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The Possibility of Kindness in Business: Re-visiting the Case of Malden Mills from a Jewish Ethics Perspective
Abstract
The first section of this chapter begins with a summary of the case of Aaron Feurstein and his decision to rebuild his Polartec factory in Massachusetts and to continue paying his idle workers after a devastating fire destroyed most of his production facilities. The next two sections of this paper will explore two highly divergent interpretations. The first version is the standard one taught in business schools and emphasizes Feuerstein’s overly emotional reaction to the fire and the need to apply the tools of rational-decision making, even in the face of powerful intuitions to act otherwise. The second interpretation is less focused on explaining the ultimate outcome and is more interested in providing a deeper description of how Aaron Feuerstein may have understood the human meaning of his decisions to keep the employees on the payroll and to rebuild in Lawrence, MA. In the simplest terms, Feuerstein, motivated by his commitment, care, and compassion towards his long-time employees, in a bold defining moment, knowingly chose to surrender to the traditional value of kindness. The third section explores how one might go about choosing between these two divergent interpretations. It turns out that in choosing between interpretations it is our own values and beliefs and our own vision of business and its possibilities that are in play. Finally, the concluding section of the paper shifts its focus forward and considers the future of kindness in business. To the extent that every act of kindness is and must be justified in purely strategic terms, we might continue using the term kindness, but its original significance will continue to atrophy to the point where the word itself becomes hollow and meaningless. On the other hand, if businesses legitimate themselves to the public because of the wealth businesses produce and because of the voluntarily cooperative ways in which the wealth is produced, genuine kindness in business will potentially flourish. But this second possibility will happen only to the extent that our society truly does value kindness for its own sake.KeywordsJudaismKindnessCareCompassionRational decision-making
Traditional corporate accounting, defined here as the publication of a balance sheet and income statement, is broken in the sense that these traditional statements no longer provide useful information to investors and others. This may be surprising to some readers as it has not always been the case, but there is ample and growing empirical evidence to suggest that today it is. The purpose of this chapter is to propose that it is time for the accounting profession and businesses to adopt a much broader concept labeled here as corporate accountability. It is defined as the public and systematic communication of information to justify an organization’s actions (past, present, and future) to various stakeholders. Baruch Lev and Feng Gu have suggested the Economic Resources and Consequences Report as an important example of how this might be done. Hewlett-Packard (HP) provides a good real-world example of a company moving in the right direction, but not without its own flaws. Nevertheless, HP’s example provides several useful lessons on how companies can move beyond the status quo. The problem of the lack of sound corporate accountability is particularly important given the main theme of this volume which posits the potential emergence of a Next Stage Capitalism. The thesis of this chapter is that without a broadening concept of corporate accountability there is little hope for significant positive change to gain real traction and it will be impossible for companies to demonstrate a social purpose beyond profit maximization in a credible way to outside stakeholders.
Of the division of labour (From book I, chapter 1) The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour. The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch.
Since economies are dynamic processes driven by creativity, social norms, and emotions as well as rational calculation, why do economists largely study them using static equilibrium models and narrow rationalistic assumptions? Economic activity is as much a function of imagination and social sentiments as of the rational optimisation of given preferences and goods. Richard Bronk argues that economists can best model and explain these creative and social aspects of markets by using new structuring assumptions and metaphors derived from the poetry and philosophy of the Romantics. By bridging the divide between literature and science, and between Romanticism and narrow forms of Rationalism, economists can access grounding assumptions, models, and research methods suitable for comprehending the creativity and social dimensions of economic activity. This is a guide to how economists and other social scientists can broaden their analytical repertoire to encompass the vital role of sentiments, language, and imagination.
Adrienne Rich (Baltimore 1929) es autora de: A Change of World; Blood, Bread and Poetry; What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics; Midnight Salvage; Dark Fields of the Republic; The Fact of a Doorframe; An Atlas of the Difficult World, entre otros. Ha obtenido numerosos premios, entre los cuales está el Common Wealth Award in Liteature, el Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize y la Beca MacArthur. Desde muy joven ha participado en la lucha por los derechos civiles, particularmente en movimientos antirracistas y antibélicos.
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