Moral obligations of social entreprises

By Jessica Grant

Welcome to the blog of Incuheal, a team with the objective of decreasing Infant Mortality Rates across the world, specifically in third world countries, through the distribution of the Incubator bag. Shortly, our team will be writing about the problem of infant mortality, what the major causes are, how we came up with a possible solution, what our product is and how you can help with our distribution efforts.

I’ll start off this blog by discussing the moral obligations of our social enterprise when trading internationally.

Dictionary.com defines ‘moral’ as:

adjective

1.

of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes.

noun

9.

the moral teaching or practical lesson contained in a fable, tale, experience, etc.

In a blog by Michael Josephson, he writes that there are three sources of business morals:

• Law – an obligation to obey or disobey laws based on one’s own beliefs of right and wrong
• Mutual agreements – the need to do the things we said we would do
• The moral principle – standards beyond laws and agreements that ultimately pull us towards actions that we believe are ‘right’, regardless of consequences.

In bringing our product to international countries, morals are important for us to consider and the topic raises a lot of questions. Is this a problem that other countries want to be fixed, or have we assumed that this is a problem based on our own moral principle? How will we proceed if our purpose and actions are rejected by the countries we deal with? Will we continue to try to influence change, go around those who reject us or focus our efforts elsewhere? What is the trade off between breaking a country’s laws to fulfil your social enterprise’s goals and facing incrimination in that country?

We’re interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic and what you think you would do if you were facing a moral dilemma as a social entrepreneur.