'If Ukraine war grinds on, businesses should study UN's Ruggie Principles'

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

What should businesses do if the Ukraine war grinds on for a long time? What can they reasonably be expected to do?

Be prescriptive? High-minded? Prepare to lose market share, for as long as it takes?

In other words, should businesses be prepared — at the slightest sign of moral failure on the part of countries or their leaders — to sacrifice their bottomline, for the cause?

If so, what cause? And how slight is slight? Isn’t a moral failure exactly that — a big, unforgivable thing that must be forcibly ended as soon as possible?

The answers to all these questions lie somewhere within the broad and deep contours of the debate over the role of business in society.

What should the role of business be in society?

Business administration professor and acting director of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, Nien-hê Hsieh, recently told Quartz that companies have to pick and choose their moral battles.

He said: “Corporations will increasingly need to have a view o…