Blessed Buzzwords: Defining Ethical Business

The five panelists and a lively audience of participants explored the meaning of words, not in any pedantic sense, but in an effort to root the discussion of business and economics in the original, true connotations of the worlds involved. For example in analyzing "profits", the French term benefices was considered because it conveys the sense that profits are to benefit the community. "Value", shareholder or other, should mesh with the additional connotation of true value. "Competition" or “concurrence” is derived from “running together”. "Economics" comes from the words for the welfare of the household. In short, even the contemporary use of terms, and more so their spirit, have deviated from the underlying values that they originally conveyed. The Hindu principle of Ahimsa is an example of a term that offers a guiding framework: it means to do no harm and avoid violence. The notion of a ledger for business, with good on one side and risks and damage on the other, also offers a useful and potentially practical guide for ethics as much as for balanced finance.

A meditation on "toast" offered an evocative metaphor: the message was that we must seek to be truly aware of the realities of the moment – a theme that echoed from the poetic discussions of the Forum’s first day. This, it was suggested in several ways, is what spirituality is truly about. Even something as mundane as toast is worthy of contemplation because it anchors us in realities, something that is not only philosophical but an urgent imperative. This admonition is perhaps true most of all for enterprise leaders whose decisions have far-ranging global impacts.

In addition, the "silo phenomenon", which is the separation and distance of disciplines, troubled us all. The discussion linked two improbable topics and fields – business and spirituality – that often appear as opposites or a contradiction. Thus, it confronted us with the challenge of finding paths between these different worlds, whether the divisions are built between religions, disciplines, or world views. We need passerelles, a term that originally meant "footbridges", and today conveys new paths, and thus new ways to communicate and work together.

Moderation and balance: Mohammed Kabbaj highlighted this central premise of Islam in contemplating le juste milieu, perhaps best translated as "striking a fair and good balance". That balance is challenged by the frightening dangers that climate change presents and the excruciating and stark choices it seems to offer not only to policy makers but also as it places demands on the wonders of technology. The two obvious choices are impossible and unacceptable: halting growth and condemning today’s poor to continued poverty versus untrammeled growth that depletes nonrenewable resources and destroys the world. Balance and moderation simply must be a central part of the solution, whether it addressed the perils of excess like waste (discarded bread, gadgets, and clothing simply treated as garbage) or the desire for wealth and power.

With the world at a critical point economically, environmentally, and perhaps also spiritually (perhaps even to a point of no return), the long-touted need for new paradigms takes on a fresh urgency. Faouzi Skali stressed that the initiative of the Kingdom of Bhutan, and its romantically appealing Gross National Happiness, offers a real path towards such a paradigm, which is based perhaps less on happiness and joy but instead simply on well-being. The important work of the Sarkozy/Stiglitz commission and the United Nations to define indicators that can show us the way and keep us on the path is a serious challenge.

The dilemmas of wealth and poverty underlay much of the discussion, but Jean-Francois de Lavison highlighted two especially important points: that the issue is far less about rich versus poor countries than we often imagine. There are great gulfs between rich and poor in every society. As business seeks to return to its roots of providing for the common good, its responsibility to the community represents a material but also spiritual call. Humanity and responsibility are what spirituality is about.

Our panelists left us with two acrostics (poems with the first letters of each line forming a vertical word) that, for our record, we should preserve, though translation masks their force. They center us on the two main topics and issues for the discussion: ethics and spirituality.

Thus, Ethics (ethique):

E for ecoute (listening)
T for tolerance
H for humility
I for the individual (ethics is very personal)
Q for questioning (always question, always seek to learn)
U for universal, and
E for example (one’s life is about what one does, far more than what one says).

And Spirituality (spiritualites):

S for the self (soi)
P for peace
I for inquietude (doubt and uncertainty)
R for respiration (breathing)
I for interrogation (questioning)
T for treasure (often hidden)
U for unity
A for amour (love)
L for lucidity
I for integrity
T for tolerance
E for esprit (spirit), and
S for silence, and the power of silence.