The Need for Humanism in Management Across the World
Over the last weeks I spent my summer
holidays travelling through northern and western Madagascar – a wonderful
country with charismatic people, a variety of landscapes and unique flora and
fauna. But this is not meant to be a travel report and to my delight I
frequently stumbled across what is supposed to be the underlying subject matter
of my research topic – microentrepreneurs or commercially active people living on
a few bucks per day. For example, there was this artisan group of neighboring women
producing gorgeous silk embroideries and selling them in a small shop on a
veranda. In another village, there was a man crafting delicate artwork and
articles for daily use out of polished cow horn with the help of an old washing
machine’s engine. Like in every developing country, the majority of Malagasy
people, however, were working on fields, planting rice and spices or farming cattle. Here and there, I spotted agencies of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in
surrounding villages, indicating that financial services were potentially
available for the aforementioned random acquaintances.
Back home, I found the report of the
Microfinance Banana Skins Survey 2012 from the Center for the Study of
Financial Innovation (CSFI) fresh from the press (www.csfi.org).
With the title ‘staying relevant’, this is the 4th edition of what
can be regarded as the most comprehensive risk perception survey in the sector.
According to this year’s report, the most pressing risk is - for market
observers unsurprisingly - overindebtedness among microfinance borrowers.
However, the overindebtedness problem is symptomatic of deeper difficulties in
the industry - first of all the overemphasis on growth and profit at the
expense of prudence and the lack of good governance, management skills and professionalism
in local MFIs: “Corporate governance is widely perceived to be inadequate,
failing to provide sufficiently strong leadership to keep MFIs on a healthy
growth path. Management quality is also seen to be lacking in many markets…,
including the quality of risk management which is seen to be low or nonexistent
in some sectors” (p. 8).
Reflecting on my holiday experience with
regard to the responsibility of business schools and research for establishing a
new paradigm of leadership, this made me realize that it is clearly not only
western, industrialized countries, for which a new generation of managers and leaders is needed, but certainly also developing countries. Although they weren’t
directly liable for the recent crises in the global economy or necessarily affected by the numerous management scandals in multinational corporations, narrow-mined short-term thinking with a sole focus on
profit-maximization there too takes its toll. The microfinance experience in
developing countries shows again that economic progress and societal
development cannot be sustainable without appropriate management education and
responsible business leaders with a sense of solidarity for all their stakeholders. The humanistic mission
of initiatives like “People for People” seems therefore equally important for
fighting inequality across the world and the aspiration for prosperity of
underdeveloped regions.
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