Ethics Incorporated: Top Priority and Bottom Line (revised edition)

Citation

Ashman, I. (2007), "Ethics Incorporated: Top Priority and Bottom Line (revised edition)", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 484-486. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730710761779

I didn't have to delve very far into Dipankar Gupta's book, Ethics Incorporated: Top Priority and Bottom Line, to realise that people like me are not part of the intended readership. Gupta is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, but in this book he dons the hat from his other role as co‐founder of KPMG's Business Ethics and Integrity Division, also based in Delhi. His audience is intended clearly to be KPMG's potential clientele; the “executives” that he makes frequent reference to. The prescriptive, almost preaching, tone, the sound bites reproduced in the margins and scant bibliography (less than two pages, of which only a handful of the sources are directly concerned with ethics) suggest an approach where academic rigour is not the priority.

Ethics Incorporated is divided into nine chapters that are intended to take the enlightened, but uninitiated, “executive” from a basic grasp of what business ethics means through to the implementation of sustainable ethical business practice. Gupta offers a conception of business ethics that, I must confess, I have never encountered before, indeed, it is quite at odds with most of what I am familiar with. For instance, he says:

Business Ethics [sic – always capitalised] is not about morality, but about the establishment of transparent norms and interrelationships (p. 19, emphasis added).

And:

Morality can be privatized but not ethics, which is about other people (p. 33).

Gupta's radically humanistic stance appears to be drawn from a rather narrow interpretation of Emanuel Levinas's “Ethics of the Other” and it may alienate those who feel, for instance, that environmentalism or animal rights are legitimate concerns for business ethics (neither of which get a mention in this book). Interestingly, in the preface Gupta maintains that:

Executives everywhere would like an operational and unambiguous ethical system in their organizations. They would like to function in an atmosphere that brings out the best in them and their team. That is why they turn to Business Ethics [sic], and it would be a shame if at that point business ethics advocates let the side down by offering obtuse and moralistic advice (p. 9).

First, while I am sure there are many executives who are very concerned about ethics, undoubtedly there are many who are not. Second, I'm not at all sure that it is meaningful to talk of an ethical system, and third, Levinas would balk at the idea that ethics can be made unambiguous and operationalisable. The irony is that the book is replete with obtuse and moralistic advice – witness some of my favourite sound bites:

When top executives dare to know, they no longer shy away from unpleasant truths (p. 23).

It is only when rules are properly established that people are truly challenged and perform at their best (p. 34).

Ethics is clearly for Type A personalities, who play hard and play to win (p. 57).

Transparency is about embracing knowledge and rejoicing in its advances (p. 117).

Rules should not be seen as strictures that prohibit but rather as enabling mechanisms (p. 121).

The centrepiece of Ethics Incorporated is the two chapters entitled “How to make it work: putting eusiness ethics in place” and “Step by Step: Guidelines for Business Ethics in Practice”. Gupta claims that:

An organization is committed to Business Ethics when it has the following:

• •

  Vision/mission statements;

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  Core values;

• •

  Business practice policy;

• •

  Code of conduct;

• •

  Grievance counselling mechanism; and

• •

  Ethical dilemma resolution workshops (p. 50).

There is nothing intrinsically ethical about any of the first five factors listed and a similar discussion to that provided by Gupta of each can be found in most texts on business strategy and leadership that have no ethical pretensions. The outcome of diligently following the first four steps should be an “ethics manual” small enough so as not to compete “for space with the lunch box in the brief case” (p. 70). The ease with which Gupta implies this can be achieved leaves one wondering why moral philosophers have needed to spend so much time and effort across the millennia deliberating over what is, and what is not, ethical. The lengthy coverage of ‘ethical dilemma resolution workshops’ is quite novel if somewhat naïve, but the cynic in me can't help thinking that this type of activity is probably the speciality of KPMG's Business Ethics and Integrity division.

Ethics Incorporated is a well‐meaning book and if it inspires a handful of “top executives” to pay closer attention to the ethics of the organisations they lead then so much the better.