It’s funny sometimes how things that at first glance seem
unconnected, later come together in a kind of synchronicity. For instance, yesterday I read an article
about a study that suggested large companies whose CEOs are former members of
the U.S.
military are less likely to commit fraud than companies whose CEOs never
served. Later I watched an episode of
Mad Men where an employee of the fictional advertising agency featured in that
show faced a moral dilemma. She had to decide if she would commit an immoral
act for a client who could potentially be very lucrative for both her and her
employer, or forgo the act and potentially lose the client and his money.
While the
article’s study showed far less fraud by ex-military CEOs, it also showed that their
companies made less money. It was
supposed that executives with a military background are rule-followers and not
innovators, thus they were more about maintaining than expanding, and that when
the line between right and wrong turned gray, they stepped back until it was
thick and black again. A feather in the
cap for the ex-military CEOs is they perform better during downturns. It was suggested having been on a battlefield
makes one less likely to be too upset over tough times and slow returns.
The article also asked which
company you’d rather have your pension invested in; the lower performing
ex-military led company or the better performing non-ex-military led one. Knee jerk reaction to this question would
likely place most of us on the side of
the better performing company, but then the question was raised, How much more likely
is it that a non-military background CEO would move his jobs offshore. It doesn’t really matter which type of
company I put my retirement in, if my job moved to another country and I had no
income to invest.
In the Mad
Men episode the employee elected to commit the immoral act. The ad agency got the client, and she got a
partnership and a 5% share. There was
another character that was sure they would get the client with her having to
perform the act, but he was out voted by the other executives.
But these
points might be moot, because ex-military led companies are becoming
extinct. Without the draft fewer and
fewer business men and women are serving before they go into the business
world. Are we losing a group of leaders
who serve with honor and have a distinct sense of right and wrong, or are there
leaders, and future leaders, in the business world who want it to be a business
world where ethics is considered with equal weight as the bottom line?
A group of
graduates from the Harvard
Business School,
class of 2009, have started a movement to have MBAs take a sort of Hippocratic Oath,
to act responsibly and ethically. I’m
not sure that would work though. Doctors
are held by that oath because there is far more accountability in the operating
room than there is in the boardroom, and profits are profits.
I don't know a lot of MBAs, but I would imagine since they come from the same human race as the rest of us, that there are good ones and bad ones. Of the few I know, I realize which are which and in a small sampling, the good ones don't seem to be as wealthy as the bad ones. If you consider wealth in monetary terms.
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