ETHICS IN INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1939, Page 9

ETHICS IN INDUSTRY

NEED FOR GOOD FELLOWSHIP.

“Fundamental thinking is not necessarily mathematical, it is that ability to reduce each situation or problem to its fundamental elements —is it right or wrong, correct or incorrect, ethical or unethical, moral or immoral, truthful or untruthful —and then to make the proper decision based upon this anlysis, plus your intuition, that sense which helps you to a decision when analysis and reason fall short of a solu ■ tion satisfactory to you,” said Mr R. C. Muir, vice-president of the Genera] Electric Company, preaching in All Souls’ Church, New York, on Laymen's Sunday. “So one of our ideals in industry is the cultivation of the art of honest thinking and to encourage the development of intuition through experience. Business as I know it is carried on through intelligent compromises. In business you will find in any conference of intelligent men a number of opposing opinions. Decisions must be made, however, in order that business might go on and that men might work, so that the result of nearly every conference is a compromise, not something that everyone thought was the best, but an understanding be tween men—and then they go forth and work to that understanding. We agree to disagree, but carry forward coo-operatively. With this conception of industry, it is apparent that the men of industry must be men among men, understanding members of society. A man's standing or rating in business, and for that matter in society at large, is the sum total of the opinions of everyone who knows of him, through personal acquaintance what he,says, what he writes, what he does, and what others say of him. ’By his acts ye shall know him.’ The man may feel his rating is wrong, and sometimes it is, but in business and society opinion and rating are synonymous. In business it is important for men to have high ratings, so we teach young men entering industry to co-operate with their associates, to develop social instincts, human understanding and good fellowship—in short, a belief in the brotherhood of man.” rztßaMßaaMOßaiiJßM 1 iiii i—i rmir.’iiFWftWßWßwaMgMMWMUw