Duty to Country or Just to Shareholders?

The issue of a corporation's responsibility toward its home country will likely play larger in the future, as the realities of globalization mean companies will increasingly move jobs abroad to low-wage countries like India or China, leaving more and more people at home without work.

Employees in India undergo training in the use of specialized software to provide services to overseas clients.

The process has already begun and is likely to accelerate, according to Adrian Ottnard, a senior economist at the Bonn-based IWG institute, which studies issues relating to the economy and society.

"That is really the core of the matter," he said. "This matter with Deutsche Bank is only a harbinger of what's to come."

While small and medium-sized companies often exhibit more of a connection and, some would say, faithfulness to their home country, globalization has changed the way large multi-nationals operate. Corporate priorities, many coming initially from the United States, such as maximizing shareholder value and rates of return, have established themselves as the norm not only in Germany, but globally.

"Stock prices are looked at very carefully as are quarterly earnings reports and then action is taken quickly," he said. "That is not always good for a company in the long term nor is it seen by the public as good for the society. The corporate criticism is partly justified."

Broad-based discussion needed

According to critics of this kind of corporate behavior, Germany is in need of a serious discussion about the role corporations should play in society and what their duties are toward the country that gave them their start, not to mention their initial customers.

According to Gert-Uwe Mende of the SPD in Hesse, Germany as a whole -- politicians, industry leaders, union heads, and employers -- has to talk about ethical guidelines, rules which he said many companies do follow, but that large multinationals increasingly think they can ignore.

He doesn't argue with the fact that profit is the ultimate goal of a corporation, nor that the era of globalization and tougher international competition have created a new set of challenges for global players, who are faced with new problems that call for new solutions.

"But perhaps those solutions are more complicated, and slightly different, than the fairly simple ones that corporations have given us so far," he said.