Occidental solutions to this problem have been
to adopt codes of business ethics as, for instance, announced by President
Clinton, about how to treat customers, suppliers, shareholders, neighbors,
employees. Companies like LEVI STRAUSS, NIKE, JOHNSON & JOHNSON, DU PONT,
BEN & JERRY’S, BODY SHOP INTERNATIONAL, have
discovered that in the long run altruism is good business! REEBOK hands
out human rights awards. Other firms provide training in ethical business
practices and are turning to ethical audits as part of their
annual reports which report on the firm’s ethical, environmental and other
social failings. 60% American companies and half of Europe’s biggest firms
have formal codes of ethics and ombudsmen: “They demand that entire
companies should be open, trustworthy and Green.” [49] The Harvard
Business School Bulletin writes, “A host of organizations--among them
Lucent Technologies, the Boeing Company, and Southwest Airlines--have
recently begun to ponder such intangibles in an effort to attract and
maintain a motivated, performance-boosting workforce. Books about the
“ensoulment” of corporate life have been hitting best-seller lists lately,
and conferences on spirituality and business have been springing up all
over the United States and Canada. Web sites dedicated to such topics now
pepper the Internet. Even the World Economic Forum devoted a session at
its February meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to ‘spiritual anchors for the
new millennium.’ Clearly, something of a non-material nature is stirring
in the corporate temple.”[50]
Business schools in USA and Europe are offering over 500 courses in
ethics—often compulsory. In 1993 there were 25 textbooks and 3 academic
journals devoted to this. In MBA courses, stressing the Aristotelian
concept of personal virtue was advised as likely to appeal to high-flying
young individualists. Firms are counseled to reinforce ethical codes with
tough sanctions and investigative powers and to ensure that bosses lead by
example: doing the right thing even when it is profitable and
expedient not to do so. For, that is when employees will follow, making a
necessity out of virtue. The problem, as Robert Prentice (Business Law
professor at McCombs School of Business, Texas University) points out, is
that teaching in business schools is “built on the silly (though
occasionally useful) assumption is that man is a rational maximizer of his
own utilities--and that these utilities can be measured financially. Not
only is this unrealistic but…it also encourages the view that any business
plan that does not maximize monetary reward is suspect.” Because of this,
he continues, “most business students will always view business ethics as
hortatory rather than mandatory, as extra credit rather than
required.”[51]
Ethics is seen usually in terms of loyalty to the company and performing
well. Where companies value results over honesty, acting ethically becomes
very difficult. Under the pressure to perform and to meet family and
financial commitments, it is mostly the middle management that is found to
cave in when ethics and business clash, rather than the top or the
idealistic newcomers. Further, senior managers are unable to convey the
ethical message down the organization because of different cultures
prevailing at different levels and their own isolation at the top.[52]
Cleansing international trade of dishonesty has become a major concern
following the World Bank’s realization that corruption adversely affects
the rate of investment in a country. It has been computed that in Albania
businessmen pay about a third of their profits as bribes. In Indonesia the
figure is a fifth of total operating costs. German firms pay over $3
billion annually to win contracts abroad. In the arms trade roughly $2.5
billion a year, about a tenth of the turnover, is paid in bribes.[53] The
United States got all the 29 members of the OECD, who account for the bulk
of world trade, and five non-members to sign a “bribery convention” that
came into effect from February 1999 whereby these countries will make it a
crime to bribe any foreign official to obtain any unfair advantage in
business deals. The cynical say that it merely encourages American firms
to bribe more cleverly!
