Just what is acceptable behaviour in business? In our work as consultants and trainers we come across a whole spectrum of cultures and what counts for 'normal' behaviour in organisations we work within.
Recently one of my sons gave me a DVD of the movie 'The Corporation'. ("The Corporation [DVD]" (Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, Joel Baker)). The movie has been Released four years ago it has taken me a little while to catch up with this title, which I remember caused quite a stir at the time.
I suppose it falls into the Michael Moore genre of establishment-skeptic movie-length documentary. This work is about big business.
I found it to be well researched and produced, a worthy movie asking pertinent questions of our giants of globalisation, although it is somewhat selective in what it did present. At its heart is a thesis that if these global giants were human personalities then they would be psychopaths, behaving purely selfishly. And the way the movie develops this thesis is very clever, using an interesting presentation device: a behavioural profile that builds up the case during the first two-thirds of the movie.
It left me wondering why the company I belong to - albeit tiny by comparison with the subjects of this film - seems to express an entirely different personality, or so our clients tell us; a personality that unintentionally has built our brand, and a very positive one at that.
How did this happen?
I think the essential advantage of pearcemayfield is that we had a set of values established from the beginning, which we all live by consistently.
So what is acceptable behaviour in a business? In pearcemayfield our values drive the answer to that question in any context. They are our ABC of behaviour.
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