To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. — 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt
 

Our graft-busters have been hogging the limelight of late — and that is good news. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is hard at work and communicating to the rest of us that enough is enough. It’s about time, if you ask me. One too many legal and ethical violations have been committed in our corporate and public offices for the average Malaysian to stomach.

Our image as a steadfast and trustworthy people is being eroded by a bunch of kleptocrats and crooked business opportunists looking to make a dishonest buck whenever an opportunity arises. Look in the newspaper virtually any day of the week and you will find at least one business or political scandal in which a company or a group of individuals appear to have violated the rules or standards of behaviour generally accepted by our oh-so polite society. Have we not learnt anything?

The 1997/98 Asian financial crisis and 2008/09 global financial crisis hit our economy hard. But by dint of hard work, discipline and home-grown ingenuity, we have survived them. But now, a few of us are running fast and loose with questionable ethics and practices.

Company finances have been manipulated in order to show better balance sheets than actually exist, toxic waste has been allowed to flow into rivers, bribes have been paid in order to secure business deals, discriminatory practices have prevented the employment or promotion of members of a particular group, and the list goes on. What gives?

In a nation where the educated elite run ministries, government-linked companies (GLCs) and major companies, this trend is worrying. I believe we need to instil the right values in our best and brightest. I think we should turn “management” into a profession.

Managers create, shape and influence the lives and incomes of nearly every person on the planet. Given such far-reaching influence, the management community has an obligation to ensure that their practitioners understand the grave and weighty responsibilities they assume when they engage in local and global activities.

An occupation only earns the right to be a profession when some ideals that go beyond following the law become an integral part of the conduct of the people in that field. I believe the management community must learn to be a profession, and in the light of recent events, learn it quick.

There have been many debates and discussions since Harvard College established its highly ranked business school in 1908 about whether or not management qualifies as a profession. Many illustrious professors weighed in on the subject. I say enough with the rhetoric. Let’s get on with the action.

Managers must now formally assume the obligations of a profession, which means responsible action as a group, devotion to its own ideals, the creation of its own codes, the capacity for its honours and the responsibility for its own disciplines, the awards of its own service. It should start here, in our backyard.

The Malaysian management community should emulate the medical and legal profession, me thinks. They should establish a code of conduct that governs the behaviour of their members. The code should establish constraints on the action of the members who do not necessarily follow the dictates of the market.

As with doctors who may be required to serve those who cannot afford their services or lawyers who may be constrained from discussing the truth of what they know (despite public clamouring for information), managers must show they are worthy of trust and protected against the purely self-interested logic of markets.

I also believe that the Malaysian management community should enforce the codes of their profession through a governing body of respected peers who can ensure compliance. For example, doctors can lose their licences and lawyers can be disbarred.

The Malaysian management community should also require its members to demonstrate mastery of a codified body of knowledge. Just as doctors must pass their board examinations and lawyers must pass the bar, managers must show high mastery of such specific knowledge, such as accounting, finance and marketing.

And finally, the Malaysian management community should require their members to continue their education throughout their careers and stay abreast of the evolving knowledge in their field. This is to ensure that as businesses grow and expand, the managers do too.

If the Malaysian management community can construct an oath similar to the medical profession’s Hippocratic Oath for its members to swear to, they can manage themselves, their finances and their firms in ways that create value without adding unnecessary risk to the system.

They will also earn healthy profits without losing the trust of those who work with them or compete against them. They can work with the understanding that they are the stewards of a great trust that must be protected.

In the Harvard Business School library rests a tablet that describes the institution’s vision: “To promote knowledge and integrity in the art of finance, industry and commerce.” If that simple and clear vision were realised, the entire field of management would be transformed. If we had that vision embedded in the hearts of our Malaysian managers, then we can proudly say that they will develop into innovative, principled and insightful leaders who can change not only our beloved nation but also the world.

During the 2007 to 2010 US subprime mortgage crisis, the world lost US$50 trillion in financial assets — roughly equal to the world’s GDP at the time. The aftermath was not pretty. These losses brought long-standing, successful global companies to their knees. The epicentre was Wall Street but major financial displacement occurred in nearly every city across the face of the earth.

Kuala Lumpur was not spared. Big Malaysian companies were forced to scale down their businesses, relook their strategies and revise their targets in the light of the global economic upheaval. But through it all, Malaysian banks and corporations learnt to trim their fat and be lean and nimble in order to survive and compete competently both locally and on the global stage. As a result, they got stronger and financially more stable.

Beyond all of the above, we want sustainability at our firms and ministries, and making management a formal profession in Malaysia, I believe, will go a long way towards helping us achieve that objective.

Zakie Shariff sits on the board of two local universities and has a deep interest in developing strong corporate leaders

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