Ethics in Business-Perils and Prospects

Ajit Sabnis

Editor-in-Chief

Recently I had an opportunity to address and interact with the students of a reputed management institute on the topic: Ethics in Business-Perils and Prospects. Though I completed the assignment based on my three decades of business experience in the field of construction engineering, the fundamental question ‘whether ethics to be taught as a course in business schools’ remains ticking and tickling.

A business is not always about money making at any cost. There are other considerations too. It should have a positive influence on its immediate surroundings and the people that live in the community by creating jobs and playing a significant role in the economical and social welfare of the community. Human beings are actually designed to live in a community, in a society. It is a collective living. When there is collective living, there has to be harmony and hence a minimum set of ethics required to be followed. That is how codes of conduct come into picture. Ethics essentially is concerned with the discretionary ability to distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong, virtuous and non virtuous. It is also related to morality. It is the guiding philosophy.

To me, the very concept of ethics originates from deep within. If at all ethics is to be taught then a proper holistic mechanism of infusing ethical values should be in place starting from pre-primary level, the level from which development of an integrated personality of a child evolves. The curriculum should be staggered in a manner that when a student is in a primary school, he is taught more on the moral values. When he moves to the middle class, he is exposed to advanced level of moral values and possible role models. In college he should learn more about business ethics. As a professional student, he should learn how to apply ethics to business situations. Ironically and painfully, we have reached a stage where we are wondering whether ethics is required or not!

Why have we reached this stage? Is it because we have become so self-centred that we have no concern for others? Or is it because the very definition of successful business changed? On a broad spectrum, success is now being equated to the quantum of money one has or the amount of profit you make. Take the classic case of Enron. The rise and fall of the Enron, the biggest corporate collapse in the recent years failed due to inefficient governance and unethical practices. A majority of top executives in a survey carried out post-Enron expressed their vulnerability to compromise with business ethics in case they are faced with deteriorating performance and financial health. Back in India, an organisation called Satyam had a promoter with a highly proven track record. Seemingly, a simple man, and a philanthropist, who publicly advocated business ethics and would empathized with the sufferings of the poor, allegedly turned out to be a perpetrator of a fraud.  The world at large was made to believe that Satyam had sound corporate governance in place but in reality, ethics was missing. Infosys and kingfisher! If the promoter of Infosys believes in sharing of wealth, the promoter of Kingfisher believes in ugly exhibition of wealth without paying his employees- who is ethical here?

This leads us back to the core inner values. Ethics is like a compass which helps in navigating an organisation towards its goals, vision and mission. There must be a harmony between mission, vision and values. The vision must flow out of mission and values must follow mission and vision. Only then, values can provide clear guidelines for shaping decision, action and behaviour. The Mind-Tree organisation classifies its value-systems into four categories: Caring, Learning, Action, Sharing and Socially Responsible-CLASS. In the end analysis, for example, if the organization aspires for truth, beauty and goodness, it must ask what do these values mean for modern corporate activities like finance, manufacturing, marketing, customer service, human resource development, corporate governance, and interpersonal relationship and express them in terms of these corporate realities.

All said and done, this talk of mine helped Built Expressions to initiate partnering with SAFIM-Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Integral Management in some of its activities to promote and to define new paradigms of leadership based on the human aspects of values, beauty, compassion, harmony and a deep sense of universal interconnectivity. Built Expressions shortly will announce variety of programs under this joint venture.