Waking up the inner sleeping beauty of companies

Studies in corporate responsibility (CR) have found that many large companies seem to fulfil the psychiatric criteria for psychopaths.

New research suggests companies displaying psychopathic behaviour would benefit from a 'Prince of Virtues' approach to wake them from their '100-year sleep'. The research was conducted at the Turku School of Economics in Finland and will be published in the next edition of Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.

Research author Dr. Tarja Ketola argues that working in large companies which employ psychopathic practices which breach people's basic values quickly becomes a huge mental burden for managers and employees. But she sees a solution in the form of using ethical principles employed by individuals in their personal lives.

"According to the natural law (lex naturae) all people all over the world share the same sense of morality, irrespective of their religion and background," says Dr. Ketola.

"Why then, should people keep their personal values separate from their work values? If key individuals or the majority of personnel within psychopathic companies realise that the same ethical principles they use in their personal life also apply in business life, the 'spell' will be broken and they will overcome organisational resistance to genuine corporate responsibility."

These results suggest that 'psychopathic' companies can move towards ideal responsibility by developing their economic, social and ecological responsibilities in harmony on the basis of virtue ethical values.

Dr. Ketola notes, "if these companies can stop schizophrenically separating their staff's personal values from their professional values, allowing people in organisations to integrate them into a natural harmonic unity, the corporate responsibility '100-year sleep' could be over."