It is dismal to see that a course on management ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) – qualities and values which are ASSUMED to be innate in ‘human beings’; principles and behavior which we imbibe from a course on social studies in the 3rd and 4th grade – are today being crammed into the heads of the so-called “managers”. The very characteristics that make us humans are today being executed in our brains like a computer program written in C++.
The morality of profits is often questioned, but the profitability of morals is seldom put to test. While managers do have the obligation to generate profits for the organizations they are working for, they also have the onus of upholding the interests of the society they are doing their businesses in.
Risky mortgages were bundled into securities and sold on Wall Street. Big funds, frenzied for a higher rate of return, ignored the risks – all resulting in the creation of a “perfect storm.” Followed up by lack of oversight by the Federal Reserve, this is what has ushered us into the recession of 2008. No infringement of legality, but a gruesome violation of ethics. Is this how we want to generate profits? The answer is NO.
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