Lecturer: ‘Immorality can destroy society’

What keeps business and society together is  enough people practising “upright lives,” but should these people leave the country, then the society will fall apart, said Surendra Arjoon,  Head of the University of the West Indies’ Department of Management Studies and Director of the Centre for Business and Professional Ethics, at last Thursday’s weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Central Port-of-Spain. Arjoon said a society could only tolerate a certain amount of immorality, and when it reached a threshold, “the society can implode.”

He used the decline of Roman society when the Caesars ruled as an example. He said it was a time of  homosexuality, bestiality and humans being sacrificed to animals. “Rome didn’t fall because of a sword, but because of excessive immorality,” Arjoon said. Using a more recent example, he cited US energy company Enron (the energy firm which went bankrupt not long after news surfaced that the company was covering its debts and manipulating figures to support its inflated stock price). “Enron did not fall because of competition, but because a few people transgressed their law that is built into their nature — of doing the right thing for the right reason.”

Arjoon was the first feature speaker in the Rotary Club’s Ethics Sensitisation Pro-gramme for 2004-2005 organised by its Vocational Service Committee. The programme aims to heighten awareness of the need for higher ethical standards in the business world. Arjoon referred to a survey of young managers which found that many had received explicit instructions from their bosses  (middle managers) or felt organisational pressure to do things that they believed were sleazy, unethical or sometimes illegal. Arjoon said corporate ethics programmes, mission statements, codes of conduct and hotlines provided little help in such environment.

“Company executives were out of touch on ethical issues. Either they were too busy or tried to avoid responsibility.” Young managers solved their own dilemmas largely using personal reflection or their individual values. Providing general recommendations on how ethics could be applied to business, Arjoon said businesses must make sure the people at the top have integrity, that ethical behaviour was seen to be believed, and that the right systems are in place so people of integrity are not tempted to go astray. “Build on an open culture of integrity and over communicate it. The tone at the top is what really dictates,” Arjoon said.