Shocked.
As the dust on the Global Financial Crisis begins to settle and corporate life begins to settle, questions abound as to whether ‘Lessons Have Been Learned’?
While debate still focuses upon issues such as the ethics of corporate salaries the fundamental issue of corporate greed would appear to be slipping from every conscience.
But I was recently confronted, in the context of an innovative Pharma communications project, with a different version of corporate greed to that of ‘fat cat’ salaries.
This type of greed was the insatiable desire by big corporate to do and own everything – to just take over – to show no respect for anything but total ownership of the cake.
To give the small to medium sized organisation no hope whatsoever of a place at the big deal table – no slice of the cake – not even a crumb – starvation of the small and powerless was inevitable
I was shocked. Naïve I may be. But, I was shocked none the less.
And you know the way things happen – I then saw two TV documentaries of large US based software companies blatantly stealing intellectual property from small innovators and assuming the size of their legal war chest would quash any complaint by the technology originators and patent holders.
The twenty first-century business paradigm of Strategic Partnering seemed to be news to the large corporate juggernaut.
The economics of comparative advantage was clearly an alien concept to these corporate leviathans.
Business ethics something you studied at graduate school like Ancient Greek.
Is such greed in the interest of our society?
Is this in fact greed or something else – like misunderstood good business practice? Will it be a fact of corporate life for the foreseeable future or is there an end in sight?
Defining Greed
Dictionary definitions can be collapsed into a consensus of:
An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.
What does a corporation need? Is infinite growth to feed shareholder appetites, at any price, in the DNA of corporations or their constitutions?
How would shareholders ever know about corporate bullying tactics unless news of their practice reached the media?
Are we really entering a century of business practices where material wealth is not the primary goal or are we simply being fed a pacifying corporate PR line?
Strategic Partnering
I once heard Tony Lendrum propose that the catch-cry of corporate strategic partnering should be:
“Love your Partners Profit”
Has big corporate heard that cry?
There are management coaching companies, such as Shirlaws, who base there brilliant business approaches upon Love (yes that’s right – Love) rather than the more common business driver of Fear.
Fear of Losing Power; Fear of Missing a dollar; Fear of Losing Control; etc.
Could big corporate really learn to Love Partnering with others for mutual gain?
The Law of Comparative Advantage
This law of economics usually put forward as the logical basis for international trade, illustrates why one country which has the resources to produce goods more efficiently than another can still derive benefits from trading with that country.
Doesn’t the same law apply between business entities however large or small?
Is This the Future of Business?
Is Greed innate in Humankind?
Can the actions of a broker, buyer, seller or corporate/professional/governmental referee influence the other corporate participants in any business transaction to act ethically?
Will corporate bullies always get away with their unattractive behaviour?
Have we really learned nothing from the last 18 months?
Where does Pharma sit on the Greed Scale? Is Pharma a force for change?
You be the Judge.
(Tomorrow's Post: In Search of Natural Painkillers)
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