questionnaire’ as part of the business plan upload of the website.
Jotting down draft questions focused on the regular labour standards such as child labour, forced labour and health and safety issues, I began to realize the complexities involved.
How do you translate these answers culturally to offer the investor transparency?
By asking about child employment are we running the risk of investors condemning the enterprise out right without understanding the issues? In a perfect world child labour is indubitably wrong but we do not live in a perfect world and in many cases child labour offers the child the better outcome. Be forced to steal or forage for scraps or earn a basic wage? Child labour is unjust but it has to be seen in the context of an unjust situation.
If you ask an entrepreneur to state the minimum wage they pay, how do you translate this into the lifestyle it allows their employee to live? Is it better to ask them to describe their employee’s lifestyle?
If the entrepreneur cannot provide internationally accustomed safety standards does this reflect a lack of consideration for their employees or a lack of funds?
How do you simply convey the multiple issues that need to be understood?