Dirty Business

Last week I saw this presentation about A Trade / A Crime So Monstrous



It would be my pick to be the winner of World's Best Presentation Contest 2009. The last day for voting for presentations is today.

Yesterday TED.com published a talk by journalist Misha Glenny about his investication on the same industry.



About midway to his talk he says "A significan minority of those 500 million Europeans [as well as the US and Japanese] like to spend some of their leasure time and spare cash sleeping with prostitutes, sticking 50 Euro notes up their nose and implying illegal goods/labels (?) ... It is this Western desire to consume that is the primary driver of international organized crime."

This comment about desire reminds me of an article a read earlier this year, Why Sweatshops Flourish at HBS Working Knowledge. It's key concepts like "Moral standards about sweatshop labor are subject to change when desire for a product is high." and "Consumers have more power than they think to influence how products are made."

These are all excamples of worst practices and dirty business, while I try to collect best practices in my blog. The best practices in this case could be defined by The United Nations Global Compact, which is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

And again, like in so many other cases, I am proud for the company I work for. We are among the companies having received recognition from UN for outstanding Communications on Progress regarding Corporate Social Responsibility reporting.

Let's keep up our moral standards and fight back!