Yes, big business was once more honest than it is today
- May 7, 2010
- 2 comments
- Posted in Family, Latest Posts, The Economy
My father was a CEO, of the ’50s and ’60s generation. He lived, in his later years, in a state of shock at the grabbing greed of his corporate successors. Plenty of self-enriching louts rose to the top in his day. But instead of being admired in the executive suite, their behavior was generally deplored.
It sounds defensive and probably unreliable for a daughter to speak up for her dad’s more socially responsible times. So my thanks to economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman for pulling up the following quote from The New Industrial State by John Kenneth Galbraith, published in 1967. The subject was whether top executives would use their positions to enrich themselves at investors’ expense:
But these are not the sorts of thing that a good company man does; a generally effective code bans such behavior. Group decision-making ensures, moreover, that almost everyone’s actions and even thoughts are known to others. This acts to enforce the code and, more than incidentally, a high standard of personal honesty as well …
The point that Krugman and I are making is that brutal profiteering, which is currently treated as a normal part of the capitalist state, isn’t necessarily normal at all. Those “good company men” turned to profiteering as a group. Then they got into our heads and muffled our moral sense. The collapse of standards helped bring the system down. We should flock to a 12-step program to recover.
Tags: business morality, father, Krugman
Yes, Jane, there is some brutal self-enrichment going on (and there has often if not always been). But I think there’s also a rising trend in “Corporate Social Responsibility,” in people looking for ways to run a business that enhances not just the financial bottom line, but the social one, as well. It’s gone beyond theory in business schools to discussions in boardrooms of the right thing to do.
Companies like Google, Twitter, Pepsi. JetBlue and others are trying to, at the very least, not be evil. Others, not so much. But there is a trend in some quarters.
I would agree with both counts. It’s impossible to change the entities existence, that currently exists. There WAS a better “code,” before than today, and yes Corps. do the politically correct thing with social responsibility. I have faith some will always do that, although I cannot say or speak for what percentage. Unfortunately, what we do not really know is how ardent the social responsibility is adhered to, and wether or not social responsibility isn’t just mostly viewed as another way to market the brand, and continue the profiteering. My hope is for the best outcome for the most people…..at the least a consistent effort to tithe.