Corporate greed has erupted in different corners of the globe. Giant corporations make galloping progress in growth, sales and profits. They imbibe and propagate the concept of business as a noble profession. They introduce healthy management practices. However, such nobility exists only when ethics and integrity become an integral part of such a business philosophy. CEOs with high degree of ethics and competence are a great asset to organizations and society. They create wealth and ensure sustainability of the enterprise which they built. They are really Chief Executive Officers.
But these days often business without ethics gains respectability in society. Really speaking, it is business built on siphoning of funds. This philosophy unfortunately, is gaining ground and popularity. That is why we have booming business followed by catastrophic collapse.
Greed manifests when ethics doesn’t support human desires. The result is crash, collapse and calamity. World economy is reeling under this economic malady. The thrust for such economic calamity starts with recession and is fanned by many CEOs.
When CEOs become Chief Embezzlement Officers the downturn takes place in organizations. Greed and irresponsibility dominate and downfall of organizations and economy with series of chain reactions takes place. We have examples of Enron, Satyam with their contemporaries and counterparts world wide which brought about collapse of several financial institutions.
Efforts are made to recover reversing the trend towards economic disaster.
For this first recovery of the backbones of CEOs has to be effected. This is not easy unless they learn from mistakes and take care not to repeat them. No amount of money pumped into the system will bring relief and recovery unless their managerial backbone with ethical content is recovered fully.
These CEOs belong to a new breed and they replace execution with embezzlement. Personal aggrandizement becomes the motto and thus society suffers through massive unemployment. Fake documents, diversion of funds for personal objectives, atrocious audit practices, laxity in government control, are all responsible for this phenomenon of galloping greed and irresponsibility where the reins are lost and disaster strikes. If this is not to happen in future, along with scientific progress, management techniques and wisdom should be recognized and elevated to a high pedestal.
Wisdom recognizes ethics and values and is rooted in the sustainability principle which is also applicable to the concept of growth and economy. Greed should be curbed. It is here the great eastern philosophy becomes relevant, important and practical.
Wealth should be accumulated only subject to righteousness. So also the case of human desires. This simple formula is forgotten in the thick of the smoke caused by greed and craving for corporate growth by any means.
In the interest of posterity, now at least, business schools and institutions concerned with the economic development should take a pledge that they will evolve and dissiminate a kind of knowledge that will be practical and at the same time rooted in ethics and righteousness. They should turn out stuff that will turn into real CEOs who undertake great tasks of execution and not CEOs who are Chief Embezzlement Officers. Then only we can have a stable, happy and sustainable world.
