It's nearly Spring and love is in the air

Darwin was misinterpreted. It’s not the ‘survival of the fittest’ that drives human behaviour. It’s empathy, compassion and love. Shouldn’t that also make business tick? ROGER STEARE thinks so.

The FT recently published a letter from me comparing the modern business corporation with a feudal, totalitarian state. They printed it the day after Hosni Mubarak resigned as President of Egypt. I received lots of emails, all but one of the them agreeing with this hypothesis.

Here in the UK we’re privileged to live in a more-or-less freemarket, liberal, social democracy. We can elect and remove our government and our Prime Minister. They are accountable to us, not the other way around.

And yet, when we come to work, especially in big public companies (and indeed in the public sector), we work for unelected leaders who are unaccountable to us. We are mostly given orders by “managers” and must comply with thousands of rules and regulations. We are expected to dress and to speak in a uniform way. Our job is to “execute” orders and strategies and, if we fail, we can be “terminated”. But, if our “Dear Leader” fails, he will depart into wealthy exile, just like Mubarak.

So, while we watch revolutions unfold in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, I’m wondering if something similar will begin here in our dictatorial workplaces. When will people begin to question how and why so many British companies were legally doing business with Gaddafi’s brutal regime? Maybe it’s because they – and our government – really do care more about profit than people. Perhaps they felt at home?

If this is true – and the supporting evidence is pretty overwhelming – then ultimately these companies and this ethos will fail and they will collapse. Some of the biggest banks were nearly bankrupted by mindless profiteering at the expense of people. And BP almost went bust after yet another preventable catastrophe that resulted in the deaths of 11 oil-rig workers.

Yet, the people I meet everyday in these corporations are mostly good people trying to do a good job. What they lack, though, is empathy: they feel unable to express empathy with people who are affected by their decisions and actions. The work and research I’m doing on measuring Moral DNA in corporations overwhelmingly shows that, while there’s a lot of good thinking in business, there isn’t much emotion or feeling. This deficit is the root cause of most corporate disasters.

We can see the power of love working in our personal lives every day. Family, friendship, even neighbourhood are built on relationships based on love, fairness and trust. At least 15,000 years of human history demonstrate that, while we often compete with each other, our success as a species is based on the fundamentals of co-operation and empathy.

Darwin has been widely misinterpreted. The “selfish gene” and the “survival of the fittest” have now been disproved by most evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, moral psychologists and neurophilosophers as the primary drivers of human behaviour. Empathy, compassion and love are what make us successful as a species.

The good news is that the truth of this message is becoming understood in business and in banking. I am currently working with a major global bank here in the UK and the CEO not only uses the “L” word, it’s now a cornerstone for their business and people strategy.

It’s nearly spring. Love is in the air!

Roger Steare is a Corporate Philosopher and Professor of Organisational Ethics at Cass Business School, London. He can be contacted at: roger.steare@ethicability.org 
You can try his integrity test at www.ethicability.org

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