Significance of Moral Education In Business

In order to win customer’s loyalty and faith, moral character of the businessmen matters the most, writes the MBA student, SAIF MUKHTAR

One of the most important elements of a prosperous business is the moral character of the businessmen, for it creates a milieu where customers have faith in the company and its products/services. This faith ultimately leads to flourishing business. If we talk about 

Business, per se, its basic aim is to earn profit in terms of money, which satisfies the lowest level needs of human beings (Security, physiological needs) according to Abraham Maslow, a well known management thinker.

According to Maslow, and almost all the theorists in HR, when a person’s lower level needs like physiological and security needs are satisfied the person moves up in need hierarchy and craves for higher level needs like esteem and self-actualization .

 This has been quite visible in the activities of business moguls like Vijay Path Singhaniya, Richard Branson who have attempted and achieved a number of records in the dome of aeronautics. There are businessmen like Bill Gates and our own Azim Premji whose donations towards health and education of the needy are well known to the world. How can one forget Tata group of companies who have made winning customer loyalty and general welfare as their main objective.

 Pursuing this objective they left Singur( West Bengal) despite spending millions of rupees for developing infrastructure there. But in some cases, which are not rare now, Maslow and other theorists become meaningless when people like Ramlinga Raju(Satyam founder), Kenneth Lay (founder of Enron) are not able to move up from the lowest level and pilfer shareholder’s money in an attempt to satisfy their insatiable lust for money. The history of business is full of examples of  such cash mongers. These incidents have compelled us to ponder on the force behind such a behavior and every time the answer is lack of moral education. The answer lies in understanding a simple analogy.

An ambitious, competitive, and efficient businessman would be most satisfied when his firm(s) exploit new horizons of success but this would happen only when the businessmen are aware of  different tastes and they are not restricted to earning money as the only flavour of success. This needs proper ethical/moral education right from primary level instead of teaching it only at the graduation level, when a person’s moral character has already become rigid. Such an education would help protect great entrepreneurs from being seduced by the evil of blind greed and would help them in growing their business and serving shareholder’s interest.

The writer is an MBA Student, AMU.