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The Moral Advantage
How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing
As for the moral advantage in business, of all places, everyone knows a modicum of ethics is called for in any business - you can't cheat your customers forever and get away with it. But wouldn't it be more advantageous if you actually could get away with it? Profits would soar out of sight! Then you would really have an advantage, or so the thinking might go.
The notion of seeking the moral advantage is a new way of thinking about ethics and virtue in business, an approach that does not accept the need for trade-offs between ambition and conscience. Far from obstructing the drive for success, a sense of moral purpose can help individuals and companies achieve at the highest - and most profitable - levels.
Cynicism dominates our attitudes about what it takes to succeed in business. A common way of thinking about morality in business goes something like this:
Ethical conduct is an unpleasant medicine that society forces down business people's throats to protect the public interest from business avarice.
Morality gets in the way of the cold, hard actions truly ambitious Skepticism people must take to reach their goals.
Moneymaking is inevitably tainted by greed, deceit, and exploitation.
The quest for profits stands in opposition to everything that is moral, fair, decent, and charitable.
Skepticism about moneymaking goes back a long way. The Bible warns that it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. "Behind every great fortune," wrote French novelist Honoré de Balzac in the 1800s, "lies a great crime." British author G. K. Chesterton sounded the same theme in the early 20th century, noting that a businessman "is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation."
The contemporary media often characterize business as nothing more than a self-serving exercise in greed, carried out in as corrupt and ruthless a manner as possible. In television and movies, moneymaking in business is tainted by avarice, exploitation, or downright villainy. The unflattering portrayals have become even more pointed over time. In 1969, the businessman in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus advises the story's protagonist, "To get by in business, you've got to be a bit of a thief." He seems like a benignly wise, figure compared with Wall Street's 1980s icon, Gordon Gekko, whose immortal words were "Greed is good."
?Yet some important observers of business see things differently. Widely read gurus such as Stephen Covey and Tom Peters point to the practical utility of moral virtues such as compassion, responsibility, fairness, and honesty. They suggest that virtue is an essential ingredient in the recipe for success, and that moral standards are not merely commendable choices but necessary components of a thriving business career. This is a frequent theme in commencement addresses and other personal testimonials: Virtuous behavior advances a career in the long run by building trust and reputation, whereas ethical shortcomings eventually derail careers. The humorist Dorothy Parker captured this idea in one of her signature quips: "Time wounds all heels.
?So who's right --- those who believe that morality and business are mutually exclusive, or those who believe they reinforce one another? Do nice guys finish last, or are those who advocate doing well by doing good the real winners? Is the business world a den of thievery or a haven for upstanding citizens?
With colleagues Howard Gardner at Harvard University and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at Claremont Graduate University, I've examined this question by interviewing 40 top business leaders, such as McDonald's CEO Jack Greenberg and the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, between 1998 and 2000 as part of our joint "Project on Good Work." We found that a strong sense of moral purpose not only promotes a business career but also provides a telling advantage in the quest to build a thriving enterprise. In fact, a sense of moral purpose stands at the center of all successful business innovations. Far from being a constraining force that merely keeps people honest and out of trouble, morality creates a fertile source of business motivation, inspiration, and innovation.
This is different from the view of morality you'll encounter in a typical business-ethics course. It's so different that I now speak about moralities, in the plural, when discussing the role of virtue and ethics in business. Morality in business has three distinct faces, each playing its own special role in ensuring business success.
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