BLOG: 8 October 2009

…But you can’t fuck make money off a good personality
8 October 2009

Martin Luther King Jr, from PBS

Picture it:  A fiscally unsound company takes advantage of their distributor by purchasing large quantities of inventory, selling it, and holding accounts payable for eternity.  When the distributor demand financial statements, the company does not oblige.  When you demand accounts payable… be paid…they do not comply.  When you threaten to push them into bankruptcy to collect collateral, they bite back that you’ll lose a significant market segment in a hard-to-penetrate region.

Such was the situation in our business case today.  When we made our decision, which turned out to be a split between push them into bankruptcy or negotiate, we got into a heated discussion.  Do you enter business with people who lack integrity and good character?

During the discussion, I was imagining the iconic moment of Martin Luther King Jr. standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, exclaiming,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Yeah… what about your ability to run a company?  Because, regardless of skin colour, should we be judging business leaders by their personal and professional integrity or their ability to avoid reds on the income statements?

Indeed, in life, we don’t always have a choice whom we deal with.  The question is, when you do have the choic, do you make the decision to associate yourself with business leaders who are notoriously cold-hearted, ruthless, and morally questionable due to their ability to generate profit for your company?

I started out going to business school believing that yes, the content of your character matters.  While the the code of ethics wrought into us students from day one tell us this, I can’t help but feel slightly indoctrinated in the class room setting that lets moral integrity fall on the wayside when profitability comes to play.  Week after week, career management warns us of our duty to our school and peers that our school image is to be upheld.  But day after day, classes and cases warn us of our fiduciary duty to the shareholders to maximise profit.

I’m starting to realise what they mean by business school taking away your money, happiness, and soul.