Making an ethical living can be difficult, there’s no question about it, and the pressure to have a ‘career’ is immense, both from a social perspective (it is seen as one of the chief means to measure people’s worth) and economically. As student debt rises and advertising takes over the world, an instant career seems necessary in order to get out of debt and live comfortably. Many people plan to take an unethical job for a couple of years to get some money together and enable them to do what they really want to do after that. Yet others decide that the best method is to try to reform company behaviour from within. But is this the best way forward? Perhaps not…

The corporate hierarchy - is this really what you want?

Improving Corporations?
Many people are currently trying to improve corporations from within, but in order to decide whether this route is for you, it seems wise to ask whether it is actually possible, and if it is, whether it’s the best use of your energy. Some questions which might be useful for approaching this question include: What is meant by improving corporations? What does an improved corporation look like? Have you ever seen one? What steps must it follow to be improved in your eyes? What actions can you take to ensure that this happens in the way you intend? Does this involve working from the inside or the outside? At what point will you be satisfied that your work is done? Is the amount of trouble that you cause in the company going to outweigh all the valuable work you do for it?

Corporations have been stopped from carrying out harmful projects by consumer, activist and shareholder action, but we have found no examples of projects being stopped by young recruits, and if this is the kind of change you seek, then you should examine whether taking a job with the company is the best way to tackle the problem.

Whatever you do should be consistent with your own beliefs, and it is this point that is most difficult to follow through completely. You have to ask yourself some questions about your economic/political beliefs, and then make your choices accordingly.

Examples include:

• Do you believe that economic growth is inherently unsustainable? If so, it doesn’t make much sense to work for a for-profit company, especially a large one which relies on infinite expansion to continue to provide increased shareholder returns.
• Do you believe that medium/large companies can change? If not, why sell your labour to them in vain? If yes, does the change come spontaneously from within or only as a result of pressure from outside?
• Are there such things as bad corporations/good corporations? If you see the concentration of wealth as inherently detrimental to people and the environment then there is no point in just avoiding the most notorious companies, particularly bearing in mind that companies do not work in isolated competition but rather in concert with one another. The logical conclusion is to avoid large companies altogether, as well as smaller companies which support them.
• Do you prefer money to be kept in local economies? If so, working for any kind of chain is out of the question, and even more so if it’s a Public Limited Company accumulating money for shareholders.
• Do you prefer competition or co-operation as an organising principle?
• Do you feel that governments are having trouble controlling Transnational Corporations (TNCs)? If so, do you think that you, as a junior member of staff, will manage it?

Think You’re The First?
If you’ve pondered the above and decided that capitalism is harmless, and just needs a little tweaking, then you may have come to the conclusion that you could indeed work from within to effect the changes you wish to see. In theory this could be possible, but whatever happened to all the other people who thought the same thing? I have come across a couple of them recently. One of them now works for BP and was recently (unsuccessfully) defending BP’s Baku-Ceyhan oil and gas pipeline project at a public meeting - working from within changed the employee not the company - oops! Another, a friend of mine, began to work for a textiles company. Concerned (rightly), that the company might be exploiting low-paid sweatshop labour overseas, she asked a manager what the company’s policy on such issues was. Faced with the answer that “What’s good enough for Marks and Spencers’ is good enough for me”, she didn’t know what to do next - so she did nothing. It’s easy to say that she should have carried on pushing, but realistically what could she have done which would have been really effective? How much power did she have within the company? None. They could fire her almost at will.

Change within companies, as far as it happens, comes from consumer, shareholder, and occasionally government pressure, rather than from young recruits, and as one makes one’s way up the corporate ladder, it’s too easy to get used to a job, and to become accustomed to the level of income it provides. It’s also hard to be in a business environment every day without taking on the language and mindset which comes with it. Slowly but surely you become absorbed. You begin to see the business justification for everything, your will for change is sapped, and you become just another cog in the machine. In the worst case scenario you become a very successful cog, and end up facing those who campaign against your company, defending your company’s destruction and greed, and patronising them with tales about how ‘I was an activist when I was your age…’

What Are You Missing?
A particularly compelling reason not to work from within is that you may well have a dull life. You will be expected to give your devotion to the company, work long hours, have short holidays, and mix with two-dimensional people. Just as important as the fact that overall, you will most likely help rather than hinder the company in plundering wealth and natural resources, is the fact that you only have a finite amount of energy and will therefore miss out on doing something worthwhile and fun.

Whatever promises you make to yourself that you will support all those organisations you could never afford to support before, the chances are that either you won’t, or that the social and environmental costs of the work you do will outweigh any benefits derived from supporting good causes. Besides, giving someone else money to do things is a disempowering substitute for doing it yourself.

So What should I do?
Pressure for change comes in two main forms: negative pressure, to stop harmful things from being perpetrated, and positive steps to create alternatives. Negative pressure does not generally come from within companies, it comes from outside. Similarly, alternatives must be real alternatives, not just sticking-plaster measures regarding single issues. Some alternatives are out there already; some will have to be made. If you’re the kind of person who has had enough initiative to inform yourself about the state of the world, then you are probably also the kind of person who could manage to set up an entirely new project with a bit of help. A few suggestions for personally sustainable lifestyles avoiding TNCs are:

• Not-for-profit/Co-operative companies - anything from food production to law firms; from campaigning organisations to bike workshops; from low-impact construction firms to public transport companies (Please somebody form a not-for-profit company to bid for running the trains!).
• Self-employment - carrying out ecological versions of professions such as carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, brewing or printing.
• Community facility provision - such as recycling and composting.
• Public sector work - such as health, social care and education work.
• NGOs - although watch out - working for some is little better than working for TNCs.
• Alternative healthcare - although some areas are becoming saturated.
• Community living - carrying out activities such as food production, sustainable forestry and small-scale tourism.

These lifestyles should all be sustainable in the long term. If you haven’t got family commitments or debts which you intend to pay off, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to live on even less, doing volunteering, and lingering a while between jobs. Different people have different needs, but it’s hard to see that anyone needs to work from within: Have a little confidence and imagination, and you can do more than you ever thought possible.