Edit: Also you can be ethical.
A successful and competent employee has built relationships with colleagues, supervisors, and reports. He knows them, and they know him. He won't be asked to subjugate his principles to the company in an inappropriate way, in part because others know that he will go above and beyond within his principles to do well for the company.
For a business owner, the exact same thing, just replace colleagues et al with customers, suppliers, shareholders, and other partners.
On the other hand, a weak business and/or business owner will be very vulnerable to principle-based compromise. Out of the need to keep customers, suppliers, et al happy, he is subject to whim and every demand. Walking away from his business means the collapse of his reputation, failing his employees, and failing his family. He is no more free than your average entry level employee.
I respectfully disagree. Your team may not, your direct reports won't and your management hierarchy may not, however, your business will. If you have certain principles such as support for LBGTQ+, anti-military contracts, or a conservative in tech for example, and your company signs a contract to work with another organization that doesn't care about the cause or are completely against it, what happens? I know CEO's who can't fire bad clients because they don't own their own company.
>Walking away from his business means the collapse of his reputation, failing his employees, and failing his family.
Walking away from bad business can make you so much money it's hard to imagine. I've had conversations about doing business with shady people, which resulted in me making a deal with the person who had the same experience with the other individual.
>On the other hand, a weak business and/or business owner will be very vulnerable to principle-based compromise.
Growing pains, but an employee who is competent or incompetent will face the same dilemma because of what I suggested earlier.
I call it being a slave earlier, to intentionally raise alarm. I don't know of a way to define it but you don't have to go to sleep at night thinking, well, I didn't like that decision and now I need to change my entire life or deal with it. I.e. find a new job, change my commute, change my schedule, acquaint yourself with a new environment, meet new people and so on. An owner, is doing this on a daily basis already.
