Can Christian ethics be applied to the business world? Ian Harris argues they can and should, citing an initiative from Harvard University in the United States.
Can any good thing come out of the current financial turmoil? The tsunami has destroyed many leading companies around the world, battered confidence in financial institutions, unsettled governments, shattered retirement nest-eggs and, thankfully, toppled some of the greed-driven elite who caused the crisis.
Among those appalled at their reckless conduct is a group of graduating business students at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The day before they received their Master of Business Administration degrees last month, about 400 of the 889 graduates took an oath to behave ethically in their future careers.
Advocates see the oath as a step towards developing a professional code for business paralleling the Hippocratic oath for doctors and the pledge lawyers take to uphold the law and the United States constitution.
"We are looking for long-term systemic change," says an organiser, Max Anderson.
Business professor Rakesh Khurana noted that when Harvard pioneered a masters programme in management 100 years ago, the aim was to produce not only better managers but also a better society.
Over the years, however, the emphasis of business schools and business leaders had tilted towards maximising profits and shareholder value, with the accompanying expectation that managers would reap rich rewards.
The change is reflected in a book he has just published, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands.
Now the pendulum is swinging back.
Business schools have been criticised for not doing more to prepare graduates for the ethical challenges of the business world.
Teachers at Harvard and elsewhere say students are demanding courses on social ethics and responsibility to round out their business studies.
An Arizona business school responded five years ago with an MBA oath, and students use it constantly to question what they are taught.
Harvard's oath is the latest outcome.
Signatories vow to:
• Act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
• Safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.
• Manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behaviour that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
• Understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
• Take responsibility for my actions, and represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
• Develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the wellbeing of society.
• Strive to create sustainable economic, social and environmental prosperity worldwide.
• Be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.
In large part, the oath is a personal response to the latest wave of financial depredation.
The students don't like what they see, and want to make a difference.
It is sad, though, that they should feel such an oath is needed.
In a healthy society, honesty, integrity and trust are in the air people breathe, and they conduct themselves accordingly.
Those values are the bedrock of every sound relationship.
One of the prime contributions a religious heritage makes to successive generations is to teach and uphold such values.
As people have turned their backs on the churches, however, the reach and robustness of that supportive ambience have weakened.
Honesty, integrity and trust can no longer be taken as givens, as is evident when investors lament they were not told the whole truth, clients feel they have been taken advantage of, and firms wriggle desperately to slough off obligations.
A measure of that slippage is the cynicism with which some commentators have greeted the new oath.
The idealism of the young is all very well, they sneer, but wait until the real world hits them.
One man, aghast that fewer than half Harvard's crop intended to sign the oath, said: "In a field marred by ethics scandal after scandal after scandal, for so few to swear an oath of ethical practice is embarrassing, even worrisome."
And another: "Isn't it insulting for grown men and women to have to promise that they won't lie, cheat, or steal?"
To which Harvard's Max Anderson replies: "We know this isn't the total answer. But we have to start somewhere. Why not start by stating our values and aspirations? Sure, it will be hard to keep these. But if it weren't hard, it wouldn't mean anything."
He has a point. Any Kiwi takers?
- Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator
