I attended a talk on "Putting integrity into Finance - A positive Approach" by michael jensen on the 17th of September 2010 at Schulich School of Business and was propelled to share the ideas discussed.(http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=876312). Michael had a very interesting way of defining Integrity which was void of morality or ethics.
Drawing from the field of ontology he said that integrity is such a basic quality of a being that it cannot be termed as good or bad. An entity has integrity when it is whole and complete. For organizations to have integrity it is important that the design, the implementation and the use of the organization - all three are carried out in a manner which was intended and planned for.
He goes on to further say, that integrity can be maintained in two ways :
A. When the person (or organization) honors his promise in timely fashion.
B. If he is not able to honor the promise, then inform the other party well in time and be ready to accept consequences. There have been numerous cases where companies have gained customer loyalty at times of service failures just by ensuring that the company does everything in their power to amend their shortcoming.
Integrity comes when a person follows the rules and abides by the law of the land. Interestingly, integrity can also be maintained if a person chooses to not follow the rules but let everybody else around him know of his intention of not following them. He should accept all consequences openly and not have anything to hide. A shining example in this regard is Mahatma Gandhi who openly defied the government with his non-cooperation movement and accepted all the hardships.
Some of the interesting analogies he drew were :
1. Integrity compared to spokes of a bicycle : If some of the spokes of the bike are missing and we keep on adding weight onto it then the bike would eventually give in and fail.
2. Integrity as compared to gravity : Like integrity, gravity is neither good nor bad, it just is. Gravity keeps the atmosphere together or it is instrumental in causing death when a person walks off from the top of a building.
These ideas seemed revolutionary to me when I heard them.. I know I have been able to convey only a fraction of the enthusiasm I had when I attended the seminar itself but I would love to hear thoughts of people around this.
2 comments:
interesting lecture and blog...
I know the fact about their being something called as an "honor among the thieves". However I wonder how ppl would perceive a person's integrity when he commits a grievous crime or misdeed to keep up to his promises.... eg - terrorism
There is no doubt that the single most shocking revelation from the discussion stems from the fact that thieves can also have integrity.
Integrity by the way also requires that if you openly defy the laws of the land, you make every one else aware about it and be ready to face consequences.
Animals also have integrity, they make a promise to themselves for surviving and every action that they undertake is positioned towards that goal. They do not tend to hoard as that would not be true to their promise.
What I am trying to arrive at is that integrity is something very basic to all living organisms and organizations and cannot be judged as good or bad.
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