From Influence to Integrity: Navigating Business, Politics, and Social Responsibility
When business filters into politics and vice versa, both suffer. This relationship is under increasing challenge as it comes in many shades of grey. Businesses are interested in influencing policy, and politicians are interested in funds. This politics of support and power is an established tug-of-war that often gives rise to favouritism, corruption, and economic instability.
Businesses often establish relationships with the government to seek political access and resources. They leverage political connections to gain a competitive edge — often unfairly and unethically. But this can also put them at risk, especially when they independently lobby for favours.
As a collective, business people are generally pragmatists rather than ideologues, and thus favour solutions that meet the diverse interests and priorities of all stakeholders. This is where chambers, associations, and institutional member-based organisations come to the forefront. However, recent politicisation of such entities has raised questions about their role and delivery.
Today, capable leadership is the exception; leadership is now based on the clout and influence of individuals. Emerging markets are defined by opportunities amidst chaos and corruption. In this environment, protecting the economic benefits of narrow interest groups is detrimental to overall welfare and will only widen the gap between the extremely wealthy and the rest. If ancient concepts of power continue to dominate leadership agendas, building and safeguarding a culture of innovation and collaboration will never take precedence.
A growing body of literature on the relationship between corruption and inequality underscores the realities of our country, where the super-rich find ways to park their money in Swiss banks while the poor struggle to find ways to leave the country in search of life and livelihoods.
Families live fragmented, clinging to the hope of a secure future. The most promising years of a person’s life are spent in labour in lands where even the food that sustains them tastes foreign. Some return in coffins with unfinished dreams, burdened by loans and with no second chances. Yet, the country significantly survives on the sweat and blood of their earnings.
It is time for economic elites to think carefully about whether they are perpetuating a corrupt system before exercising their economic and political power. Create wealth, live in the pursuit of making money — but do it with conscience. After all, nothing lasts forever.
