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Talent, virtues and corporate responsibility

Arnold Smit raises the question: How does talent management relate to corporate responsibility and sustainable development? He argues that if we are to become responsible corporate citizens, we need to anchor our talent paradigm in virtues, as much as we anchor it in knowledge, skills and values. He shares six universal core virtues, their impact on our perspective and shows us how we can source virtuous talent.

by Arnold Smit

Challenging times
We live indeed in a very challenging time in history. In no period before have we experienced so much promise as far as development is concerned and yet were so threatened with regard to the sustainability of our planet, its natural resources and living systems and ourselves as a species. Whilst the earth can barely continue to sustain its current population of 6.8 billion, another 2 billion people are expected to be added by 2050. Resources are already under immense pressure, greenhouse gases continue to accumulate at an alarming rate and global warming and climate change are showing their devastating impact.  At the same time, our world is characterised by inequities and disparities in wealth and power and huge gaps between rich and poor.

Our challenge, however, goes deeper than the availability of sufficient resources and the responsible use thereof. The real crisis is rooted in, and caused by, the economic model that shaped the world in which we live today. This model is driven by progress and profit, while the earth and its resources, and human beings and their capacity to labour, are largely disregarded and treated as means and not as ends. Much depletion and abuse have been committed in the name of development and progress. It is being calculated that it takes the earth one year and four months to regenerate what we as human beings use in a single year, or to put it in other words, at our current levels of extraction and consumption we need 1.3 planets to absorb the waste and regenerate the resources that we use in one year (King, 2009: 20). 

How does this predicament affect corporate agendas? For South African companies, direction is offered by the internationally-renowned King Report on Corporate Governance, of which the third version has been published in 2009. King III regards companies as citizens with duties and rights in very much the same way that individual persons are. The report then defines corporate citizenship as follows:

Responsible corporate citizenship implies an ethical relationship of responsibility between the company and the society in which it operates.  As responsible corporate citizens of the societies in which they do business, companies have, apart from rights also legal and moral obligations in respect of their economic, social and natural environments. As a responsible corporate citizen, the company should protect, enhance and invest in the wellbeing of the economy, society and the natural environment.

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