When a corporation offers to donate AZT to pregnant women, and a government refuses the drug for its own particular political reasons, that government should be held as accountable for the consequences as the corporation. When a government outlaws child labor but refuses to enforce its laws, that government should be held as accountable as the company that hires the child. When government officials take bribes, they should be held as accountable as the company that pays it. And when an environmental organization demands operational transparency from corporations, it should do likewise opening its doors to similar scrutiny. The third challenge in this manifesto is movement toward more open, free market societies.
Global corporations exist first and foremost as profit-making ventures.
Our job is not to create governments but to create wealth, and we value human capital above all else because ideas are the hard currency of the Information Age. Having said that, we see that one of the by-products of economic globalization is the movement toward more open societies that value the power of the individual. China is a good example. Honeywell has been trading in China for more than 60 years. Like most Western companies, we brought our values, principles and global operating standards with us when we set up shop.