Berlin The Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk is not a man of timid words. Ritter-Sport Managing Director Andreas Ronken has been feeling this for some time. Melnyk called the product “square, practical, blood” and “knight’s murder” on Twitter. On Wednesday he wrote to Ronken: “Good luck with the aggressor”.
Ritter Sport has been in the middle of a shitstorm for months. The reason was the company’s decision to continue to supply to Russia despite the war of aggression. A decision Ronken made in a moral dilemma.
Leaving the country of warmonger Vladimir Putin would have meant taking a stand – but at the same time jeopardizing hundreds of jobs in Russia and Germany. Ronken’s company generates around 15 percent of its sales in Russia and employs more than 100 people locally. Staying, Ronken was also aware of that from the start, would bring with it the accusation that business was more important to him than the lives of Ukrainian people.
Many companies are faced with a similar consideration. The war in Ukraine reinforces public expectations that entrepreneurial decisions should not only be examined from a business point of view, but also from a moral point of view. In addition to Russia, China in particular, with its enormous economic importance and precarious human rights situation, is the greatest moral challenge.
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And the pressure is immense because, as with Ritter Sport, the companies are threatened with public protest. The question of what is right and what is wrong is not easy to answer.
Many German companies act differently than Ritter Sport. Tengelmann owner Christian Haub justified the sale of the Russian branches of the Obi DIY chain to Manager Magazin with the words: “For moral reasons I simply couldn’t imagine continuing to do business in Russia and thus indirectly supporting the regime there financially .”
More harm than good?
Ronken, on the other hand, says that a delivery stop would have changed a lot less for the Russians than for the employees in Germany and the people who supply the chocolate company with raw materials – such as cocoa farmers from Nicaragua or West Africa, who are dependent on the Russian sales market.
>> Read here: Ritter Sport boss: “I also received personal threats”
“If only we had had any real influence on Putin pulling out of the war, we would have used that influence,” says Ronken. However, the fact that the Russian President should break off his attack because Ritter Sport no longer supplies chocolate seemed more than unrealistic to him. He also points out that a delivery stop would probably have resulted in gray imports, i.e. imports of his products via third countries.
The dilemma facing many company bosses: stay or go?
(Photo: Ritter Sport)
The state philosopher Max Weber described the dilemma in which many company managers are now stuck as a result of the Ukraine war. He divided it into “ethics of conviction” and “ethics of responsibility”. Accordingly, the ethics of conviction sets a clear conviction, such as breaking off the economic relationship with Russia, as the only moral standard.
Instead, the ethics of responsibility asks about the concrete results of a decision. The Ritter Sport boss based himself on the latter.
Ludger Heidbrink, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Kiel, points out: “There is no general answer to what is morally correct.” size and number of employees.
>> Also read here: How the West fell into Putin’s trap in the global economic war
“We would like to distinguish between good and evil, but the world cannot be divided that easily.” Heidbrink criticizes that it has become difficult to discuss moral decisions rationally. It is problematic to put companies in the public pillory and to urge them to make a certain decision.
Public “list of shame” with company names
Yale University has published a list in which the behavior of companies doing business in Russia is publicly evaluated. Over 1200 companies worldwide are listed there, including 127 from Germany. The companies are categorized according to American school grades from A (complete withdrawal) to F (no withdrawal at all).
The grades in between determine, among other things, whether the company is planning new investments in Russia or advertising there. Ritter Sport has discontinued both for the time being and is therefore given a “D” – transferred to the German system, i.e. “sufficient”. The fact that the group says it wants to donate its profits from the Russian business to organizations through which the money will benefit Ukraine is not included in the rating.
The goal of such lists: to increase public pressure to persuade companies to break off their business relationships. However, Ritter Sport criticized the fact that the ratings were only made up of media reports and letters. The company itself was not asked for a statement by the university.
Russia would not be the only country where the question of the moral basis of trade relations could be raised. Qatar, for example, where Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) campaigned for liquefied gas for Germany, is being targeted by the non-governmental organization Freedom House for disregarding press freedom and the lack of the rule of law classified as an unfree country – basic freedom rights are missing.
Handelsblatt series “The new world economic (dis)order”
Dealing with China is likely to be one of the biggest challenges for companies. On Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Office released a report by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim community. The conclusion: In the Xinjiang region, the government in Beijing committed “serious human rights violations”.
China is also stepping up military threats against Taiwan. A violent annexation of the island would not only have serious humanitarian consequences, but would also hit the German economy hard. After all, the Asian giant is Germany’s most important trading partner.
Wolfgang Merkel, professor of political science at the Berlin Science Center, warns against preaching moral maxims that are too high and ultimately cannot be adhered to. “The traffic light coalition carries the value-based foreign and economic policy in front of it like a monstrance – but something like that cannot be sustained,” he criticizes.
Instead, Germany would risk its credibility and would have to be accused of a certain hypocrisy. After all, the moral maxim of not trading with unjust states cannot be enforced at all – as the examples of China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar show.
We would like to distinguish between good and evil, but the world cannot be divided that easily. Ludger Heidbrink, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Kiel
Of course, the economy also has a responsibility, says Merkel. A flagrant violation of international law, as is the case now by the Russian side, would have to have consequences. “But we also have to honestly admit that sanctions are ambivalent and that we can only influence the development of regimes in large countries to a very limited extent.” The fact that trade always results in change has often been refuted in history.
After the experiences with the Russian business, one became cautious in Waldenbuch at Ritter Sport. When making decisions to enter new markets, Managing Director Ronken also wants to take greater account of the geopolitical situation in the future.
But which countries would if heeded of all moral criteria still remain? “We could still deliver to Switzerland,” says Andreas Ronken. Unfortunately, the market is not that big.
Cooperation: Anja Müller
More: The Weapons of Global Economic War: How the West Fell into Putin’s Trap