The question is how graft-ridden governments will
build up the mental habits that limit corruption. Experts from Indonesia,
Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand have prepared a working draft of an
Anti-Corruption Action Plan for Asia-Pacific in May 2001. Officials of the
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), Transparency International Australia, UK Department
for International Development (DFID), United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) and the World Bank also participated. The proposed Action Plan
contains legally non-binding principles and standards for strengthening
national and regional efforts to combat corruption. Under the agreement,
interested governments of the Asia-Pacific region are expected to commit
politically to undertake actions to attack bribery and money laundering
and to promote public sector integrity in a coordinated, comprehensive
manner. A Global Forum of 142 countries against corruption has also met in
the Hague for the second time in May 2001 and spoken on defeating
corruption through integrity, transparency and accountability, carefully
eschewing any concrete action plan. Transparency International’s Bribe
Payers Index (BPI) 2002 shows bribery practiced “on an exceptional and
intolerable scale” by corporations from Russia, China, Taiwan and South
Korea in developing nations. The TI chairman, Peter Eigen, declared that
“Politicians and public officials from the world's leading industrial
countries are ignoring the rot in their own backyards and the criminal
bribe-paying activities of multinational firms headquartered in their
countries, while increasingly focusing on the high level of corruption in
developing countries. The governments of the richest nations continue to
fail to recognize the rampant undermining of fair global trade by
bribe-paying multinational enterprises...Corrupt political elites in the
developing world, working hand-in-hand with greedy business people and
unscrupulous investors, are putting private gain before the welfare of
citizens and the economic development of their countries.” Eigen added
that there is “no doubt that large numbers of multinational corporations
from the richest nations (USA and Japan are high in the list) are pursuing
a criminal course to win contracts in the leading emerging market
economies of the world.” [ ]
A WORLD VALUES SURVEY conducted in 1990-93 revealed that in America 82%
respondents considered themselves religious, as against 55% in Britain,
54% in West Germany and 48% in France. There are more places of worship
per capita in USA than anywhere else in the West. The social ills flowing
from the breakdown of the family have prompted a return to religion,
seeking moral anchors. The coming millennium has also sparked off an
impetus for spiritual renewal, calling for religion to move out of the
closet to keep families together, to provide guidance on how
individual virtue can be the starting point for the transformation of
home, community and, ultimately, the country. Both Republicans and
Democrats are now agreeing that religion is such an essential social glue
that the state has an interest in promoting it. 4.5 million Americans
meditate; Europe has over 600,000 practicing Buddhists. Denys Teundroup,
honorary president of the European Buddhist Union, referred in the 1999
annual meeting of the World Economic Forum to an Internet initiative to
promote a culture of world peace, based on altruism and universal
responsibility. Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum,
welcoming religious leaders to the January 2002 annual meeting, said, “It
is clear that the world’s religions play a central role in societies
around the world. We believe that religious leaders can make an invaluable
contribution to our multi-stakeholder dialogue as we address the major
challenges on the global agenda.” Issues discussed included the role of
religion in: (i) using moral resources internationally to build a genuine
culture of dialogue, (ii) searching out common values to bridge divides
among communities; and (iii) addressing the priority issues on the global
agenda and the issue of bridging cultural and religious divides. At the
International Conference on Business and Consciousness in November 1998,
Michael Rennie, a partner in the Australian branch of Consulting giant
McKinsey and Co., conferred the ultimate credibility on the subject by
reporting how his team was using spiritually based training techniques to
boost clients’ productivity and profits. At Boeing headquarters in
Seattle, Craig Elkins, the manager of applied thinking and creativity,
leads training programs designed to open spiritual dialogues that will
unfetter employees’ creativity and not incidentally give the company a
competitive edge over arch-rival Airbus. “If your people aren’t allowed to
bring their whole selves to work--body, mind, and soul--then you are not
going to win,” he says.
The World Values Survey also substantiates a traditional truism: the
happiest are not the richest. Iceland, Holland and Denmark are the
happiest nations with over 92% of their populations happy though they are
not as rich as USA, Germany and Japan. The key to happiness does not lie
in wealth or in comparing ourselves favorably with others or in how well
goals are achieved, say geneticists, evolutionary biologists,
psychologists, physiologists and political scientists involved in the
study of happiness. Instead, it is the looked-down-upon “folksy”
traditions of good companionship and enjoyable activities that count. The
studies solemnly state that as “ever-increasing wealth does not create
ever-increasing happiness, more people will turn to the post-materialist
values of community, belonging and self-expression.”[54] The newly set up
COMMISSION ON GLOBAL GOVERNANCE in its report Our Global Neighborhood
affirms that the foundation of future global governance shall have to be
“neighbourhood ethics” and “neighbourhood values.” Purely rationalistic
ethics based upon pre-occupation with individual concerns without a
transcendental vision linking body, mind and soul of the person with
society is seen as inadequate for building up a sustainable global
community. The 1994 UN Seminar on “Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions of
Social Progress” held in Bled, Slovenia, followed by the World Summit for
Social Development in Copenhagen, urged acceptance of the conviction that
all human beings constitute a single family in which each is responsible
for the other, without which, they asserted, achievement of social justice
for all would be excruciatingly slow. The grossly inadequate funding that
followed for acting upon such resolutions shows how superficial is the
understanding of the wealthy nations regarding this basic truth.[55]
Still, there is hope yet. In 1999 the World Economic Forum devoted a
session at its February meeting in Davos to ‘spiritual anchors for the new
millennium.’
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