Introduction

9.1 Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Culture 9.2 The Influence of Advertising 9.3 The Insurance Industry 9.4 Ethical Issues in the Provision of Health Care

As consumers, employees, and community members, we see everywhere the extent to which business can contribute to either social well-being or harm. Some career paths invite special scrutiny because of their influential role in society and the extent to which they serve as magnets for business students. Friends and critics of these professions have studied the unique ethical issues they raise and individuals who pursue careers in these fields should give careful consideration to these findings to decide if the benefits outweigh the potential downsides. Entrepreneurship, for instance, offers the opportunity to construct your own business in the hope of profit, but at some personal and financial cost. Are the potential gains being overplayed when, in fact, most entrepreneurial businesses fail? Advertising is the driver of sales, but are its claims honest and its delivery platforms, including social media, acting in good faith? Do they exert undue or biased influence on the gullible and the young? Insurance is necessary, but what is the proper and ethical role of property insurers, for example, in the face of increasingly dangerous natural disasters? Health care in the United States is extraordinarily expensive, especially compared with that in other industrialized nations, and access is too often limited to those with means. Should quality health care be a right for all rather than a privilege for the few?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify ethical challenges relating to entrepreneurial start-ups
• Describe positive and negative effects of growth in a start-up
• Discuss the role of the founder in instilling an ethical culture

An entrepreneur is a business leader willing to risk starting a new company and offering a product or service he or she hopes will be sustainable and permit the firm to prosper. The entrepreneur may have to find the money required for this venture and typically draws on business experience gained by working for others first. Entrepreneurship often requires hard work, but the potential for economic payoff and career satisfaction appeals to many.

The Risks of Entrepreneurship

Although the risk of failure associated with starting a business is real and even high, we hear much in the media about success stories and little about those entrepreneurs who crash and burn. Perhaps the allure of entrepreneurship inevitably outshines any mention of the downside. Still, start-ups impose a higher than normal degree of risk, and we turn to the evidence for this now. What is the specific nature of entrepreneurial risk? Different studies yield different results, but business consultant Patrick Henry reported that “75 percent of venture-backed startups fail.” Henry added that “this statistic is based on a Harvard Business School study by Shikhar Ghosh. In a study by Statistical Brain, ‘Startup Business Failure Rate by Industry,’ the failure rate of all U.S. companies after five years was over 50 percent, and over 70 percent after ten years.”1 This figure might be enough to chill the enthusiasm of any would-be entrepreneur who believes an exciting or novel concept is enough to support a successful company with a minimal amount of time and effort and a great deal of other people’s money. Still, the ranks of start-ups expand prodigiously each month in the United States. Even start-ups that beat the odds financially need to be watchful for a different sort of pitfall, an ethical failure that can be nourished by the very strengths that allow a company to get off the ground. That pitfall is the hubris or excessive pride that may characterize some entrepreneurs, particularly after they have had some initial success. Uber, an application-based, ride-hailing service, was founded in San Francisco by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009. If ever an idea matched the success potential of smartphones, it was this one. Offering a cheaper and more convenient service than hailing a cab on city streets, Uber was valued at $70 billion in 2017 and operated, with varying degrees of success, in seventy countries at that point. However, the corporate culture, especially at headquarters, left many observers aghast in early 2017 after an Uber engineer, Susan Fowler, blogged about her experiences there. Other employees substantiated much of her account, revealing an atmosphere rife with misogyny, homophobia, and sexual harassment. This culture was permitted—even fostered—by Kalanick, who reigned unchecked for several years over what the New York Times labeled an “aggressive, unrestrained workplace culture.”2Muted grumblings from quarters within the company never received much attention outside the firm, allowing Kalanick to become a high-flying role model for would-be entrepreneurs who wished to emulate his success. A reckoning finally arrived when Uber’s board of directors asked him to resign his position as chief executive officer in June 2017. Yet the workplace culture that prevailed during his years at the company was not unique to Uber. Many firms have experienced it. Holding destructive egos in check is an ethical challenge at many successful businesses, particularly at hard-riding start-ups. Founders and their start-up teams need to be aware of how deeply their attitudes toward others; their visible treatment of employees, customers, and clients; and their display of