Harmony Equity Group

So over the course of the last two years or so I've been working with a remarkable team of individuals, both formally as well as informally, on attempting to revisit the basic assumptions of the role of business and commerce in society.

Watching everything go down with the financial industry has had me very agitated at times. It seems we often end up trying to blame a bad CEO or a few greedy people at the top or even an entire industry while we completely ignore the fact that the entire cultural context within which ALL corporate decisions are made is rooted firmly in a pervasive materialist ideology that explicitly states that human prosperity will follow material prosperity as a matter of course. (Though I wonder if the series of failed social experiments that we refer to as the 20th century might provide a bit of evidence to the contrary)

In the absence of any significant attempts at explicitly nurturing the moral, social and spiritual spheres of civilization, it doesn't seem to me like there should be much doubt as to the outcome. If the entire emphasis is on the material and we have a society that is completely lopsided in that direction, of course people will be irresponsible with other people's money, of course they will lie, cheat and steal, of course they will sacrifice any notion of morality for greater material gain. Because if human fulfillment follows material material fulfillment, then the "material advancement by any means necessary" actually becomes your moral code in a sense.

Of course this is not to say that material prosperity plays no role in human fulfillment...quite to the contrary. Surely it is tough to think lofty thoughts when you're starving, but the problem is when you place an undue emphasis on the material, neglecting the other essential elements of societal, and thus human, development.

So in this project of ours, we're trying to take a stab and learning something about an alternate role for business that takes into account these other elements. One that believes that the fundamental purpose of business or commerce is to ensure the prosperity of humankind. It seems to me that the very existence of NGO's and trusts is a testament to the failure of commerce to accomplish that purpose. As such, we're starting from that assumption, recognizing that we don't know what type of a system will actually emerge, but starting from the ground up in the hopes that we will start to discern patterns and trends that might contribute something meaningful to the global discourse on "Oh no! Institutions we once thought were impregnable are crumbling...what do we do?!!"

I've found it useful for myself to think about our initiative in terms of hardware and software elements.

The "hardware" side of this project is to define and implement an institutional structure that takes as a fundamental assumption the role of a firm to be an animator of progress for an ever-advancing civilization instead of strictly to increase shareholder value, where the definition of progress or development is more holistic and not strictly defined in material terms (Amartya Sen, for example, defines development as freedom). This also has to do with creating the appropriate incentive structures, ownership models, management structures and a collaborative IT framework that would be reflective of such a paradigm that takes into account the need for harmony of the material, social, moral and spiritual spheres of civilization.

The "software" side of the project really has to do with redefining the cultural context within which the corporation operates. Central to this is an HR development program that acknowledges our spiritual reality and recognizes its development as one of the responsibilities of a corporation. If the firm is to be player in advancing the interests of society, surely one of its responsibilities is to have a program that considers the spiritual and moral development of its workforce. The implications are not only profound for a healthy and collaborative atmosphere within which a unified organization could be far more productive, but really for the entire extended sphere of family and other social connections that the employees will now be interacting with on a more enlightened level.

Additionally, the fact that we can institute a curriculum without the approval of a board of education or that we can institute an experiment in governance models without worrying about losing an election should the experimental governance model prove to be defective, places the firm in an optimal positional to act as a Petri dish of sorts for other civil organizations that may not have the flexibility necessary for experimentation (which in turn is essential for our survival). It seems to me that the one big thing lacking from the entire field of political science is the science (at least from my perspective). It also seems to me that we need to start finding radically innovative ways of governing ourselves and of revisiting the role of commerce in society at an ever increasing pace as the forces of disintegration continue to wreak havoc in the old world order.

So...that's what I'm doing these days. Oh, and New Years Resolution: I'm going to blog TWICE A WEEK for 2009. I have an enforcer that has kindly promised to inflict severe pain upon me if I neglect that duty.