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Back to business as usual? Let’s hope not!
By Lauren | April 27, 2009
As the recession has deepened and bad news has continued to pile up, the optimists among us have been looking for signs, however tiny, that we’ve hit bottom and are on the road to recovery. And while the news has been mixed, there may be reason for hope. Economists are starting to predict that we’ve seen the worst, and that the economy will begin to recover by the end of the year.
That’s great news … if businesses don’t bounce right back to their pre-crash mindset. There are reasons why Wall Street melted down, the subprime mortgage market crumbled, and the world economy hit the skids. We’re months if not years from a full explanation, but I believe that much of what went wrong can be traced back to unreasonable shareholder expectations about profits, an unhealthy emphasis on meeting bottom line objectives without paying much attention to the right way to get there, and too much reliance on leverage - in other words, getting rich by doing deals using someone else’s money.
Now would be a really good time for business schools to rethink the values they’re teaching to their students and for executives to take a hard look in the mirror. Yes, it’s important to make a reasonable profit, but at what cost? And what value are businesses offering their customers to justify the profits that they make? It may be great to rake in money over the short term, but profits can’t be sustained unless there are quality products or services behind them. Instead of focusing exclusively on the bottom line, businesses would be smart to take the breather this recession provides to examine their practices, confirm their values, and commit to providing ever better value to their customers and clients. Unless businesses collectively choose to take an ethical path, we’re likely to end up right back in the economic dumps.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, corporate responsibility, customer relations, ethics |