Pre-School reading

I've been reading three books on the corporate experience. The Corporation, Working with Emotional Intelligence, and Built to Last. All three deal with ethics in business, but from vastly different perspectives.

The Corporation talks about the origin of the modern corporation, and how it evolved from what used to be essentially extended partnerships. The idea that the owners of an organization (the shareholders) would not be participants was originally regarded as immoral and was legislated against. The basic message of the book is that corporations are legal entities, the way citizens are legal entities, but they are not subject to the same rules as citizens. They exist solely to profit the stockholders, and any activity that does not forward that end is, in the context of the corporate system, "immoral". Therefore, a corporation cannot be subject to human rules or laws of ethical conduct, because it is contrary to the pillars of the business. The author makes a strong case, but loses me when his solution is to return to strict government regulation. While this might be the best answer, I think it's highly unlikely, and I think changing the culture within the corporation is going to be the only option.

Built to Last is a book that studies the characteristics of "visionary" companies, as defined by the authors. Visionary companies are long-lived, have core values that never completely disappear, and are able to roll with internal and external changes better than their counterparts. The authors hold, sort of, that ethical behavior and rules are very much part of the cultures and literature of visionary companies, but they tend to ignore some of the grosser exceptions to this rule. There's no mention of Wal-Mart's labor practices, or Phillip Morris's health policies. The authors seem to believe that ethical business and employment practices are usually by-products of visionary companies, and that the exceptions are few and far between. While I don't believe they are entirely mutually exclusive, I agree with the author of The Corporation, in that any policy must further the corporation's bottom line, regarless of how ethical or unethical it is, in order to be successful.

Working with Emotional Intelligence is much more psychology based. The author believes that raising an individual or group's EQ level, has widespread positive outcomes for a business that will ultimately positively effect the bottom line. EQ consists of a combination of critical thinking skills, ability to recognize strong impulses and control them, social awareness, adaptability and several other skills that pretty much all fall under the category of emotional maturity. He lays out several core competencies that he believes are necessary for success, and provides examples. The weakness of the book is it provides information on training others, but not on evaluating and improving EQ levels for the reader himself. He also provides some compelling examples of how organizations acted in and emotionally intelligent way when faced with a difficult moral quandary. I've been considering recommending this book to the career development person at my work, because I think it builds on a lot of the ideas put forth by other books in our library, but the lack of actual hands-on activities or even evaluations lessens it's helpfulness quite a bit.

All three books have helped me hone and develop my own ideas about ethics and business and how they do and don't mix. School starts tomorrow, so I won't be reading much that isn't assigned for a while.