Franks2000inchTV
Active Member
The thing is that in a family-owned, family-run business there is absolutely nothing wrong with using some of the company money to pay for a car for your little brother, or to pull favours for your own benefit. There is no conflict of interest there because it's your business and you can do what you want with it.
You have a responsibility to pay your workers and suppliers according to their contracts, to properly record your business expenses and pay your taxes, and to deliver whatever goods and services you have promised your customers, but beyond that there are no rules.
It's a lot different if it's not a familiy business. Then there are consequences to those sorts of actions. In a public company, when you use company money to bail out your little brother from a jam you are, in effect, stealing from the other shareholders.
The Fords come from the first kind of business, and they don't have enough of an understanding of the world to know that there are any other kinds. It's why they have such contempt for the integrity commissioner and procurement rules and the like. Those kind of rules seem like an unnecessary burden, and they would be in a familiy business.
They come from a world where conflict of interest doesn't exist because the family's interests and the shareholders' interests are identical. The kind of business ethics that are required to function in a publicly traded company aren't innate, they need to be learned over the course of a career.
Public office requires and even more nuanced and detailed understanding of business ethics. In a public office literally the entire city has dealings with your company. Every interaction is fraught with the potential for abuse, and if you do favours for people, it costs everyone else in the city. It's no wonder the Fords have found themselves in over their heads. They got dropped into the deep end, and they've never even seen water before.
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