The Importance and Development of A Humanistic & Long-Term Mindset in Business Leaders.

• Author: Dupre, Juliette I.

Short-term profit-making goals and neoclassical understandings of historic and current economics encourage a particular friction between business leaders and their human and ecological resources, a friction which has historically resulted in business leaders being incentivized or influenced towards the exploitation of those resources. However, some of today's business leaders have discovered that this issue is reduced when business goals are oriented toward long-term performance, such as is deemed necessary for commercial success in twenty-first century markets. Ethical, sustainable, and values-based leadership practices are essential for such long-term performance. These frameworks are more closely aligned to the law and political economy view than to neoclassical economics frameworks. Additionally, leadership styles that demonstrate ethical, sustainable, and values-based practices are strongly associated with development of emotional-social intelligence (ESI), a body of skills that can be intentionally developed through mindfulness practices.

During fifteen years in the industry, the author has observed a variety of for-profit leaders as they explored decision-making approaches, dealt with volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) challenges, and managed the influences of profit-drivers on their actions. These include the best kinds of leaders--ostensibly good-hearted people who desired to make smart, fair choices for their employees, customers, and investors. Yet even for the most well-intentioned, cross-roads emerged that caused conflict between their values and their business sense, eroding the ability to align their actions to their values.

As this paper is being written, the world is navigating a phenomenon that may be a defining event of the decade, the COVID-19 pandemic. As the economic impact of the pandemic mounts, business leaders have encountered humanistic questions of ethics, sustainability, and personal values. (1) For example, American businesses have terminated a swath of employees as a result of the pandemic such that from March 25, 2020 to April 25, 2020, 22 million workers filed for unemployment. (2) The Department of Labor report on the week ending April 25, 2020, reports "the highest level of the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment in the history of the seasonally adjusted series." (3) Questions of ethics, sustainability, and humanistic values in business decisions regarding terminations, furloughs, layoffs, reductions of hours, sick pay, leave time, working conditions, workplace safety, and benefits such as health insurance have been raised by the pandemic. Social media reflects a wide range of public concerns, from the efficacy and use of the $2 trillion bailout; (4) to working conditions believed to be responsible for outbreaks; (5) to asking why frontline workers are not provided healthcare benefits through employment, lacking coverage while they put themselves in harm's way. (6)

The pandemic has also called into question the supremacy of the world's most powerful nations. (7) Some researchers are calling for increased conservation regulations worldwide against wildlife consumption as a vital measure against future epidemics as well as protection to our ecosystem. (8) As nations grapple with these humanistic and ecological issues, the time is ripe for further evaluation of how business leaders can prepare themselves to approach decisions impacting their stakeholders, including workers, in ways that will result in better outcomes for those businesses and their communities.

This paper seeks to answer the following: What impacts have sustainable, ethical and values-based leadership practices, or their lack, demonstrated in the for-profit sector? What influences leaders in the for-profit sector towards or away from sustainable, ethical, and values-based practices? How are sustainable, ethical, and values-based leadership skills actively developed in a leader? This paper is a literature review for which research was selected with the goal of establishing a holistic understanding of historical business leadership experiences and contextual pressures, beginning with early American economic development. The second section of this paper focuses on how research has developed to describe business leadership and align those frameworks to the context of twenty-first century markets.

This paper contends that leaders can intentionally develop sustainable, ethical, and values-based leadership skills by fostering emotional-social intelligence, particularly through mindfulness practices. Lacking such development, business leaders may be doomed to repeat mistakes of the past, with communities and habitats bearing the consequences. The author is a professional in HR and OD in the for-profit sector and believes analyses of business leader behaviors are essential for businesses to prioritize how to invest in leadership and executive development programs to improve business performance and communities. The inspiration of this paper is the executive teams the author has worked with, particularly from witnessing the challenge of adhering to their values in complex business decisions.

American Business Leadership in Emerging Capitalism

American economic systems have been rooted in and defined by pursuit of the creation of surplus, or, in the for-profit sector, specifically profit. (9) At the direction of business leaders who direct the use of resources and inputs, including people, production of goods, and services for public consumption commences devotedly towards this goal. (10) This paper analyzes how profit-drivers have influenced decisions by business leaders which have had global and long-term impacts on habitats and populations.

Many of history's conflicts have been fought over surplus, and many companies have engaged in wrongdoings that have caused large-scale irreversible harm to individuals and communities. (11) In a system where some individuals control and benefit from others' labor, there exists incentive for those in control of labor to reduce the latter's standard of living. The result of this friction has historically been these detrimental acts by businesses against human and ecological resources in service of surplus creation, or for those specifically in the for-profit sector, in service of profit creation. (12) As an example, emerging capitalism is ultimately the economic context in which business leaders rationalized the enslavement of 13 million people, possibly many times more, for hundreds of years (the world's largest forced migration) and created a "towering mountain of cadavers" by means of the genocide of indigenous and Native American people. (13) This paper agrees firmly with arguments that slavery, far from being routed by capitalism or separate from it, was the very foundation upon which capitalism was built and supported in order to grow into its successful modern iteration. (14) Dr. Robin Einhorn observes that it is now recognized by historians that, far from being an unfortunate sidenote in the history of the United States, enslavement was a critical underpinning of the nation's economic and political development. Dr. Gerald Horne argues that slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy in emerging capitalism formed the source of global dominance of eighteenth-century England and its child nation, the United States of America. And while some historians attribute the vast loss of indigenous flora and fauna during western expansion to the spread of foreign disease, it is now recognized that these tragedies were principally caused by willful acts of violence against indigenous Americans and forcibly migrated African people. (15)

Profit was the driving force behind the early American business leader Christopher Columbus. (16) Backed by Spanish royalty, Columbus contracted his journey at 10 percent of the profits plus governorship on lands. (17) Columbus and his teams methodically tortured, kidnapped, starved, killed, terrorized, and enslaved the reportedly peaceful, intelligent, and generous men, women and children of the land in service to his quest for gold. (18) These acts, in the interest of seeking profit, are the foundation of our initial business leadership in the New World. Such choices appear to be rooted in what is described by Daniel Kahneman and his predecessors as System I thinking, in which the subject operates largely on reflex and automation, and incidentally is associated with racially-based prejudice (as opposed to System II thinking, where the subject reflects more deeply and thoughtfully.) (19) Indigenous Americans had shown themselves to be welcoming and intelligent. (20) We will never know what synergies may have developed from egalitarian cultural exchange.

Bartholome de Las Casas reported Columbus's statements that the population should make for very satisfactory slave labor. (21) Las Casas was a colonist, a leader of his community, and an advisor to the crown in matters including business. It is notable that De Las Casas, a man heralded for advocacy of indigenous Americans and clearly disquieted by their treatment, had participated at all in Columbus's violence. (22) While the complexities of his reasoning and his influence may forever be debated, we know it was after participation that he experienced misgivings and suggested the use of African slaves as an alternative before finally determining that both enslavements were equally wrong and advocating against them. (23)

Las Casas not only witnessed acts of violence that disturbed him in life but which caused him to fear eternal damnation after death. (24) His interest in supporting the profit quest of commercial aims under his king was so at odds with his values that he believed ignorance was not sufficient to excuse him before his God. (25) It is difficult to imagine a position more at odds with a business leader's values. Las Casas was made to endure enormous cognitive...