The Ethical Review Board
The body that adds the word "ethical" to decisions that have already been made.
Overview
The Ethical Review Board exists at every Big Three corporation because regulation requires it and because, in certain specific circumstances, it is useful to have a body that can officially declare something ethical.
Nexus Dynamics' ERB consists of seven members. Three internal executives with voting authority. Two external consultants in an advisory capacity. One employee representative who observes. One ethicist-in-residence — Dr. Priya Achebe — whose objections are, by charter, non-binding. The Board meets quarterly to review "items of ethical significance." The Board's approval rate is 97.3%.
The 97.3% is not corruption. It is selection bias. Items that reach the Board have already been filtered through three layers of internal review. Legal has determined they are legally defensible. Compliance has determined they are regulatorily permissible. Strategy has determined they are commercially necessary. By the time the Board sees a proposal, the only question remaining is whether to add the word "ethical" to a decision that has already been made.
Core Function
The Board has no beliefs. It has a function: to convert institutional decisions into ethically stamped institutional decisions.
The Stamp
The stamp changes nothing about the decision. It changes the documentation. In a world where documentation is evidence, this matters — but it matters in ways the Board's designers did not intend.
The Pre-Filter
Items reaching the Board have already been deemed legally defensible, regulatorily permissible, and commercially necessary. The Board reviews what has already been decided. The 97.3% is not a failure of oversight — it is proof that the filter works.
The Archive
The documentation Dr. Achebe produces is evidence of something other than ethical approval. Her 147 non-binding objections constitute the most comprehensive internal critique of Nexus ethics in existence.
The Boardroom
Mahogany and document white — the aesthetic of serious deliberation.
Seven people around a table. One speaks — Achebe, always Achebe — while six listen with practiced patience. The patience is not hostile. It is the patience of people who have heard 147 objections and changed nothing 147 times, and who will hear the 148th with the same courteous attention they gave the first.
In the corner, Thomas Okafor writes in a physical notebook. Nobody looks at the notebook. Nobody asks what he writes. The employee representative rotates quarterly by lottery — designed to prevent institutional knowledge accumulation. Okafor has said nothing in his tenure. His notes are his own.
Connections
The Board sits at the intersection of corporate governance and institutional memory — where awareness is documented and accountability is diffused.
Members
Dr. Priya Achebe
Ethicist-in-ResidenceNine years of non-binding objections. 147 formally registered dissents, none of which changed an outcome. Her archive constitutes the most valuable intelligence resource the Collective has never stolen in person.
Thomas Okafor
Employee RepresentativeLottery-selected. Silent. Takes personal notes in a physical notebook nobody asks about. The representative rotates quarterly to prevent institutional knowledge accumulation — which tells you everything about what the institution fears.
Institutional Context
Nexus Dynamics
PatronNexus's ERB is the most documented of the Big Three — not because it is different, but because Achebe's 147 objections constitute an internal ethical archive no other corporation possesses.
The Collective
Interested PartyValues ERB minutes as internal documentation of Nexus's ethical failures. The same archive that protects the corporation also indicts it. The question is who reads it first.
Tensions
The Evidence Paradox
The Board generates documentation that can be used to prove either ethical rigor or ethical failure. The corporation points to the 97.3% approval rate and says: we review everything. The archive of 147 dissents says: you knew, every time, and you approved anyway. The same records, the same institution, two opposite conclusions.
The question is not what the Board decided. The question is who reads the minutes — and what they are looking for when they read them.
Institutional Design as Containment
The employee representative rotates quarterly by lottery. The ethicist's objections are non-binding by charter. The advisory consultants are external, which means they lack internal context, which means their advice can be noted and dismissed. Every structural element of the Board is designed to create the appearance of oversight while preventing the accumulation of power sufficient to exercise it.
The Board is awareness documented and accountability diffused — the institutional expression of knowing and not acting, preserved in quarterly meeting minutes.
Selection Bias as Strategy
The 97.3% approval rate is stable across all Big Three since 2169. This is not coordination. This is convergent institutional design: every corporation independently discovered that if you filter proposals through Legal, Compliance, and Strategy before the Board sees them, the Board will approve nearly everything — because nearly everything that reaches it has already been optimized to be approvable.
The most effective way to control a review process is to control what it reviews. The Board's power is not in its vote. Its power was spent three departments ago.
Secrets & Mysteries
What accumulates in the margins of quarterly minutes.
Okafor's Notebook
The employee representative rotates quarterly to prevent institutional knowledge accumulation. Thomas Okafor has said nothing in any session. He writes in a physical notebook — not a device, not a terminal, a bound paper notebook — and nobody has asked him what he records. The rotation is designed to ensure that no employee representative serves long enough to understand what they are observing.
Okafor understands. Whether anyone else understands what Okafor understands is a question that depends entirely on what happens to the notebook when his quarterly rotation ends.
The 147th Objection
Achebe's objections are formally non-binding. They are also formally recorded. Nine years of documented dissent — every ethical concern raised, noted, and overruled — constitutes an archive that no external investigation could replicate. If the ERB minutes were ever subpoenaed, released, or stolen, they would provide a complete map of every ethical boundary Nexus chose to cross.
The corporation keeps the archive because regulation requires it. The archive keeps the corporation accountable because Achebe ensures it. The tension between these two facts is the only real power the Board possesses.
Atmosphere
Setting
Seven people around a mahogany table. One speaking, six listening, one writing in a notebook nobody looks at. The room is warm, well-lit, and designed for consensus. Shadows are not permitted here.
Key Symbol
A rubber stamp marked "ETHICAL" — worn from 97.3% of all items it has ever reviewed. The ink is always fresh. The stamp is always ready. The word it prints has become a formality so routine that its absence would be more remarkable than its presence.