The writer believes that honesty is a trait that can come in handy – in business and in life
It is almost impossible to open a newspaper today without coming across reports of dishonest or deceptive acts occurring across various areas and this triggered me to look into some statistical data pertaining to India as well as other countries relating to “Honesty” and “Integrity” with an objective to perceive whether there exist any patterns to such deception or remedies to control – or rather eliminate such deception and dishonesty as our daily life operations, essential amenities and services are yearning integrity and honesty on the professional front.
Here are some interesting and insightful facts that could draw ones attention to the issue. In the United States of America, the year 2004 witnessed the total cost of all robberies elevate to an enormous $525 million and the average loss caused due to a single robbery was about $1300. These costs are inclusive of costs of police interventions, judicial trials, prison administration and so on. However, what is particularly astonishing is the fact that, each year “employees theft and fraud” occurring at the work place are estimated at about $600 billion! This figure is radically higher than the financial losses caused due to robberies and burglaries. Considering that all career criminals come together and collectively steal for life, they would still, be nowhere close to catching up with the financial loss caused due to the “employee theft and frauds.”
The episodes of “employee theft and fraud” are unending, that include bogus insurance claims, under invoicing, sales returns, junkets, tax evasions, adulterated materials, casual attitude at the workplace, negligence, kick-backs, bribes, lobbying, display of blatant favouritism towards visibly incompetent constituency members, half-hearted dedication towards ones vocation at the work place, work place politics, false travel bills and so on.
To elucidate with an instance, the Enron Corporation was once, the recipient of global envy after having to its credit, the accomplishment of becoming the six-time winner of the “Most innovative company in the world” title, till the Enron scandal erupted in the year 2001!
It is almost fascinating as to the manner in which these “white collared crimes” are judged differently and less severely than other crimes. They are hardly noticed, rarely reported and seldom reprimanded knowing that their impact is much more severe thus leading us to explore “Dishonesty!”
Dishonesty could either be one that evokes the image of the criminal as often portrayed in television shows such as “Savdhaan India” or “Crime Patrol” or one that is generally committed by people who commonly consider themselves as “honest” which includes “picking up additional writing material from conferences, carrying extra food at workshops, exaggerate the cost of their property on property loss reports, use official vehicles for personal use when not on duty, producing false and fabricated bills for reimbursement and so on. These acts appear to be minute and hence insignificant; nonetheless, they take place every day and when you multiply it with the gigantic population that our nation houses, the amount in rupee terms attributed to them becomes astronomical in size.
Multiple experiments conducted worldwide to comprehend the latter type of “dishonesty” indicate an interesting analogy that given a chance, most honest people will indulge in acts of cheating and will noticeably cheat on regular basis making it an almost habitual tendency. So also, the trepidation of getting caught does not particularly agonize them since they have their rational explanations ready, if questioned about the same. There is yet another interesting corollary to this which states that when people have no chance of getting caught, they continue to indulge in cheating and yet do not become wildly dishonest.
This leads one to dive deeper and recognize why such peculiar “white collar dishonesty” patterns exist. Sigmund Freud, a globally renowned Austrian neurologist also a renowned psychoanalyst has given a reasonable explanation to this aspect.
According to Freud, throughout our life, we are continuously fed with social virtues, imbibed with social values, rewarded for compliance to the norm and reprimanded for deviation. Further, religion and religious practices have also augmented this effort thus leading to formation of the “Super Ego” which is our “Moral Monitor” and operates as Moral Conscience. The Super ego tends to be pleased when we are honest and despondent when we deviate! This is precisely the reason as to why we halt at a red signal even when there is not a single vehicle other than ours at the junction. Alternatively, our psyche also consists of the “Id” which is extremely instinctive in nature and is an untamed centre that is highly impulsive in nature. Thereafter, we have the “Ego” i.e. the realistic centre which mediates between the desires of the Id and the Super Ego.
The problem is that our “Super Ego” which is our moral honesty guard is active only when we contemplate bigger transgressions such as grabbing the big box of pens from conferences, packing food in mammoth tiffin boxes at a marriage buffet. In case of smaller transgressions like lifting a pen or slipping the fruits arranged at a dessert buffet into our bags, the Super Ego stays inactive and that, to a larger extent explains the acts of white collar dishonesty.
So the question we need to ask at this juncture is, ‘whether there is a way to pull the plug on these minute aberrations of honesty in a colossal economy like ours? Here are some options to ensure that our “Super Ego” remains active in cases of minute transgressions.
1) Legal intervention: Few years ago, the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act” was introduced which made the CEO of public firms in the USA to vouch for their firms audits and accounts.
2) Religion intervention: This is the reason people are asked to swear by the holy book (Bible, Koran, Bhagvad Gita) before they give their testimony. Besides, habitually praying at least twice a day or regularly visiting religious places, listening to spiritual sessions are few other examples of religious interventions that could influence the functioning of the Super Ego.
3) Non-religious intervention: These could be in the form of professional oaths that doctors, lawyers and various other professionals take when they graduate from their respective institutes by regularising it at the work place.
