HUMAN GOVERNANCE
REALIZATION OF ONENESS
Aziuddin Ahmad PhD
Professor of Risk Management
Graduate School of Management
University Putra Malaysia
Responsible Leadership Summit 2009
Shaping Our Future
IMD Lausanne
1st – 3rd February 2009
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DISCUSSION CONTENTS
Evolution of
business,
governance & role
of leaders
ONENESS in life
which is in line with
new sciences &
ancient traditions
Bringing
back
human
to the
centre
What does it mean
to be a HUMAN?
HUMAN
GOVERNANCE
• What is HG?
• HG vs CG?
2
THE MESSAGE
Transform mindset from centuries-old secular mechanistic
‘command-control’, outside-in, quantitative & positivistic to the
quantum mould
Return to fitrah (innate nature), inside-out, sacred human-centric,
principle- & values-based, tawhidic (unbroken wholeness epitome)
meaningful leadership with sense of purpose
Actualize a qualitative, subjective, spiritually devolutionary
sacred view, morally & divinely ordained world bounded by
SPIRITUAL standards & in line with quantum physics
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THE APPROACH
Turn into the
past in order
to prepare for
the future
Regain the
original
meanings
attached to
the words
Revisit the
etymology
of words
Must be
looked upon
in its
ontological
context
Not in its
secularized
meaning
devoid of
spirituality
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EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS
• Corporate leaders
make decisions
• Business is the leading
segment of society to
achieve societal well-being
• Overtaken government’s
role. Government facilitates
• Business NOW Rules
• HUMANS in life
make decision
• Getting through
dilemmas
(permanent texture
of life) require
decisions
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• No longer the same as before - then process was
THE king
• Knowledge-based vs conveyer-belt, machine
(mechanistic) economy
• If you manage business/corporations TODAY
using YESTERDAYS model, you have no
business/corporation TOMORROW!
• But today’s models ARE yesterdays!
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HOW SACREDNESS LOST ITS
CENTRALITY IN HUMAN
BEING
Profane & Sacred
Secular & Spiritual
fictively separated
Secular Being
Natural Person
Artificial Person
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LIMITATIONS OF CORPORATE
GOVERNANCE
HOW
MANY
MORE?
SUB-PRIME,
BANKS
MADOFF,
SATYAM
AND
MORE
SOXs!!!
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CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
The Unfolding Played Out & Still Playing Out
• Corporate Governance mechanistic
structure is already broken
• Cannot be repaired by patching/gluing,
more regulations or legislation or policy
• Need to reinvent/redesign – Get out of
conveyer-belt mentality
• We can't solve problems by using the
same kind of thinking we used when we
created them – Einstein
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• Limitation of valuing only what can be measured
• A CLASH! There is tension between human values &
performance oriented value
• But ONENESS & INTERCONNECTEDNESS is a given
• NEED new measures to measure what is meaningful
NOT the measurable only – Einstein
• Need to balance continuum of paradox (yin yang)
• Need a NEW GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE
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NEED TO RETURN TO
THE REAL MEANING OF BUSINESS
(AN ENTERPRISE/PRINCIPAL ACTIVITY)
Is the
purpose of
business
just
business?
Leadership
shapes &
plays a
critical role
Must it
transcend
business?
Financial
bottom-line
only?
Is it not an
enterprise
to reach
felicity?
MUST be
profit WITH
BARAKAH
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TOWARDS A NEW ARRAY OF
DESCRIPTIVES
Corporate Governance
Legal/Artificial Person?
•
•
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•
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•
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•
•
•
Discovery
Translucent
Conformance
Caveat emptor
Dead
Symbol
Label
Form
Rule-based
Legal enactments
Rules & compliance
Newtonian classical
Fragmented
Outer-in
Letter of law
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Disclosure
Transparent
Integrity
Edico venditor
Emergent
Meaning
Essence
Substance
Principle- & values-based
Innate nature (fitrah)
Adab & ihsan
Quantum science
Wholeness
Inner-out
Spirit of law
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WORDS EMANATE MEANING
• Turn to history to dissect the real ontological meaning of
words, otherwise we will only apprehend a shadow
• REGAIN the spiritual & sacred (vertical) dimension they are
supposed to encapsulate
RETURN FROM
• cosmos
BACK TO
• kosmos
• Mercator projection
• globe
• canvas
• inner vision
• map
• terrain
• logic
• logos
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TAWHIDIC ONENESS –
CONVERGENCE IN SCIENCE &
ANCIENT TRADITIONS
• Wholly integral, interrelated & non-local
cosmos – integrating material & nonmaterial
• We must actualize this Tawhidic journey
• Ancient traditions & sacred texts all
convey spirituality & interconnectedness
• Unbroken wholeness & indivisibility
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HUMAN & PERCEPTION DEVICES
• Born with three devices of sense
perception, intellection & contemplation
• Islamic teachings:
– They have hearts, yet they do not
comprehend; they have eyes, yet they do not
see; they have ears, yet they do not hear
– There are signs on the horizon & within
themselves
• Are we limited to sense perception only?
