This blog shuts down for August. It heads for the beach and takes time out to reflect.
So this valedictory post before the break seems a good time to step back and consider an issue that’s usually crowded out by the day-to-day: the ethics of BPM.
Most of us are concerned about the ethics of how we live and what we do. We want to be doing good, to be living an ethical life. We want our coffee to be responsibly sourced. We want to know our trainers were not manufactured using child labour. We prefer to invest in ethical pension funds. We want to feel assured that we are not conniving at injustice. So, since it takes up so much of our lives, the ethics of our work must matter a great deal.
For the purpose of this discussion, let’s define BPM as anything to do with performance improvement - CI, BPI, Lean, Six Sigma, whatever. And focus on the most difficult ethical issue it creates – its impact on jobs.
To keep it simple, let’s ignore outsourcing and assume that no jobs are ‘lost’ through outsourcing, they are simply transferred to a new location or new employer.
Millions have lost their livelihoods since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. The ILO reported that 20 milllion jobs were lost, 10 million of them jobs in emerging and developing countries. In its latest Outlook, the IMF says that ‘persistently high unemployment’ is a critical policy issue in the world’s advanced economies.
Against this background, the hard reality is that the business case for any significant BPM project is almost invariably based on job losses.
The jobs may be lost through automation, or through productivity increases. The BPM project will typically enable the same work to be done by fewer people. More positively, the BPM project may enable the same people to do more work – that is, there are no jobs lost immediately. But, even so, the societal effect is not dissimilar because economic growth will now create fewer jobs.
Put crudely, and for the sake of this argument, BPM seems to be a job-killer.
Now I believe, as will many of you, that work is about far more than simply generating wealth and meeting basic needs. Work provides each of us with a role in the community, it enables us to develop our talents in service to others, and to contribute to the advancement of society.
So it’s a serious question that deserves attention: Is BPM – my work– ethical?
Like you, I don’t want to hide behind excuses about being just one small cog in the corporate machine. Nor to sidestep ethics by saying that I have no choice, I have to do this to earn a living for my family.
The conclusion that I keep returning to though – and it would be interesting to hear yours - is that, despite what it entails, my work – BPM - is not unethical.
As I see it, continual performance improvement – the stuff that BPM relentlessly drives – leads to material and technological progress that is essential, and overwhelmingly for the good of humanity. It’s the reason that we have medical advances revolutionizing heathcare, and mobile networks that can transform productivity for small farmers in Africa, and agricultural revolutions that will feed the world’s fast expanding population, and cheap solar panels that can provide light in a village hut in the evenings so that the schoolchild can study.
While it may eliminate some jobs, this material progress creates new jobs – many of them highly-skilled - that never previously existed. My own son is working on a new frontier in molecular biology that holds great promise for medicine in the long term – but was unknown just ten years ago.
So the economist in me accepts the efficiency argument about creative destruction. And - the economist's moral cop-out - sees the implications for equity as a separate issue, to be dealt with at the societal level.
In reality, of course, equity is often ignored. As a result, progress enabled by BPM can be traumatic for individuals whose job just got automated, and for communities whose local factory just got closed down.
Neverthless, providing support for those who lose their jobs through material progress has, surely, to be a societal issue. It’s not capable of resolution at the level of the firm, at least in any economic framework remotely close to our world.
So we, as a society, have the responsibility to create an economic framework that encourages full employment. Whether or not tens of millions are unemployed, and many more millions under-employed on part-time work, reflects to large extent our values. We created this social reality, so we can change it. Ultimately, it’s a matter of how much we care about human solidarity.
In our world of global corporations, global trade and global migration, it’s difficult to imagine any ethical framework for advancement that is not both global in its scope and local in its application. The world has had enough of grand theories alone – it has also to be about changing me, here, now.
For me, the resolution lies in our recognition of the oneness of the human family. When we can see this world as our common homeland - and each other as fellow citizens of this planet - then we will have the moral framework, and the necessary volition, to transform our world and build a true prosperity: just, sustainable and post-consumerism.
‘Sophistry!’, I hear you claim, ‘it’s just to help you sleep well at night’. Well, maybe, I hope not.
Actually, the bigger ethical issue for many people is probably not BPM at all but Software Sales! It always surprises me how many people simply assume that all software salespeople lie most of the time. There’s a whole new debate: does the ethical software salesperson exist?
One final thought: it’s been marvellous to watch the ascendancy of ethics over the past three decades. When I started work, ethics was a valid topic in development economics but it was considered a non-issue in the developed world. Nowadays, it’s way beyond ethical discussions: organizations vie with each other in their Corporate Social Responsibility programs. CSR is often criticized by campaigners as inadequate, and perhaps sometimes it is. But just look at how far we’ve come!
It’s stirring too that ethical behaviour seems to be far more central to young people’s thinking. They are going to inherit this world. I think they might do a far better job in looking after it because their idealism has to be part of the solution.
Enough – where are my new Speedos? See you in September!
PS Final thought - for US readers, reeling at the thought that anyone might take a one month vacation. Let me hasten to reassure you that, while this blog may be in its fallow season, I shall indeed be working for some at least of August. Blame it on my Gallic heritage – my ancestors from Normandy were economic migrants to England back in the twelfth century. The thing is, if August was not the close-down, then we couldn’t enjoy nearly so much la Rentrée in September ;-)
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