In the fall, I wrote a series of posts on the moral concerns raised by the financial crisis and how a business ethics course might address them. MBAs, I said, should not be expected to memorize a subjective list of professional Do's-and-Don'ts. Rather, they should be taught "how to engage, with intelligence and integrity, a real ethics debate about the role of business and the business professional in a free society."
I've since had the opportunity to observe students taking up this challenge. This winter, I taught an accelerated course in business ethics to professionals at the Harvard Extension School. The goal of the course was not to get students to agree on a common code of business ethics but instead to give them the tools to write their own individual codes. Having been granted permission by my students, I wanted to share four lessons they taught me:
Help others without hurting their sense of dignity. Diane, an accounts director, believes that an ethical workplace is one where employees help each other. But as anyone who has ever had an overbearing boss can attest, no matter how good the intention, such offers can sometimes seem patronizing. Diane says that the good we aim to do for others must be balanced by their need for self-respect. She illustrates this with an example from her home life. When children say "Hands off," she says, often "they are actually hoping for some help but don't know how to ask without surrendering their concept of independence." Diane believes that respecting this sense of independence will make the members of her team more likely to ask for, and accent help, especially when they face difficult moral decisions.
Self-control is not at odds with ambition, it is essential to it. "Ambition is to be admired," says Kevin, a business systems analyst. It is a driving force behind capitalism, yet there are certain "boundaries that shouldn't be crossed." In Kevin's mind, pure ambition is not synonymous with personal success so much as with ruthlessness. To be successful, he says, one's personal ambition must ultimately be guided by self-control and an eye toward broader social benefit.
Business may lionize individual achievement, but responsibility to others is key. "No one person, no matter how ambitious or creative, can exist in isolation or complete independence from others," says Mark, an accounting manager. This is particularly true, he says "in a technologically and economically complex society." The liberties we enjoy in a free society allow us to pursue our personal interests, but they are not without responsibility. One needs to balance them with the outcomes they produce, "lest someone else do the balancing for you."
Your gut is a great moral philosopher. "The best way I can describe my business principles," says Jose, a banker, "is to always do what feels to be the right thing." For Jose, the feeling one gets in his gut when confronted with a moral conundrum not only precedes reasoned conclusions, it often indicates the best possible decision. "In the end, we have to be satisfied with what we do and not be forced to do certain things to please others," Jose says. The mind can provide an excuse to do just about anything, but "the actual feeling that one gets when taking action" is not only morally reliable, it is not easily overruled.
Jose would have found a strong supporter in the father of the free market, Adam Smith. For him, morality was not some obscure science. Whenever someone tried to convince us of a moral matter, they aimed "to give an account, not only of the affairs of the very parish that we live in, but of our own domestic concerns." Certainly, we could reason away the wise counsel of the heart — human beings, Smith believed, were very skilled at making the expedient appear the just — but if we listened to the voice of our best instincts, our own and those of other people, we would rarely be led astray.
John Paul Rollert recently finished teaching a January Term course in business ethics at the Harvard Extension School. He is a doctoral student at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
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Posted by: ephemamn | January 31, 2012 at 01:09 AM