Interview: Heiko Spitzeck
Humanism in Business: Perspectives on the Development
of Responsible Business in Society
TT:
We are in the studio today with Dr Heiko Spitzeck, Lecturer in
Corporate Responsibility here at Cranfield School of Management.
Heiko, you have put out a book Humanism in Business, just out,
Cambridge University Press. Interesting book in business, in
particular. Tell me about the book; where does it come from?
HS
Well it all started with a little wine and cheese session back in
Switzerland where I did my PhD, with a couple of colleagues. We
were interested in getting a fresh perspective on business because
we recognised that in the German speaking area; a lot of the
business ethics schools were fighting each other for their approach.
And instead of moving forward on their agenda in general, they
were bogged down in conversations about what is the right
approach for business ethics.
So we thought why don’t we elaborate on a philosophical travel –
let’s say – applied to business, where we think about the common
routes of human life and philosophic thought instead of getting into
these different struggles that business ethics schools have gone
into. And it was more than a feeling we had to explore humanism
and we reached out to practitioners and theoretical people in the
field and academics to say how can we put this together and how
does humanism apply to business?
TT
So more of a foundation – a foundation to share conversations
about business ethics? Was it somewhat neutral? I get the feeling
that it is a kind of Esperanto of ethics – it’s a kind of general
common language. Would that be fair to say?
HS
Well I think in an academic discipline you always have to at least
clarify the routes where you are coming from; if you are utilitarianism
or if you are coming from a deontological background. And we
thought humanism is not like building up barriers between different
disciplines, but looking more at the common ground which we see
increasingly necessary in a globalised world. And business is one
of these drivers in a globalised world. So we end up with value
conflicts and whether we look at what makes us different from each
other, we said hold on a moment, instead of making differences,
why don’t we concentrate on what is common to all human life on
the planet – whether we are in China or Brazil or the UK?
TT
So what is the ‘ism’ of humanism?
Heiko Spitzeck
HS
Well I think that is the spelling out of the roots and saying this is the
philosophical framework we work with, and we go back on the
human being – what is common to all the humans – ‘let man be the
measure of all things’. And these are our roots. You can criticise
that as you can criticise any other ‘ism’ but at least it is spelt out and
it is not implicit like is current practice with a lot of academic work in
economics and management.
TT
So reading the book you seem to have a tremendous range of
people talking about humanism. One thing I was taken with for
most of them is the lack of a transcendent. There is no recall or
invocation of something not of this human world – have I understood
that correctly?
HS
Yes. We think there might be a god, but instead of posing all our
luck and faith into the hands of a god or a belief, we think what we
can be sure of regarding a rational thought etc, is that we are all
humans, we experience this life together - we experience empathy
with other people. We don’t know if there is a god. We don’t
exclude the possibility, so I strongly believe you can be a Christian
humanist. And actually in Barcelona one of our contributors comes
from the Catholic background and he looks at humanism in
business from a Christian perspective.
We have Greg Epstein in this book who is the Humanist Chaplain of
Harvard University who argues that if we take pride in our own
religion, it’s like taking pride in our own theories without
acknowledging the fact that other people have bright thoughts as
well. And if we capitalise on the broader scale we might achieve
more in the long run.
TT
So is another word for it then rationality, or rationalism?
HS
Definitely it’s a rational approach, but it’s also an approach which
you can apply rational thought on furthering your self interest; you
can apply rational thought on the interest of your community or your
particular nation; and you can apply rational thought on the
furtherance of human progression overall. And I think we are more
at the last level I mentioned – further the human wellbeing and
dignity of all humans.
TT
So the human addition of reality?
HS
Yes.
TT
Right. Some critics would say that maybe it’s too anthropocentric;
it’s too human oriented and there is too much concentration on the
foreground, the foreground of existence being the human, and less
or not enough on the background of what it is we are embedded in –
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the context we are embedded in. How would you respond to that?
HS
Well I think whether we look at nature and the sustainability
movement, I think the flowers and plants and animals don’t start the
discussion about what is our value in the world? So it is all
happening in our minds. So it’s our mind we have to control and its
happening in the human mind and that is why we come down to
humanistic thought. Because it’s the value discussion we have
about the value of the natural environment to us, enabling us – like
Brundtland put it – the wellbeing of the future generations to come,
as well as take into account how our children and grandchildren can
approach life here on this planet if they have the same position.
