Gemma S. Ventín , coordinator of the Master in Corporate Responsibility at Bureau Veritas University Center.
Under the attractive and subtle cocktail of celluloid, in the film 'The Insider - The Dilemma' the ingredients (pressure groups, interests, restriction and struggle for access to information, ethical dilemmas, principles and values) are mixed together offering the viewer an analytical film where the big tobacco industries are publicly exposed.
Thus, a thick cloud is drawn that envelops two men in the darkness of the lack of transparency and the density and tension caused by certain circles of pressure. The insider is the person who is informed, the informant.
A manager (Jeffrey Wigand) drowning in the anguish of the dilemma. An activist journalist (Lowell Bergman) convinced of the need to fight against the system. Two men united by the ethical principle of student data divulging the "secrets" - impacts - of a powerful tobacco multinational. In this way we are presented with a plot, based on a real event, about coumarin, a substance that was present in cigarettes, a popular consumer product.
Companies facing the concealment of information
With this feature film we address the ethical questioning of the company through the concealment of harmful information - lack of transparency - for one of its interest groups, the consumer.
We understand that a socially responsible company is one that operates with the freedom granted by its power of action (a consequence of its capacity for influence) in a conscious manner, under the premise of reciprocal influence, always keeping in mind its responsibility for the environment in which it operates, since the present and the future are related by the principle of cause and effect.
And 'The Insider' is about causes and effects. The launching of a questionably healthy product, tobacco (the cause) and the rejection of this fact, the confrontation with various pressure groups (the effect).
Let us therefore open a path to criticism, based on two ethical principles on which a responsible company is built:
The principle of Corporate Rights, according to which any violation of the legitimate rights of others is condemned.
The Corporate Effects Principle, whereby any organization is always responsible for the effects of its actions.
Responsible companies act on these two principles, and as a direct reflection or “objective strategic element” of their operations, a product is produced. A result that in itself contains a series of values, since:
A company's product is a direct reflection of the actions it carries out.
A company's product is the strategic manifestation of its corporate identity.
The product of a company is the representation (see in this concept the direct link with the term “intention”) of the corporate image.
All this exposes the relationship between the company (producer) and the product (target strategic element). A concomitance through which the manufacturer has an inherent responsibility placed on its product.
In a consumer society, when the producer has more information about his product than the consumer, the principle of information asymmetry gives greater responsibility to the manufacturer of the consumer product. Extrapolating this ethical principle to the tobacco industry, we find three questionable facts:
The consumer is unaware of the overall, and therefore real, information regarding the product (tobacco composition). In this case, the responsibility according to the ethical principle of information asymmetry should fall on the producer.
The tobacco industry does not assume responsibility for the risks of tobacco consumption (the principle of corporate effects and information asymmetry is breached).
This lack of transparency (further enhanced by other harmful additives used to make tobacco) violates the principle of corporate rights, as it violates the rights of others (health).
The WHO Constitution states that “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being.” Today we understand the right to health to be “an inclusive right that extends not only to timely and appropriate medical care, but also to the underlying determinants of health, such as access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, healthy environmental and working conditions, and access to health-related education and information, including sexual and reproductive health.”
Let us recall two basic concepts included in the article “ The End of the Company ”, written by Professor César González Cantón, where the difference between the end of the entrepreneur/manager (the search for economic profitability) and the end of the company (satisfying the needs of its global environment) is made clear.