Ethical leadership in our region:
The inaugural Ethics in Leadership Conference, Penang, January 1996
by Kerrie Henderson
Regionalism is currently a hot topic in world affairs. It promises something of a new beginning, an opportunity for change and growth. As Paul Keating observed in his Singapore Lecture in January:
... it can let the light in, in ways which global structures are too large and unwieldy or rigid to do.
To let the light in effectively in a region as diverse as Asia and the Pacific, we need to open a multitude of different windows, to see and preserve many different vistas. The challenge lies in identifying not only the will, the need and the means to change but in fostering the leadership necessary to bring it about.
Fostering a new breed of leader is what the Vincent Fairfax Ethics in Leadership Awards [now the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship] are all about. St James Ethics Centre is delighted that, as part of that program and together with the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur, we successfully convened the inaugural Ethics in Leadership Conference in Penang this January.
In order to foster the growth of real friendships and frank relationships, the conference was kept small (thirty-five people) and was attended by delegates from Australia, Brunei, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines as well as the fifteen inaugural Award recipients. The discussions were lively and broad, ranging across the role of cultural difference, issues of economic development and poverty, the environment and national identity.
Like all meetings conducted under the Awards program, the discussions took place on a private and non-attributable basis, in the Asian tradition of frank but 'closed door' meetings. They were informal, without the presentation of written papers, and the discussions became involved and complex, as the participants sought to explore what one called the “sadistic and masochistic refinements of ethics”.
Good ideas developed as readily as good friendships and may be worthy of consideration by a wider audience. Without violating the closed nature of the meeting, I am going to try to canvass some of them here.
Like almost all good considerations of ethical issues, more questions were asked than answered. We proceeded in the spirit of mutual learning, to explore both our similarities and our differences.
At least initially, it seemed as if it were probably true to say that there is indeed a well of common values throughout the region. However, it also appeared to be true to say that the means by which different communities seek to express them differ widely in ways which are not always compatible.
As a regional community we present a range of traditions of what it means to lead. For some of us, to lead is to act. For others it is to inspire others to act, through speech or deed. Those of us inclined towards doing find it hard to focus on the utility of the slow process of dialogue, on the complexity of shades of meaning and the value of symbols. Those inclined to talk find trouble in hearing and understanding the silences, and respecting the unstated and understated. We have as much to learn from each other's ways of proceeding as from the conclusions drawn.
The issue of cultural differences was on the table from the start, as was the vexed question of whether there really are identifiable 'Asian values' (and, if there are, whether they are in fact different to Victorian English values).
There was much support for Samuel Huntington's proposition that the potential for future disharmony lies more in cultural and economic differences than it does in military and political disputes. There was little, if any, support for his conclusion that the result would be “everyone ganging up on the West” which had better stay in its bunker and stay defensive. The issue instead was how to manage cultural difference.
The identification of values and value systems was a starting point, but it wasn't enough. The wholesale acceptance of established value systems, Asian or Western, meant acceptance and tolerance of 'horrible things' on both sides. The discussion shifted to considering the bases on which the merits of different values could be debated and assessed. The need for humility, and the value of a certain amount of hypocrisy were discussed.
This gave rise to a consideration of the role of the nation state, and its leaders, in creating a system for managing international change. While it is clear that transnational issues are proliferating and being dealt with on a transnational basis it is also clear that the nation state is alive and well and self assertive.
Nationalist movements abound within the region and around the world and states retain their near monopoly of military force and intelligence activities. National identity however could prove to be a useful tool for managing differences, because it is dynamic and changeable. Cultural identity, on the other hand, looks to the past and is rooted in tradition. It is therefore less amenable to change and more likely to entrench itself in battle lines (for example, does the current situation in Bosnia Herzegovina illustrate the triumph of cultural identity over national identity?).
On the other hand, the dynamism of national identity makes it amendable to political manipulation. Lively discussion centred on whether it was ever legitimate for regimes to harness religious and ethnic identities and to forge from them new national identities which could then be used as much to manipulate the populace as to unite them. Can a focus on national identity at the expense of cultural identity effectively destroy or devalue tolerance within and between communities, and if this is so, is it worth the price?
More generational issues of regional leadership came to light too. A clear movement was discernible, away from the old (Western?) paradigm of defining goals and working towards them and towards a paradigm of establishing processes for consultation and seeing what happens from there (a more Asian approach?).
Young leaders are not inclined to accept older ideas of compromise and balance, where some ideals are sacrificed to others. They look to the preservation of cultural identity, but moderated by a national one (as exemplified perhaps by our host country Malaysia). They reject the idea of development at any cost, and of development behind closed doors, seeking instead new ways to develop without destroying their notions of who they are, their environments or their neighbours.
A telling joke, from someone on the cutting edge of the industrialisation process: What is the difference between a rapidly industrialised country and yoghurt? Yoghurt has a live culture.
The new regional leader must therefore be prepared to tackle head-on issues such as urban migration, pollution, and foreign investment and to negotiate solutions which protect the integrity of all the parties involved.
This of course starts to take us back to some of the opening discussions, which focussed on whether or not there are universal values. Integrity in fact looked like a pretty good contender, at least until it came to the hard part of finding means of practical application. An afternoon spent considering detailed case studies of foreign investment scenarios found some proponents of universal values making covert deals with oppositions in foreign countries to subvert their governments on the basis of 'leaked' materials. How did we get there? Corruption and ethically doubtful practices were harder to spot in real-life camouflage!
We found no definitive answers. We did however find definitive friendships, and we asked and attempted to address the really rough questions facing us all. The process is itself part of the answer, and we renewed our collective commitment to pursue it.
A start. A humble but honourable start.
discuss this articleKerrie Henderson was Director of Leadership Programs and has been a Professional Associate at St James Ethics Centre
This article was first published in City Ethics (now Living Ethics), issue 22, summer 1996.
© St James Ethics Centre