Global economy is still struggling to rise after the great collapse in 2008, despite so many stimulus packages introduced by different countries, heavily borrowing money from future generations. It is, as if, we are trying to revive a person who has suffered a massive stroke. Indeed, a business corporation breaths and lives just like a human being. It is similarly made-up of a body, mind and soul. It similarly gets sick when different organs of its body stops functioning in unison and the mind falls out of harmony with the soul. When we continue to ignore symptoms of any sickness, it is only a matter of time before a serious blow is dealt to the corporate health bringing miseries to its stakeholders. The recent economic meltdown, I believe, is the cumulative result of ignoring the role of the corporate conscience. We can make more stringent laws. But people would still find loopholes in them and exploit them. The only most effective step is to awaken corporate conscience.
Major corporate houses don’t seem to have learnt this lesson yet, as evidenced in the case of BP’s catastrophic incident of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. We can see ample examples of ignoring this lesson in many organizations around us. Have organizations learnt to create a sense of belongingness among its employees? Are corporate goals beyond just making money? Do they also embrace principles of service to humanity and protection of the environment? Are employees motivated enough to keep corporate goals above their individual greed? Does the organization take good care of its employees’ personal and professional development, which is unquestionably the most important motivator (even more than the money)? Is the management able to lead from the front, presenting themselves as role models and setting examples of uncorrupted service? Is there a transparent system of rewarding employees for their work without any discrimination? Is there a system for creating corporate memory based on individual employee’s lessons learnt, so that past mistakes are never repeated by any one? Do employees work according to well-defined uniform policies, standards & procedures across all functions? And last, but not the least, is there a corporate conscience which every employee can relate with? I wonder how many corporate houses today can boast of saying “YES” to these questions.
3 comments:
No matter what we hear these days about corporate conscience and culture, the bottom line is to make a profit by hook or crook. That is what is rewarded in corporations as was proven in the economic melt down. There is a lesson beyond the pious words we hear coming out of Board Rooms from time to time. Let there be no mistake about this. Regulations have to take care of human frailities and corporate greed. There is no other way.
No doubt the Corporate World need to work differently from Social Welfare Organizaions. Corporate World is highly competitive, and 'the bottom line' is the keyword. Yet, we find cases where the Company does take care of employees very well and also respects some norms and ethics in their overall dealings. In my personal life, I have had good experience while working for Tata's in India and later Schlumberger internationally.
As far as Tata in India is concerned, they are well known for their employee welfare, for the towns they built around their factories (ex: Tatanagar or Jamshedpur). One may also have heard about what Ratan Tata ecently did to the permanent and contract employees of Taj Hotel in Mumbai after the recent disaster there from terrorist act.
As far as Schlumberger is concerned, they do various welfare activities around the world where they operate. Employees are given strict guidelines in their dealings with clients and vendors. Anoher good example of how Schlumberger takes care of their employees is their Staff Pension Scheme, which is as good if not better than some Government pension schemes. Although I did not work for ONGC in India, I did hear about employees' loyalty to their employer and how well ONGC takes care of employees' health benefits. ONGC staff gets very decent medical coverage for their entire extended family.
If we analyse the collapse of the financial system in 2008, it was the result of FINANCIAL GREED which seem to have overtaken the few of the banking corporate czars in their eagerness to make a quick buck in the housing loan market and to a lesser extent in the HEDGE funds.
I remember as a young kid that my father's banker was caught fraudently signing cheques and withdrawing funds, not his own, and was put behind the bars for 2 years under section 420 of IPC. He lost a good job and when he returned from jail after 2 years we said he was 420 and literary ran away from him.
My father's explanation was that these bankers see so much money everyday passing through their hands, that at some time or another, they fall into temptation. They tend to undervalue the downside risks and go for the upside gains forgetting that the former has at least equal chances of occuring as the latter, especially with newer incumbents joining them in the race.
A good example of decent corporate conscience would be INFOSYS whereas Ramalingam's SATYAM would be the other extreme.
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