Week 11 Entry - Public Virtue

 This week, I learned a lot about the importance of trust in business.  It makes total sense to me and goes along with some things I learned last semester.  Our Founding Fathers spoke and wrote about the importance of Public Virtue, personal virtue and self-interest in how we conduct ourselves as a society.  It was refreshing to see this addressed in the article entitled, “What’s a Business For”, by Charles Handy.  We are intended to conduct ourselves with virtue so that business interests can flow freely and easily.  Growth is not possible without mutual trust in the business world.  The legal system, intended to defend the rights of the oppressed or wronged, has become a big business, in part because people, when there is prosperity, often fail to practice personal virtue, which in turn causes public virtue to decline.  Once there is a decline in public virtue, there is a lack of trust in society and a breakdown in the moral fibers which hold society together.  Business and business ethics has become a force larger than the ethics it is expected to keep.  One of my favorite statements from this reading is “Markets rely on rules and laws, but those rules and laws in turn depend on truth and trust.  Conceal truth or erode trust, and the game becomes so unreliable that no one will want to play.”  This is the truth. 

The real justification for the existence of business is that business must do more than to just make a profit.  It must do something more or better than itself.  To think otherwise is to buy into self interest being the motivating factor behind the purpose of business.  To lose sight of the importance of the “greater good” causes selfishness and self-centeredness where the “almighty me” takes over and doesn’t allow trust and honesty to prevail.  

The two solutions I agreed with are truth telling and prioritizing a bigger picture, as well as being involved in causes. These practices would go far in keeping private and public virtue a priority in our culture and society and allow truth and trust to flourish.  That is what leads to true prosperity.