TT
So it’s not because the background of the ecology is not important,
it’s because the debate about the ecology is our debate – that we
are having that debate?
HS
Yes, correct – it’s a human debate.
TT
So then why should business people in particular, this is humanism
in business – those last two words – why should managers be
interested in this?
HS
Because if you start from the wrong philosophical assumptions and
a lot of, in my view, the current economic thought is based on
utilitarianism: the greatest good, for the greatest number. You have
a few in power who decide what is the greatest good for the greatest
number and then we run with it.
We can see that this model of thought has led to severe problems in
our actual lives regarding climate change, poverty, etc. So
breaking free from that, we suggest basically another philosophical
grounding of economic and management thought, which is based
more on how can we foster human wellbeing on a global scale;
which means on the one hand including sustainability thought, the
necessities of life I would say. What is necessary for every human
being on this planet to have? The conditions of a good life. And
then if you have that assured like in a lot of developing countries,
then it are the quality of life aspect. How can we increase the
quality of life of all humans within our territories?
TT
So in terms of the practical aspects – and there are practical
aspects in the book, diagrams and tips and so on – what, or how,
could the average manager put some of this into practice:? What
could they do on the Monday morning?
HS
Well on the Monday morning – one model which is currently very
heavily discussed is social entrepreneurship. People like
Mohammed Yunis who got the Nobel prize for a business idea,
Peace Nobel Prize, who contributed to our book as well; we have
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two Nobel Laureates and one of them is Mohammed Yunis. I think
they can serve as a template for the manager, saying how do you
evaluate a business if you take financials aside? How do you
evaluate what real contribution does our business do to humanity?
What are the positive impacts we have, what are the negative
impacts? How can we leverage the positive ones, and how can we
minimise the negative ones? And these are questions which
normally social entrepreneurs ask themselves when they set up
their business plans; and venture philanthropists ask how can we
ramp up this idea? How can we make credit available to the
poorest of the poor in a lot of countries?
And as you can see with Yunis’ idea of micro credits, it’s bred in
territory: it’s applied to Brazil, it’s applied to Africa. You see
Citigroup taking it up as a foundation and saying OK, how can we
foster this spread of micro credit. Which for me, and I guess for my
colleagues as well, the fellow editors and authors of this book,
would be a sign of humanism in practice. So how can we foster the
wellbeing by the business we do?
TT
So in terms of teaching business ethics, and I am not sure whether
you ally the two together, this provides a new paradigm for teaching
business ethics?
HS
Yes
TT
And business ethics, is that secondary now? Is there a new
paradigm with humanism?
HS
No, I think business ethics is a very general term. You can have
utilitarian business ethics, you can have deontologic business ethics
– you can have whatever kind of business ethics. And maybe the
German speaking area, the fight they have is basically along these
lines of ideology they are following. Humanism is, like I said,
getting down the barriers and saying you can be of a utilitarian
background primarily, you can be of a deontological background –
all your arguments are valuable in the discourse for business ethics,
so let’s bring them forward and see how they can best be aligned
with creating human value.
TT
So where is the next book-where does this research take you?
What would you like to do now with this?
HS
Well we have already started – it was kind of funny because at one
of the biggest management conferences last year we organised a
session on humanism in business and my colleague and I were very
surprised to see more than 100 people coming into the auditorium at
eight o’clock in the morning, which is kind of unusual. And they
were all interested in the agenda. So we are now planning a book
series looking at the different issues. One is humanistic
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management in practice, so a collection of case studies showing
how do organisations really do it and why would we consider them
to be humanistic instead of being just socially responsible or
sustainable.
Another book is looking at the financial crisis with the running
hypothesis that the banks who were doing well are managed more
humanistically and more down to ground to human value creation
than banks who drifted off and focused on profitability only.
Another book is looking at humanistic management education which
is a very actual topic because the UN announced a principles for
responsible management education which Cranfield is also part of.
And I think a lot of my academic fellows on the teaching side, they
would look for something to show how we can put that into practice
and how can we educate our students?
So these are the three books we currently have in the pipeline and
there are more.
TT
Heiko Spitzeck, thank you very much.
HS
Thanks very much Toby for the talk.
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