Last Thursday, in the first of a three-part
series of discussions organised by St Paul’s Institute and sponsored by CCLA,
an ethical fund manager, Archbishop Vincent Nichols placed before
the audience, challenging views for our society and it’s communities, to
consider what sort of City it is that we want that would better serve society. As keynote speaker for the
evening, Archbishop Vincent took a view of the City as a place where people
live and work. Since it is people who make the City, it follows that the City
can therefore be a place of human flourishing. The Archbishop’s talk therefore
was entitled ‘ Good People ’.
Good first had to be defined, itself
not an easy process since we no longer share many of the patterns of thought which would help
establish its meaning. Instead of applying the conventional rationale of morality and duty he
felt it would help to understand ‘desire’ as a vital and fundamental driving
force of ethics and goodness. In our quest for relationships of
deep friendship and for our lives to have meaning so as to make a contribution, we
all have in us a desire for ‘good’. The Archbishop said
that respecting others and seeking their good was essential to one’s own
good. Seeking the good and responding to its attractiveness further takes us out
of narrow, self-centered attitudes. It is he suggested the path to true
human flourishing and fulfilment.
However he did recognise that our
desire for the good can easily be distorted through selfishness greed, pride or
lust. It is a struggle between
good and evil that runs in every aspect of our lives. Thus in order to lean to
the good we need to learn to pursue virtues that become our moral agents.
These would help us do that which is right and honourable irrespective of
reward and regardless of what we are obliged to do. The Archbishop then briefly
explored the fundamentals of the virtues of prudence, justice, courage and
temperance.
Prudence or right
reasoned action was the opposite of rashness and carelessness. Courage ensured firmness and the
readiness to stand by what we believe in times of difficulty while Justice enabled us to give what was due
to others by respecting their rights and fulfilling our duties towards them and
the virtue of Temperance which helps
us moderate our appetites and use of the world’s created goods was the opposite of consumerism and the
uninhibited pursuit of pleasure. These together form essentials of a happy life.
The formation of good people starts in the family
which is the first school of citizenship. Loving, stable families are the
vital building block of every society. Schools come next and are
important in building character, as are universities and in the context of the
City, the business schools. Whilst we should look to these institutions
of the community to foster virtue and thereby build
character, we should also look to the institutions of commerce to nurture and
strengthen character. Such institutions should have a clear sense of purpose so as to be
enterprises of ‘good purpose’.
When sight of purpose is lost then
breakdowns of the system occur. Reflecting on the Francis Review into
Staffordshire NHS Trust, Archbishop Vincent quoted the head of the professional
standards authority who spoke of leaders having lost sight of their moral
purpose. They seemed to have forgotten
they exist to do good. Concern for finances had taken priority over care, compassion and
respect leading him to say that “unless you know the purpose for which you are running an
organisation you will never get the ethics right within it”.
That sense of ‘good purpose’ was not
just for the public sector but also for commercial organisations. Mark Carney,
the incoming Governor of the Bank of England spoke of the speaking of
the need for companies to “define clearly the purpose of their
organisations and promote a culture of ethical business”, and, in doing
so, for employees to have “a sense of broader purpose, grounded in strong
connections to their clients and their communities”. It is not simply a focus on profit as
an end in itself but Archbishop Vincent suggested that the true justification
of business was when profit was made while making the world a
better place. Goods and services produced that
truly serve people, create employment, offer fair returns
to investors, while minimising harm. Any business looking to remain true
to that purpose needed people with technical skills and competencies as well as the
required character and virtues he outlined earlier. These “ architects of lasting business
success ”in staying true to their virtues would create a
culture within their organisations that actually promotes and strengthens good
practice.
It should be noted that the
exploration of ‘good people bound by good purpose’ comes up against the limits of law and
regulation since these mechanisms are slow to react and new rules usually deal with
the last problem not the next one. Furthermore a compliance
mentality creates perverse incentives while increasing bureaucracy. Rules
become a lazy proxy for morality and people think that if what they do is not
against a rule, it must be in order. Such a society he counselled, would become inherently
fragile. What is required the Archbishop believed was a fundamental transformation of
purpose, so that business, and the financial sector is seen by everyone as it
should be - at the service of society. Reform though must be credible
or as John Kay, an economic commentator says, it will take another financial
crisis before the City really wakes up to the scale of reform that is needed.
Archbishop Vincent though is firm
in his belief that there is great potential for good in people which far too
many employers do not release or encourage because of the primary aim to
maximise short term profit. In mitigation, companies tended to justify
themselves through additional programmes of social benefit or philanthropy but as the Archbishop insisted, these acts of benevolence should be
supplementary to the shared value created by the core work of the business
activity. Rather than react to laws and guidelines or engage in these programs, it was far more important for business to have a clear purpose to serve society. To this end, the quality of leadership is critical since all the good influences that support the way for a
better society is hugely influenced by these choices made by leaders. The
Archbishop drew on Paul Polman’s remarks as CEO of Unilever when he reminded the assembled guests at the launch
conference of the Blueprint for Better Business last September that in the long
term no business can succeed in a society that fails.
The Christian instinct Archbishop Vincent affirmed, sees the potential for good in a city and gave us all food for thought in
noting that the Bible started in a garden and ended in a city. He then drew
our attention to the setting of the evening’s lecture that the beauty that is
St Paul’s Cathedral invited those of us present to gaze upwards and place our
hopes and fears in the context of the Eternal. It also perhaps afforded us recognition
of our frailty, our need of one another and our shared destiny. In
closing, Archbishop Vincent left us with his impression that humanity had
a most extraordinary capacity for good and that he deeply
believed that there are many untapped
ways by which we could organise the world of work in service of the common
good.
There then followed a discussion with the panel consisting of Baroness Helena Kennedy, Tracey McDermott of the FSA, Peter Selby who is the director of St Paul's Institute. Proceedings were under the chair and direction of Stephanie Flanders, the economics editor of the BBC. Questions were put to Archbishop Vincent from both the panel and audience. Archbishop Vincent's responses in the video are well worth noting.
There then followed a discussion with the panel consisting of Baroness Helena Kennedy, Tracey McDermott of the FSA, Peter Selby who is the director of St Paul's Institute. Proceedings were under the chair and direction of Stephanie Flanders, the economics editor of the BBC. Questions were put to Archbishop Vincent from both the panel and audience. Archbishop Vincent's responses in the video are well worth noting.
Pictures - Marcin Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk
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