• Sufism – The Spiritual HEART of Islam
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FACULTY/DEVICE
WOMB
H
E
A
R
T
BABIES TO
TODDLERS
H
E
A
R
T
ADULTHOOD
PHYSICAL
SENSES &
THE MIND
HEART
OLD AGE
H
E
A
R
T
The Heart has its Reasons which Reasons knows not
– Pascal
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MODES OF KNOWING
Three
Modes of
Knowing
Born with
coherence
ability, we
repressed
Cultural
conditioning
emphasizes bodily
senses over nonsense perception
Scientists
demonstrate children
of 4 to 5 years old
experience nonsense perception
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LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT BEING
HUMAN
Connotes stewardship & vicegerency – at
once trustee/custodian to self, community &
universe
Senge et al –
Awareness of
wholeness of
nature stolen from
us, replaced by
assemblage of
parts
Chittick &
Murata –
Human
actualized by
Adab, governed
by Ihsan
Hernandez – Leader
makes decision while
factoring in the
implications on future
generation, the way
leaders behave
shapes decision
makers of future
generations
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• Is about the heart
• Is about BEING what you are, BEING HUMAN & doing
is the effect of being i.e. a consequential to being
• Is about balancing the oneness – balancing along the
continuum of obligation to corporation, obligation to
people & obligation to universe
• Is about living the spirituality, the interconnectedness
• Is about accepting participatory universe
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ORGANIZATION MEASURES
• Einstein: Everything that can be counted
does not necessarily count; everything that
counts cannot necessarily be measured
• What measures to act as reference in
arriving at decisions – the metrics & matrix
• Natural person measures good enough?
• Redefinition of success to encompass
well-being of society not just maximization
of shareholder value
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NEED
Governance that:
• Goes beyond sense perception /
experience, to intellection (mind/brain) &
contemplation (heart/consciousness)
• Regain Human Centrality
• Bring back the ‘Vertical’ Dimension
• Human Integrity – Ihsan & Adab/Akhlaq
• Corporations/Legal persons CANNOT
mimic Human Beings
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WAY FORWARD
TRANSFORMATION
If there is no transformation inside each of us, all of
the structural change in the world will have no
impact on our institutions!
Peter Block
• Transformation – akin to metamorphosis
from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly
(via the IMAGINAL CELLS)
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HUMAN GOVERNANCE
Redefine Human as Soul of Being
REGAIN our sacredness:
• innate nature (fitrah),
• subjectivity & experiential,
• emotions/feelings,
• empathy
• compassion
• INNER KNOWING ability
• SPIRITUALITY
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN
TO BE HUMAN?
• Natural vs. Artificial/Legal person
• The spiritual is what makes human, human (Salleh &
Ahmad, 2008 & Stapp, 2008)
• Physical is for locomotion
• Human’s drive is towards inspiration, meaning &
purpose
• Purpose – Ad Dhariyat Quran (51:56)
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ISLAM, IMAN & IHSAN
• IHSAN – Virtue, Perfection, Excellence, Authentic
• Third dimension of Islam
• Life is series of dilemmas
• Ihsan is Governance
• Story of Muadh ibn Jabal
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• Human Governance is about INTEGRITY
• Latin integritas: integer, whole number, being
whole being one – AL TAWHID
• Integrity is a state/condition
• The actuator/actualizer to felicity & tranquility
• Originally only be applied to human beings
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Integrity – ala Bobby Jones when he still
assessed himself a one stroke penalty
even though no one else saw him touch
the ball. Not the tournament official, not his
playing partner, neither of them believed
he actually touched the ball. He did the
right thing even when no one was looking!
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BENCHMARKING INTEGRITY
• What is legal MAY NOT be moral
• What is moral is legal
• INTEGRITY – IS IT LAW OR BEYOND LAW?
• Conformance or Beyond Conformance?
• Rising beyond the self: Rectification of character
– getting rid of bad attributes (Murata & Chittick, 1994)
• The HEART is the source of one’s integrity
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COMPLIANCE- & VALUES-BASED
• Compliance-based approach is divorced from values and
ethics i.e. THE SPIRIT
• Compliance-based system: what is not prohibited is
allowed. Attention is NOT on doing what is right but on
NOT DOING what is wrong, NOT on doing one’s best but
on NOT DOING one’s worst
• Values-based encourages NOT to do ethical minimum but
to DO ethical maximum
• Rules DO NOT inspire. Values DO
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• an internal mechanism to guide human in
emanating internal behaviour
•Human Governance is rooted in religiosity whose
core criteria/measures or ‘standards’ is Spirituality
• Human Governance brings back due regard to
the profoundness of governing the individual
rather than the corporation which is the artificial
legal person
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HG
• inside-out values-based
conviction to guide human
• human is viewed as a nonmaterial soul & embodied in
the physical being
CG
• external, outside-in rules
& regulations to legislate
the corporations
• parameter-driven & rulebased
• human is NOT machine
• human is machine
• emphasizes the spirit of the
law
• emphasizes the letter of
the law
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ONENESS REALIZED?
Oneness:
- a coherent portrait of reality & a holistic way of knowing
- brought about by personal experience, intuition and conscience
balanced with reason and modern science
Oneness transcends the individual
- our choice affects others, to act against another is to act against oneself
The Fictive Belief:
- ourselves, our thoughts and feelings perceived as separate from the rest
Moving on: Remove the filters & change band-width of sensors
- Sensory Filter (rejection of use of intuition & sentient sensation)
- Awareness Filter (rejection of anything unaware)
- Belief System Filter (rejection of information that doesn’t conform to
belief system)
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