Of Ethics

Dear my avid blog readers,

My first paper during my MBA class back in 2001 was on Ethics. It was suggested to me by my Professor during our disscussion after class. Hence, during the presentation day, my colleagues are having all these "trendy" topics of "comptetive advantage", "JIT", "Performance Evaluation" and what not. Me? A rather dull and conservative discussion on "Ethics". But it turns out that my topic has received a warm intelectual discourse from the class.

The Chinese community has been known as a business community for centuries. They are a very practical and pragmatic people. They will court you, they will entice you until they get what they want. And after that, they will leave you alone (leave you alone? hahahaha). Is that ethical? Doesn't that logical in a capitalist society? Isn't?

Yes, the Chinese are a very pragmatic society. As they are known for centuries as traders, businessmen, and corporate leaders, they only value profit and maximum wealth for their stakeholders. Ethics? Well, let see if that can brings them more money.

But ethics has now gain weightage as an important variable for businessmen, especially in a post-enron business calamity era. Companies are now looking for an ethical business partner to ensure a "sustainable" profit during the coming years. Investors are looking for an ethical countries to invest. HR managers are now incorporating ethical values as one of their recruitment processes. The word "corporate governance", "transparency", "intregrity", "the rule of law" have gain popularity as we cruise our way past the second world economic's catasthropy, after the first a century ago in 1920.

The reason I wrote on ethics is to emphasis how important it is in our daily life. Malaysia would have being a developed country long ago if everybody done their part and stayed away from unethical deeds. Malaysia is a resource-based nation. We have copper, petroleum, gas, timber and even gold unlike Singapore who used to be a green field. The reason why we have been so lef behind is because of the so called "ketirisan", "rasuah" which lead to unefficient distribution of resource. What a waste.