Whole Foods Not So Whole After All

Whole Foods Market always has the reputation of being a more high end classy grocery chain with its wide selection of organic products and gourmet processed foods.

Today most business front pages reported that Whole Foods CEO John P. Mackey used an alias 'Rahodeb' (or Deborah...haha) to post vicious comments about its smaller competitor, Wild Oats Markets on the Yahoo! Financial Forums.

The Wall Street Journal: Whole Foods Is Hot, Wild Oats a Dud -- So Said 'Rahodeb' --- Then Again, Yahoo Poster Was a Whole Foods Staffer, The CEO to Be Precise

The New York Times: Whole Foods Executive Used Alias

Some of the comments are very silly and funny, but this news strikes a particular interest to me as a business ethics issue. Is this behavior ethical? Of course you can argue the first amendment - the freedom of speech. But on a deeper level, how is this different than insider trading? This is almost the reverse maneuvering of insider trading. CEO having intimate knowledge of his own company and the opponent companies, and spreading possible relevant information on the internet, is this ethical and should we hold corporate executive to an even higher ethical standard?

I guess we will never know.

[Professor Alan Ross]: Imagine a Venn Diagram with two circles
[Prof A. Ross]: now one circle is labeled law and the other circle is labeled ethics. What do you called the overlapping area?
[Class]: ...(silence)....
[Class]: ...soft law....(what the heck is that?) ....government...(haha, really...) ... legislature ... (possibly ... I guess)
[Prof. A. Ross]: Ladies and gentleman, it's called COINCIDENCE

One thing is for sure though, Berkeley Bowl will now permanently replace Whole Foods.