by Howard Gardner
Goldman Sachs is widely acknowledged to be a leader in its field and has certainly been successful by most commonly applied criteria. But it has to decide what business or profession it is in. If it is just a business, whose goal is to make as much money as possible for partners and shareholders, then it needs to make that clear. “We will do anything legal that we can,”–and, implicitly, cut as close to illegality as we can without crossing the line.
But if it claims to be socially responsible, if its partners claim to be professionals, then it has to apply much stricter standards to its own actions and take full responsibility for the consequences of these actions. By most accounts, so long as Goldman Sachs was a partnership, it behaved in a professional manner and was justifiably respected for its behaviors. But it is clear from recent events in the post IPO period, that it is strictly a business, one that aims to make as much money as possible, by any and all means, including ones that involve deception of its customers.
Goldman Sachs does not need a new strategy or a new public relations gimmick. If it wants to become a respected firm, it needs to alter fundamentally its hiring, its training, its reward systems, its accountability, and its transparency. Absence a new leadership, with a wholly different set of ethical standards, that won’t happen– even if the firm claims to be doing “God’s work.”
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