Can we afford to be efficient?

By Simon Longstaff

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 18 summer 1995

Can we afford to be efficient? At first glance this may seem a rather odd question. After all, the community has grown accustomed to calls for continuous improvement in productivity and international competitiveness. Indeed, it is probable that many have started to take such exhortations for granted.

Yet, this is the question that St James Ethics Centre has decided to explore at its next symposium to be held at the Hotel Inter-Continental in Sydney on Thursday 2 March (1995).

Some may regard it as a little unusual that an ethics centre should be concerning itself with questions to do with efficiency. However, efficiency is just one among a number of values that we might endorse as a community. Given this, we hope to foster debate about how much weight ought to be accorded to the values of 'efficiency' and 'competition' relative to alternatives such as ‘justice’, 'equality' and so on.

For example, is an increase in efficiency good in itself, or only if it is part of securing some other outcome, such as an increase share of the world's economic cake? Is an increase in the economic cake desirable in itself? Or is this, in turn, only justified by appealing to some other good - such as an improvement in the standard of living or quality of life enjoyed by Australian citizens? The questions could go on - with each new challenge requiring us to consider what ultimately justifies the policies we promote and pursue as a society.

Another way of approaching the topic is to determine what costs might reasonably be borne in order to increase efficiency. In other words, what might we sacrifice in order to achieve competitive excellence? Questions to do with the value we ascribe to the family, the arts and environment help to illustrate the types of issues that the community needs to address.

How should we balance the values associated with sustaining a happy family life against those associated with the achievement of increased productivity? What happens if new forms of technology can't produce gains sufficient to place the country in a leading position? What if economic goals can only be achieved by working in ways that diminish the opportunity to spend time with loved ones, and so on?

Should society continue to subsidise cultural pursuits (and, in particular, those that can't be exported)? What are we to make of resources being allocated to 'non-productive' activities such as the visual and performing arts? Again, some would say that the answers to such questions are obvious. But are they?

Should the physical environment be regarded as something of value in itself, or simply as a resource to be managed in support of human welfare? If it is the former, then how are we to balance the value of maintaining rainforests and bio-diversity against the goods that might be secured in the service of human projects? If it is the latter, then should we take into account the real or anticipated welfare of all people (including future generations) or only those with whom we now live in society?

Questions of a similar type can be asked at the 'micro' level of the individual enterprise. Efficiency is important and should be striven for. However, the question remains; “at what cost?” How might one weigh the importance of issues such as product safety, safe working conditions for employees, the obligations of the ‘good’ corporate citizen and so on? Do shareholders seek an increase in dividends at any cost? Is the strict letter of the law the boundary within which businesses need to operate?

Or, in other words, how should people in business and commerce approach traditionally thorny questions to do with their exercise of social responsibility?

Issues to do with families, culture and the environment are fairly close to the surface of concerns arising in this area. There are other issues, of equal importance, that receive little attention. One such issue relates to the future of the professions in a world in which the process of change is primarily directed towards securing increased economic efficiency.

It used to be the case that people taking up a profession usually did so with some understanding of the fact that they were entering into a compact with society. The community would allow members of the professions to exercise self-regulation, to perform certain types of work without external competition and so on. In return for these privileges, members of the professions were supposed to act in the spirit of public service.

In practice, this meant putting the pursuit of personal interest behind that of serving others. As will be evident, behaviour such as this is somewhat at odds with what might be expected from players embedded in a pure market environment where self-interest rules.

There is no point pretending that all professionals upheld their side of the social compact. The 1980s saw a number acting in ways that undoubtedly harmed the community. Even so, what are we to make of the suggestion that we should should respond to this failure in duty by setting aside any idea of distinctive professional obligations and instead, treat the professions as if they were just another service provider in the market-place?

On the one hand, this may lead to improvements in competition and efficiency. On the other hand, reforms of this kind may undermine the basis of a social compact in which broad community interests are supposed to be taken into account as a matter of course.

Issues such as these draw attention to the things we value and ask us to determine whether or not they can be sacrificed in order to achieve economic goals. In other words, what do we consider to be luxuries and what do we consider to be absolutely essential?

This may seem to place economic considerations in opposition to other goods that we might value. In reply, many would argue that it is only by increasing the size of the economic cake that other goods can be afforded. Others disagree with this response - and hence, the genesis of the debate. Whatever position one is inclined to adopt, it only requires a moment to see that any response to the practical choices we face in this area will reflect underlying commitments about what people think to be good and right.

And this, of course, is why St James Ethics Centre is so interested in promoting the debate.