What comes first to our mind when we hear the word ‘superstar’? Most probably the names of successful actors from cinema or successful sports players from any sports with a significant fan base. Successful business persons are never considered superstars irrespective of their successful career, charisma, or philanthropic activities. This phenomenon is seen in most societies across the world even though people in business have longer career tenure than in any other profession. On the contrary, business persons are often considered anti-heroes irrespective of their contributions to the communities they live.
Over the past few years, this trend has got a slight shift in the United States. After the emergence of Steve Jobs as the charismatic CEO of Apple Inc., he was successful in creating the stature of a real superstar. After Steve Jobs, many others including the founders of Google, Facebook, and a few other companies have got such a distinction. Now Elon Musk of Tesla is moving further on the track. Why do Indian businessmen or women fail to get such a reputation? Can we expect the changes in America will reflect in India as well in the recent future? Are the acts of businessmen also blamed for the situation? What else the business leaders can do to improve the perspective of people towards them? We will discuss these things in the paragraphs below.
As we discussed in the first, people in business have longer tenure in their professions compared to any other occupation in the world. This provides immense strength to business people to influence the societies around them. It is great a responsibility and authority at the same time. Many of them are not keeping the expected level of character to keep the responsibility while dealing with issues related to their business. I think this is the basic reason for the deterioration in the reputation of business people. Business families need to focus more on the fundamental values that made their business successful than on strategies and finances in the curriculum of business education for their children.
Behind every practice of mankind including politics, entertainment, agriculture, sports, and arts; business plays the basic role to make it run successfully. But the role can be positive or negative. If the people in business do not have the orientation towards the fundamental human values every such area will become destructive. If it is positive the outcome will be very constructive and appealing to the societies.
Heroes in movies often represent the expectation of change-makers in society. These heroes emerge as the saviors of society against the evil coming from inside or outside. But business people are leading society forward in the real world. They are actual saviors and real change-makers. Imagine a world without Google or Facebook or driverless cars or food delivery systems; which will be very uninteresting. Engineers are making the research and development of such devices or software, but business organizations make it commercially possible. Even the governments have little role in the making of such a world order. But these real change-makers are being judged for their negatives, not for the real value they added.
Another reason for the situation lies in the attitude of people towards money and wealth creation. traditionally, in any society wealth creation was considered a sin. There may historical reasons for this mentality but this message was carried forward from generation to generation. The reality is two degrees away from this belief. The first thing is wealth creation is not a sin which the world is realizing now. That may be one reason for the change that we have observed in the US in the second paragraph. A fundamental function of a business is to solve a distressing social issue, profitably. The process of solving such an issue brings profit to the business. This is the second important point that contradicts the traditional belief we are discussing.
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business” is a famous quote by Henry Ford.
Forbes Magazine may rank Jeff Bezos as the richest person on the earth. That makes people jealous of him. But the reality is he has made more money for others, i.e. his investors and other stakeholders of Amazon than himself. Every publicly listed company makes money for the public. A businessman or woman achieves this position by fighting many odds. These business houses are the biggest contributors to the national treasury through various taxes in all the countries across the world. Then what is the relevance of making badmouthing against such businessmen?
People who blame businesses often praise social organizations for the charity they organize. As observed by Prominent management thinker Dr. CK Prahlad in his book ‘Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’, charities cannot solve a social problem permanently. Only businesses can make such solutions that permanently solve social issues. Besides that, most charities are funded by business organizations through their CSR funds and other allocations and still hold the credit for such charities running successfully.
‘Compassionate Capitalism’ is a phrase coined by NR Narayana Murthy of Infosys. He referred to himself as a ‘Confused communist turned Compassionate capitalist’. It is proved over the years that capitalism, with all its side effects, is the only practical way to solve poverty. Compassion will reduce such side effects. As we referred to earlier in this article, the world order is designed by the technologies developed by the best corporations in the world, not by the governments. The importance and roles of corporations cannot be rejected by statements blaming business corporations.
The issues like global warming and the coronavirus outbreak made many such big corporations think to build alternatives to their existing model to create a more sustainable world. Many such corporations are working hard to achieve their NetZero commitments.
There are many incidents of corruption in the corporate world. Many such issues are originated from the pressure from the investment communities. The corporate world is now getting ready to move toward the triple bottom line principles. Corruption in the corporate world is not very common and it gets noticed easily as the social audit of such firms is very strong in most countries.
We need a new culture that sees businessmen as real heroes. They are the trailblazers of change and transformation for better life quality for everyone. Blaming the entire business community for the activities of a fringe group cannot be taken as a testimony of the entire community. We need to appreciate the real efforts and continue to audit the activities as we do now. But we should make sure that the real heroes are applauded for their dreams, efforts, and achievements. Their positions are much above the movie, sports, and literary heroes.
