Make rogue businesses pay at the point of sale – City & Gild

Many a quinoa-based dinner party has boiled and fizzed in anger at the apparent lack of accountability, the sheer brazen-ness of rogue businesses or politicians to carry on without regret or punishment. In this mood, people believe such scoundrels can flog a horse, burn a factory, miss-sell the assets, miss-sell the products, generally miss-sell, miss-sell, miss-sell! They can lobby, fix, hide and generally leave an awful mess as a legacy and very little happens.

 

Of course, this is far from the whole picture. Bernie Madoff got 150 years in jail. Banks may have been bailed out when they deserved to fail but there have been plenty of mega-fines handed out in the wake of the crisis. The scandal over candidate selection in Falkirk claimed political scalps. Maria Miller had to stand down as culture secretary due to the controversy over her expenses. And so on.

 

Sometimes though, the usual channels of justice don’t seem to work. For instance, while it became possible to open manslaughter proceedings against companies in 1965, few prosecutions were attempted and only one was successful, in 1994. The landmark corporate manslaughter law of 2007 made such prosecutions easier and there have been dozens since it came into force, but there have been few convictions so far.

 

Maybe those who want to hold gross corporate negligence to account would be better trying another strategy. Before 1965, offending companies were covered by a 17th-century ruling stating that “companies have a soul to damn, but no body to kick”. That proved a get-out clause against corporate manslaughter prosecutions. But it also identifies a different line of attack.

 

I rather like that little line; what a poignant and beautifully modern view – companies have a soul to damn. It’s only half time in 2014, parliament and most of Europe is off for its metaphorical slice of orange and I’m sure need a breather – and already it feels to me that there have been more “whoops how did that happens” in business and government than ever. Yet the fortunes of those naughty boys and girls, their positions and privileges seem little affected.

 

What of the people? What of “power to the people” …remember Wolfie Smith? This is something he got right.

 

Look again at that phrase, “souls to damn”. Now swap out “soul” for “brand”. One’s soul is the embodiment of one’s essence: the definition of a brand. Companies have brands to damn if they misbehave – instead of complaining about how hard the bad ones sometimes are to kick, maybe we should admit we don’t do enough damning when the circumstances deserve.

 

We moan, we queue, we get ripped off, we send a very annoyed emoticon thingy and dislike a Facebook page, then we forget and get lured back by the shiny and cheap, the easy and convenient – if we want to effect real change, we should act like we mean it.

 

Don’t like slave labour? Then take more care about what you buy from regimes like China. Want to support sustainable forestry? Look for the Forest Stewardship Council label before you buy the new dining table. If you don’t trust your bank – leave it. The soul of any business is the brand that drives its profit and loss, so if you encounter a bad one, get 17th-century on its ass, damn its soul and let the good win over the evil – power to the people if you dare.