Leading towards Change of
Ethics and Caring: Resisting
Temptation and Reaping the
Benefits
Businesses stand at a
crossroads, and our
current systems are not
sustainable given the
present economic and
environmental crises.
What is Cost-Effective?
Cost reduction is becoming the
rule, and cutting unnecessary
business expenses has become a
mantra.
The good news is that there is a growing body
of research that supports resisting the
temptation to cut what in the longer term
matters the most to both business and
society.
The energy produced in caring
organisational contexts drives productivity,
with all this implies for business success.
These and many other studies demonstrate something that can
help responsible business leaders obtain support for sound
decisions: that the energy produced in caring organisational
contexts drives productivity, with all this implies for business
success.9
Making the
Invisible Visible
To meet the challenge of
restructuring economic systems,
business leaders must look beyond
the policies of their own companies to
the larger economic and cultural
context.
Economics, Cultures,
and Values
Economics is above all about values. So, to
understand where necessary change
economics is needed, we must examine
cultural beliefs about what is valuable.
In order to better understand what is or is
not considered culturally valuable, the
conventional cultural categories -
Looking at economics from this new systemic
perspective makes it possible to see that the
kinds of values, and thus economic systems, a
society supports is very different depending on
the degree of its orientation to either end of the
partnershipdomination continuum.