The corporation is a good example of a machine with no conscience says Ray Kurzweil. In charting the historical evolution of corporations, according to Colin P Marks, they evolved from a relative few, specially chartered associations in the 18th century and were generally organized to complete projects for the public good. Much has changed, for today they have become ‘ modern profit-making behemoths of modern America.’ Corporations may be subjected to regulation, but only in response to public outcry against perceived abuses of power. The corporate evolution has resulted in ‘a general separation of ownership and control’. Marks says that with regard to the corporate “conscience,” though corporations do not have one in the traditional sense of the word, the corporation is run by corporate managers who can act based upon their own sense of morals, but that alone does not account for corporate behavior that benefits society as a whole. But corporations do tend to act based upon the decisions of management as they interact with other factors.

Kenneth Goodpaster has written elegantly on this topic. ‘There is a certain ambivalence about business ethics in American society. We begin with skepticism about the moral credentials of the profit-driven market system.  As Irving Kristol wrote: “Two cheers for capitalism!” In business, as in campaign politics, we witness too often an unbalanced pursuit of goals and objectives. Over the last thirty-five years we have seen this pathology at work from Watergate to WorldCom. We have seen it in the career crashes of inside-traders like Ivan Boesky, in the corporate crashes of Enron and Andersen, and in the literal crashes of the World Trade Center and the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Call this the stimulus problem: a business system that lends itself to certain kinds of excess.

The ambivalence becomes evident when we recognize our reluctance to prescribe the most obvious cure for the stimulus problem: the use of moral criteria (beyond economic and political competition) to balance managerial (and political) decision making. Both our laws and our social norms caution managers and boards of directors (as agents of the corporation) against thinking that strays too far from a strict duty of care to shareholders. Perhaps we fear that incompetence might parade as virtue, or that ethical judgment might mean moral fanaticism. Either way, we seem to resist our most obvious alternative to amorality.’A corporation can and should have a conscience. Organizational agents such as corporations should be no more and no less morally responsible (rational, self-interested, altruistic) than ordinary persons. The analogy that holds between the individual and the corporation makes it possible to project to corporations the concept of moral responsibility as it applies to persons.’

Can a Corporate have a conscience? is an article scribed by Professor Goodpaster and co author, John B Matthews.

Kenneth E. Goodpaster,  a faculty professor at Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration, where he teaches a course entitled ‘Ethical Aspects of Corporate Policy’.

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman USA, has said that confidence in business has been seriously eroded over the last 12 months. The 2009 Trust Barometer is Edelman’s 10th annual report on trust, the interpretation of the results of research conducted in telephone interviews during December 2008 among a sampling of 25 to 64 year olds in 20 countries. The results aren’t promising. For instance:

Nearly two-thirds of informed public  (62%) trust corporations less than they did a year ago

Only 38% said they trust business to do what is right — a 20% plunge since last year — and only 17% said they trust information from a company’s CEO

Seventy-seven percent (77%) said they refused to buy products or services from a company they distrusted — the first time the survey explored people’s direct actions toward trusted and distrusted companies. Seventy-two percent (72%) criticized a distrusted company to a friend or colleague.

“Our survey confirms that it’s going to be harder to rebuild our economies because no institution has captured the trust that business has lost — trust is not a zero-sum game,” said Edelman in a statement.

What Is the Learning Code?

“Without the Learning Code to limit, filter and organize incoming information, your brain falls into a buzzing hubbub of chaos.”
– JW Wilson, Advanced Learning Institute

Organisations have started harnessing collaborative intelligence for learning leading to cognitive involvement of the community members, according to Vandana Ahuja of Customerthink, an independent research and publishing firm focused on customer-centric business strategy. Research has already proven the positive correlation between interactivity and learning outcomes. Interactivity interfaced with technology not only increases learning effectiveness, but also enhances the knowledge base of the community which includes organizational employees, customers and partners.

Learning Organizations Win!

Indeed, organizations that do not learn fast enough die, with more than 330 of the companies listed in the Fortune 500 in the 1960s no longer existing today, as evidence to the fact.

In the 21st century, corporations and government organizations must acknowledge that the speed at which their workforces can learn dictates their success. Unfortunately, most of us who have worked in these institutions recognize that there are severe limitations to the standard lock-them-in-a-box (classroom), talk-to-them, make-them-study-and-test-them method of learning. It is estimated that 85 to 90 percent of what the average attendee is taught at a traditional training course is forgotten within 12 weeks!

By understanding how to turn on the Learning Code, organizations can dramatically accelerate the speed of learning and the depth of behavioral change in their workforces.

Conventional training methods are often deemed a waste money, although their intention is to foster organisational growth. Now, according to A. J. Wilson, the creator of Cracking The Learning Code,  there is a science-based solution.

Cracking the Learning Code is designed for anyone frustrated by their organization’s speed of learning, retention and behavioral change.  An individual’s learning speed and capacity is deemed a highly positive asset, therefore, in an information-rich world we can no longer rely on unscientific learning systems designed 2,400 years ago in an agrarian age when information doubled every 1,000 years. We should be receptive to the cutting-edge scientific principles outlined in the Learning Code.

Lee White is a social media strategist with a keen ability to create presentations that articulate simply and effectively the value proposition of the connected enterprise: