In just the last week, China arrested an executive of Japan’s second largest pharmaceutical company, Astellas, on charges of espionage, and news came that EY in the United States is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to report cheating in the professional exam by its employees. We hear every day, and with increasing frequency, about Icarus-like enterprises, which fly too close to the Sun, like Winsome Diamonds, Kingfisher, SVB, and Credit Suisse. Contemporary surveys suggest that public trust in companies is low, perhaps at a nadir. Is this state inevitable?
I searched Google N-gram for the occurrence of the term “honest enterprise” from 1800 till the present time. The frequency of occurrence of honest enterprise was initially low, suggesting the topic was not prominent. Around 1900 (robber baron years), it shot up to a peak of 328 index. The use of the term, honest enterprise, collapsed thereafter, and is n
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