The previously verbose Mr. Mackey issued the following terse statement:
"I sincerely apologize to all Whole Foods Market stakeholders for my error in judgment in anonymously participating on online financial message boards. I am very sorry and I ask our stakeholders to please forgive me."
He's had to shut down his blog, too. Boo-hoo.
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Let's go back to the online ethics question. Now that the dust has settled, it's obvious that it was an ethical breach for Mackey to post anonymously online about his company. As a CEO, he has ethical, legal and practical obligations to Whole Foods' many constituencies to act in a transparent and truthful manner.
But consider this question: where's the line between ethical and unethical? For instance, if there's a Whole Foods store on Second Life, and he has an avatar, does it have to represent him in a literal and transparent way? What if he's in Second Life but doing other things not related to Whole Foods? Or, let's say he was commenting anonymously on message boards about stocks other than Whole Foods and made reference to the food retailing business, or retail in general, where he is an industry expert. Should he immediately identify himself?
Questions to ponder.
What else could he do but aplogize? His behavior was highly unethical, perhaps criminal. He has for years been touting himself (on his own blog) as the paragon of transparency, and then it was revealed that for seven-plus years he was touting himself and his company, and ripping a competitor, under an alias. Yes, he should be fired. The guy's hubris is so great it took him a week of heat to force him to apologize. Actually it took several days for the media and the blogosphere to really turn on him. Why? -- see: http://jon8332.typepad.com/force_for_good/2007/07/wacky-mackey-ep.html
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