Business integrity in a time of multiple globalizations

John Dalla Costa participated in a July 2010 interfaith gathering of scholars in theology and corporate social responsibility. They proposed some of the foundations for a project of pluralistic governance. Participants were charged with framing principles for economic recovery and cooperation from within the major Abrahamic faith traditions . . .

John Dalla Costa

One still-reverberating consequence of the financial crisis is the loss of moral authority for North American governance models. Already flexing its economic power in global currency discussions, China has recently begun to lobby for new modes of corporate management based on Eastern principles and values.

With Brazil and India’s economic ascendancy, alternative approaches to regulation and governance are also emerging in Latin America and the Asian subcontinent, as well as in the Middle East and Africa. Many economists and business leaders presumed that we were  heading toward a singular standard for corporate integrity. Instead, we are now doing business in a much more complex operating reality, which sociologists explain as a phenomenon of “multiple globalizations.”

For business ethicists, and for executives committed to ethical excellence, the challenge now is to recover the principles and practices that legitimize corporate conduct, while carefully reflecting the evolving pluralistic moral claims on economic agents. As with any project of diversity, effective engagement hinges on two dynamics: a respectful outreach to others who bring different voices and perspectives to the moral dialogue about business, and an interior owning of difference that beckons us to articulate the unique insights that will be our contribution to global ethical discourse.

In July 2010, an interfaith group of scholars in theology and corporate social responsibility came together to propose some of the foundations for this project of pluralistic governance. Co-convened by the Caux Round Table, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Prof. Ronald Theimann, and Prof. Ibrahim Zein, we participants were charged with framing principles for economic recovery and cooperation from within the major Abrahamic faith traditions.

Our starting point, as it has been for Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclicals, was to reflect on the deep human vulnerability experienced in history — and now underscored by the financial crisis. The global economy of transactions and commercial exchange links people in an almost sacramental communion. We depend on one another for making a living, for imagining and realizing dreams, and for earning dignity by sharing the outputs of our personal gifts and capacities. Technology brings a greater moral risk, so much so that innocent workers, investors, customers and citizens can be easily harmed or displaced by economic decisions made by managers in faraway cities or office towers.

Vulnerability seems to be a deficiency, but it is actually a defining mark of our humanity. By etymology, to be vulnerable means to be wounded. This inescapable vulnerability is a powerful creative force, serving as the locus for our ethics and shared human rights. It also animates in each of us the sympathy that Adam Smith — the Scottish political economics pioneer — identified as critical for developing the mature “self-control” as the complement and corrective for “self-interest.”

Work is at root a means for escaping, or protecting against, vulnerability. Each of the Abrahamic faith traditions situates work in the context of stewardship, with persons invited to participate in “the Creator’s vision for a just and fruitful globe” by using our gifts, talents and creativity to alleviate or minimize vulnerability, the round table scholars’ statement said.

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, “the social dimensions and cultural foundations for sustaining economic life” are premised on “appreciation for both human possibilities and limitations.” The teachings concerning “discernment, judgment, correction and action” from each of the Abrahamic traditions provides inspiration for seven spiritual disciplines for managers:

• Receiving, which involves the openness, humility and fidelity to attend to God’s grace and advice;
• Responding, which recognizes the call to use our talents “in the service of higher ends;”
• Repenting, which takes ownership of mistakes and accepts appropriate responsibility as prerequisites for shaping “rightly directed action;”
• Reminding, which recalls to one another the obligation for justice, with particular attentiveness toward those who have the least voice in decision-making;
• Reforming, which takes seriously the public trust, earning legitimacy for enterprises by the opportunity, dignity and collaboration enabled for human beings;
• Remembering, which invokes the teachings of our scriptures and traditions to create the “dynamic checks, balances and timely reformulations” for fulfilling stewardship;
• Rejuvenating, which uses “imagination, investments and methodologies of business enterprise” to respond efficiently and effectively to the social and ecological problems that define our age.”

In a time when differences between the world’s religions seem to be the primary impetus for conflict or cultural clashes, the joint statement issued by the scholars provides an important model for collaboration, respect and constructive problem solving. Only a starting point, this work of surfacing spiritual disciplines also inspires each of us who work as managers to reflect more deeply on scripture, integrating our interior sources of meaning with our exterior practices of managerial professionalism. As is true in any community, we are learning about integrity from each other, with the humility that is an intrinsic feature of prayer.

For sociologists, the concept of multiple globalizations is generally the horizontal one of different geographies, histories or anthropologies. For persons of faith, this multiplicity is also vertical, with theology and spirituality taking on a more public role in global ethics discourse.

John Dalla Costa is funding director of the Centre for Ethical Orientation, a Toronto-based consultancy providing ethics, governance and integrity services. The scholars’ statement is available at cauxroundtable.org