reframing business ethics | constructivist consulting

At a Tate symposium this weekend on the artist and immaterial labour, Stefano Harney from Queen Mary (University of London) startled the arts audience by proposing that management was the prime example of immaterial labour, citing its focus on harnessing such ineffable things as motivation, enthusiasm and even passion.? Always pleased to experience a provocative reframing, I recognised his name from a recent article in The Independent: What should an MBA look like after the crisis?

He wrote: ?The impoverishment of society is not an ethical issue alone, it is an analytical issue, and one business leaders are already proving they do not understand. Because society is not just the beneficiary but the generator of business wealth, and to beggar it is, sooner or later, to beggar business.? But of course this is not what the MBA teaches. It may teach beneficence, but it does not teach mutual dependence. Business is very well understood as the producer of wealth, but very badly understood as dependent on an educated, healthy, creative, and happy society. Business may help to create these conditions, but such conditions equally make business possible. They are more than resources. They are sources. It is not a question of businesses giving back to society. It is a question of giving back what was borrowed. And at the moment, it is business that is in default?.

Under these conditions he proposes that we shift the question to what an MBA should look like now, in the midst of the crisis, suggesting that it should ?lead students back to this mutual relationship, not away to the business-class lounge? and would mean ?not standing apart from the crowd when the deal goes bad, but embracing, like a real leader, the full social and environmental consequences of one?s actions?.

A refreshing and challenging alternative to the glib ?green shoots? rhetoric dominating the business press.

20th March 2012

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