It's time to stop bowing to shareholder greed

Among the many unpleasant aspects of the current wave of bank scandals is the weariness that they engender. "Scandal fatigue" causes people to believe that this is just the way that business operates. All that can be done is to clean up the more outrageous examples of malpractice.

To some extent, it is true that if companies make it clear that they exist to increase the value of shares for shareholders, and to pay fat salaries to top people, then that message distorts every level of business. It makes corruption of every kind - from squeezing the customer when targets have to met at branch level, to calmly accepting that you have the right to evade tax if you are high enough up the chain - much more likely.

Greed is institutionalised, so therefore it gets rewarded in the system as it now exists.

The general response is to shrug and ask, what can be done? People point to the fact that left-wing ideologies failed when implemented at state level, as if that proved that right-wing, market-driven ideologies remain the only viable alternative.

I thought about a banker with the somewhat unfortunate name of Dee Hock when the latest scandals erupted. He was a driving force behind one of the most successful financial innovations ever, an international business that as of December 31st, 2003, was generating more than US$2.9 trillion in annual sales volume. Yet he retired at 55 with no personal fortune and no stock options, because he had no interest in amassing personal wealth on a grand scale. He planned to spend time with his grandchildren, but the passion for another innovative idea drove him out of retirement.

Visa International was his first innovation. In 1968, the first major credit card company in America was on the verge of collapse, because other banks had taken up the idea and chaos had ensued, with outrageous stunts being pulled to entice customers.

Dee Hock was appointed to find a way out of the mess, but he went much further. Long before the invention of electronic credit transfers, he envisioned a credit card organisation that "could guarantee, transport, and settle transactions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, around the globe". His vision appeared impractical and impossible.

What company or corporation could handle such an incredibly complex task? No one bank could, but if they all co-operated, it could be done. It went against all the tenets of competitiveness.

Yet within a relatively short period, financial institutions were persuaded both to co-operate and compete at the same time.

They compete fiercely for each other's business because the member financial institutions issue the cards not Visa. They co-operate because they honour transactions on each other's cards no matter where and by whom they are issued. It is both simple and staggeringly complex. You cannot buy shares in Visa because it is owned by 21,000 financial institutions.

It is profit-making, and is by no means an altruistic outfit, as those of us who have to carry pocket fire extinguishers because our credit card is constantly in danger of bursting into flames on our person can testify. Yet it is a different model of doing business, one which once was dismissed as unworkable.

The financial success of Visa means that Dee Hock's other great passion - that of the purpose and principle-driven ethical model of business - cannot be taken lightly.

He believes that the day of the rigid, profit-driven company is over because they cannot adapt fast enough to deal with the changes coming in the next decades. His organisation, Chaordic Commons, states its reason for existence as being "to develop, disseminate and implement new concepts of organisation that result in more equitable sharing of power and wealth, and greater compatibility with the human spirit and the biosphere."

I cite Hock not to endorse his organisation or his methodologies. I mention him as just one example of literally thousands of highly-motivated business people who see that ethics must be given more than lip-service, and because he is a highly-successful banker.

You can hear the cynical response already; the mutters of "unworkable" and "utopian". Strangely, people seem to prefer to live with the rot in the current system. For example, from the 1980s onward, the banks were making it clear that they had lost interest in the small customer.

Everything was designed to keep the smaller customer at arms-length, whether it was the ATM machine or the more recent advent of online banking. Branches closed, with no thought of the impact on communities.

The kind of integrity that used to be taken for granted in the old-style bank manager seemed to become dispensable.

If business is only about generating profit, scandals don't matter as long as the share price and core business remain high. The saddest news this week was that bank share prices were unaffected. That news will cause banking institutions to heave a sigh of relief, and continue with business as usual.

Yet business as usual is exactly what will not work. Ethical principles are vital in the 21st century. For one thing, the model of business in operation today came into existence when nature was still viewed as a bottomless resource, and an endless repository of our waste. We know that to be unsustainable. A core premise has to change. Similarly, institutions in recent times have often operated as if high moral standards were for the nice guys who finish last. By making profit the main aim of business, rather than an intermediate aim that helps to facilitate people to live more human lives, we have introduced an enormous distortion. As a result, many in the wealthy West live lives of noisy, stress-filled desperation, while the poor are still scourged in the developing world.

There is an alternative for those with the vision to see that ethics and business not only can be compatible, but in the future may well give a competitive edge. People who are sold on a common purpose work better, generate higher-quality ideas and can be trusted to innovate because they are steeped in a company vision. It is time to stop paying homage to shareholder greed.