Wall Street to Main Street: Economic Disparity has One Common Concern

Dhiman Deb Chowdhury, MBA

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) Studies Department of Management, Aberdeen School of Business, The Robert Gordon University, UK. & Director of Technical Program & Project Management, Allied Telesis, Inc, San Jose, CA, USA Email: dhiman.chowdhury@yahoo.com Blog: http://dhimanchowdhury.blogspot.com Homepage: http://dhimanchowdhury.com

COPYRIGHT 2011. DH I MAN CHOWDHURY. ALL RIGHTS RES ERVED.

he continued anti-corporation protests that now sprung around the world lacks contemplation of one common concern: the undertow that ostensibly wafts in corporations exist in our society too. In fact, we are in part responsible. The muddles we encountering today are a derivative of our often confusing world view. From Wall Street to Main Street we are in it together. So, if we think Occupying Wall Street will somehow eradicate our economic woe or economic inequalities, we are nave. Problem is much complex; it is a debate of our time. A paradox that innately question continued economic progress. Yet, unequivocally we need continued economic progress for a perceived better world. Or is it? Theories abound including mine that economic progress can coincide with better world, yet I defer from others on the notion that solution to this predicament is behavioral in nature. The Corporate Greed as we connote today has its root in the very notion of economics and economic models, which simply discount interconnectedness of the human systems and that of biosphere system.

High Entropy
Resource Extraction

Wastes

Firms

BIOSPHERE

Society

Households Wastes

Environmental Inputs

Figure 1. Interconnected economic and biosphere system (Chowdhury, 2011).

This assumption created an ordered set of values that defines our attitude and in turn behavior leading to the obfuscation. Have we considered Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics (Younkins, 2011) or Chanakyas (Kautilya) virtuous cycle of economic growth model (Sihag, 2007), antecedents of economics or economic theorization would have been different. Nonetheless, in absence of the dissented ancient wisdoms in ethical business and economics, we are left with a world view that innately rejects human value proposition. Bhutan, a tiny kingdom of the Himalayas created GNH (Gross National Happiness) in place of GDP to measure its progress (Thinley, 2005), an interesting and pragmatic model of sustainable development that has global ramification. GNH conjectures a holistic purview of human needs that both physical and mental and the corollary of this that the model seeks to promote a conscious, inner search for happiness and requisite skills which must harmonize with beneficial management and development of outer circumstances (Thinley, 2005). Central to this formulation is that GNH emphasizes on Human Values (Chowdhury, 2011) in economic progress including development and commerce.

Products & Services

Low Entropy

Labor & Other Inputs

En gy er

We too want Happiness as the ultimate, yet our world view constraints us to believe that physical wellbeing is in essence the pathways to the said. Rejection of this viewpoint has been a defacto formulation in management science, Maslows Hierarchy of Needs (Mathes, 1981). We are, however, misconstruing this with self-centered view of physical wealth possession as the way to buy happiness.

Figure 2. Influence of behavioral norm in society and in Organizations (Corporations) (Chowdhury, 2011).

So, if we are witnessing this self-centered view of what we called greed in individuals like Bernie Madoff (Creswell & Thomas, 2009; Lenzner, 2008) or in business magnets like Kenneth Lay (Healy &

Palepu, 2003; MSNBC, 2006; NYTIMES, 2011), we should not be surprised, after all its a byproduct of our social state. Hence, introspection is needed. What we are dealing here is a behavioral pathology that far reaching than our common understandings. I contended that solution to our predicament thus needs a behavioral change which brings together human values and institutions. As it is applicable to organization so do in our societies. I call this formulation OCBS (Organizational Citizenship Behavior towards Sustainability) (Chowdhury, 2011). It is a framework that innately finds common ground, if not win-win paradigm, a mutually beneficial schema for the subjects. The OCBS posits a behavioral augmentation that is pragmatic and judicious and deviates in few behavioral dimensions from those defined in the OCB (Organizational Citizenship Behavior) (Organ, 1988, 1990, 1997; Organ, Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 2006; Organ & Ryan, 1995), a famous postulation of Prof Dennis W. Organ. In particular OCBS disagree with compliance behavioral dimensions of OCB and put forward a normative postulation of controlled discord to foster creativity and productivity. Many researches on OCB found significant correlations between OCB and productivity (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 2006) among many other elements e.g. job satisfaction, customer service and quality etc. These findings draw my interest in particulars sets of behavioral dimensions that, as per my meta-analyses, depict the potentiality of effecting entailed behavioral change towards sustainable corporation and sustainable world a paradigm shift for good. This preliminary observation later espoused through a global survey (Chowdhury, 2011) that measures the presence of different dimensions of OCBS and its impact to corporations, found there is a significance correlation between OCBS and long term viability of corporations through two moderators: Proactive Competence (.580; P <.000) and Creative Competence (.599; p <.000). More importantly, respondents who identified presence of OCBS in their workplace environment indicated proactive and creative competence of 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. A quantitative analysis based on the global survey result depicts Proactive and creative competence has significant correlation with Profitability & Stakeholders Equity, Governance, Innovation, Market Leadership, Human Capital and CSR and Environmental Performance. This finding depicts a very natural predisposition of human productivity and creativity.

.515 P<.000 .618 P<.000 .531 P<.000 .503 P<.000

Environmental Performance

Profitability

.749 P<.000 .453 P<.000

Market Leadership

.599 P<.000

Creative Competence

.676 P<.000

.638 P<.000

Corporate Citizenship

.924 P<.000

OCBS

.7 P< 15 . 00 0
15 0 .6 .00 P<

.694 P<.000

.675 P<.000 .526 P<.000 .518 P<.000 .580 P<.000 Proactive Competence .725 P<.000

Innovation
71 0 .6 .00 P<

.760 P<.000

.612 P<.000

Human Capital .668 P<.000

.742 P<.000

Governance

Figure 3. The diagrammatical representation of OCBS and it's correlation with two moderators; creative & proactive competence which in turn having stronger correlation with many independent variables (Chowdhury, 2011).

The Hawthorne Study (Franke & Kaul, 1978), an early (1927 - 1932) investigation on employee behavior and productivity influence found certain environmental preconditions encourage the

productivity. This finding is the precursor of many researches that later followed. Moreover, human factor is central to many management subjects including Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management etc. Nonetheless, though productivity and services are influenced by human factors, economic contemplations are oblivious of this fact. This in part contributes to obfuscation in our present-day social state. Imperative to this abstraction is, therefore, a behavioral change that purview the holistic aspect of sustainability considering the harmonious whole: human and biosphere systems; a conjecture that innately reduces entropy in societal, organizational, political and environmental system.

Reference
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