Ethical careers: can you change a corporation from within?

John Preece gives his take on getting on in the corporate world.

''The Corporation - a film you should see before you start work.'' ''The corporate world - nice to visit, wouldn't want to work there.''

For corporations, spring is the start of open season on students. They arrange opulent recruitment presentations, desperate to tempt the best and brightest with freebies before their competition can. Most will offer some kind of graduate training programme - courses where students gradually have their personalities bent to fit the company's model of an ideal worker. Of course, some less easily-fooled people raise questions about (un)ethical practices. The response is always the same: "Join the company, work your way up and change it from within." But is it even possible?

For most large businesses, the short answer is no - the basic structure of a corporation makes it virtually impossible. Modern corporations are designed to maximise the return on shareholder investment, and they do it very efficiently.

From day one, employees are reminded that only the most able get promoted. The only way to get ahead is to outperform your fellow workers - and if that means stepping on them, that's the way it is. They'd do the same to you. You have to look after number one. This mentality is what breaks almost everyone going to work for a large company. Long hours, competition with your peers and financial worries sap energy. If you can get that commission then you can afford a bigger house, a faster car, a longer holiday. Before long, you're just another drone.

But let's say that your fighting spirit remains intact. You don't play office politics and are happy with your salary and (lack of) promotion prospects. How can you change your company's practices? Your co-workers won't want to risk getting into trouble. Your manager is probably a minor corporate enthusiast - that's how s/he got promoted. The board of directors is legally obliged to consider only the interests of the shareholders. Even the CEO is subject to their whims. The unions? Maybe, but they've got nothing like the power they used to. This sense of isolation is another thing that will eventually overwhelm you.

If your ideals happen to coincide with those of the investors and can make the company money with little risk, then you can change things. If not, you'll be ignored at every turn until you annoy them so much you'll be fired. Better to never venture into the corporate world, lest you be assimilated and we lose another good campaigner to the hive.