by The exodus sheds light on what some of these companies were doing in Russia in the first place – and why it took an act of war to change their tune. One company particularly in the spotlight is Nokia.
In other words, it was just about the cost of doing business in Russia.
Laws versus ethics
There is no evidence that Nokia did anything illegal, but ethics and laws are not the same thing.
It’s hard to imagine that Nokia didn’t know what was going on in Russia. A Russian intelligence expert who spoke to The Times said Nokia “needed to know how its devices would be used”.
Experts say that no business (or consumer, for that matter) can keep their hands perfectly clean. The vast and interconnected nature of global supply chains makes it virtually impossible to avoid interaction – direct or indirect – with corruption, labor exploitation or other unsavory elements of global trade.
So the question is how close you are to bad behavior, says Jason Brennan, professor of business ethics at Georgetown University.
“No one is ready to swim in a pool when there is a corpse in the pool, but you are ready to swim in the ocean… It’s kind of about the concentration of death around you “, he says. “Markets are a bit like that too.”
Simply put, Nokia may not have manufactured the technology that was spying on the Russians, but it showed the Russian authorities how to hook it up, and that should have been a big red flag for the company’s top brass.
Documents reviewed by The Times show the company knew it was activating the Russian surveillance apparatus. It was a core and lucrative business for Nokia, reports the Times, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
Nokia has called on governments to set clearer rules on where technology can and cannot be sold. “Nokia does not have the ability to control, access or interfere with any lawful interception capability in the networks our customers own and operate,” he told the newspaper.
Find the right balance
This is not a new dilemma for multinationals. Big Tech, in particular, has struggled to balance the democratic ideals of free speech and privacy with the realities of doing business in authoritarian markets such as China and Russia, where those rights are absent. .
Apple, for example, has long prided itself on ensuring the privacy of its customers. But in China, Apple had to bend those values to comply with regulators.
Tech leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, have argued that participating in authoritarian markets is better than staying on the sidelines. But that often means complying with the regimes responsible for human rights abuses – and, sometimes, assisting them in those prosecutions.
Brennan, the business ethics professor, argued that corporations should not directly help a totalitarian government, even if local laws require them to. “You can’t do it because you were ordered to do it, and you can’t do it for money,” he said.
And if that means losing a ton of money, so be it. “You can’t do bad for $200 billion. You can’t do it for a million. It’s just basic ethics,” Brennan added.
That said, there’s good news for companies like Nokia looking for some help getting their act together: doing the right thing is good business. It’s not just good for PR – it’s good for the bottom line.
Companies should therefore do the right thing and pass up often lucrative opportunities to aid the bad intentions of opposing governments. If they give in to their impulses, their actions will have consequences – for businesses and for the world.
