“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew Eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons…….Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” (Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III.i.49-61)
Remember Shylock, the infamous Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice’’, the stereotypical Jew as perceived by the anti-Semitic—the shrewd businessman without moral scruples? In this famous quote, Shylock protests that, even though he is a Jew, he is human like everyone else (that is, Christians), and in fact, only improves on the hard business practices Christians have taught him! Barring the bizarre collateral (“a pound of flesh”) in that unlikely plot, it is all too true.
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| Anurag Batra |
Yes, Jewish entrepreneurs often do much better than non-Jews in the same line of business. I envy my Jewish friends who are successful entrepreneurs running highly profitable organizations. Their innate quality of leadership, sharpened by business acumen, makes them respected businessmen all over the globe. Traditionally, the Jews have been good at numbers, which is why globally, in modern times, financial sector professions such as credit rating, insurance and merchant banking are often dominated and controlled by them. Indeed, one can even equate Israel’s progress with a species of geo-political entrepreneurship.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Israel, and one of my Jewish friends posed an interesting question to me, “Why are Jewish entrepreneurs disproportionately successful in entrepreneurial pursuits as compared to their counterparts in any other part of the world?” Believe me, I have no clue. Like all of you, I know that Jews are champions in hi-tech areas, and front-runners in computer technology and data security. Moreover, the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, is one of the best in the world.
The Talmud, one of the most sacred texts of Judaism, preaches a doctrine interlinking business ethics with social responsibility—something that is yet to seriously catch the fancy of modern businesses in the rest of the world. The ancient Jewish law has certain tenets on how to conduct ethical business. Jews do not view poverty as a virtue, whereas creating wealth for them has always been a challenge, given the arbitrary exclusions they had to suffer in all European countries, which left them socially disadvantaged for centuries. Talmudic doctrine only enjoined the more successful in the community to look after their less fortunate brethren.
To understand the Jewish approach to business properly, one needs to delve a little deeper into the ideological origin of this faith and these people. It is said that in the Jewish tradition a question is asked, whether God wants us to be rich. The traditional answer is that for the Good Lord, pre-occupied with so much to do, that question is not top-of-mind. However, He does want human beings to be obsessively preoccupied with the welfare of their brethren. Ergo, if you succeed in discovering what others need, you should not be surprised that you are rewarded with wealth!
Jews are entrepreneurs because they deem no work to be too lowly. They view business as an activity based on long-term relationships rather than the short-term gains.
I don’t think that successful entrepreneurs possess any extraordinary caliber or IQ, genes or better educational backgrounds. Some people put forward the idea that Israelis are highly successful because they have cheated their way to success. Another view is that the Jews have a money gene that they pass on from one generation to the next. Yet another is that Israeli entrepreneurs have high IQ levels.
All these theories can be debunked by the simple fact that businesses don’t work that way. An interesting study reveals that 60 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are headed by people without advanced degrees.
For any entrepreneur, the only mantra to succeed is to be obsessively pre-occupied with discovering and supplying goods and services that others need, with a long-term vision. Simply put, business must always be a consequence of relationships between human beings, and not the cause.
That takes me to the question, are successful organizations the ones that log in higher turnovers, or the ones that conduct ethical business and promote values like corporate social responsibility?
Certainly, successful businesses have profitable bottom-lines and believe in sharing wealth with their stakeholders, including employees and even distressed sections of the society. But more than that, like the good Jews, entrepreneurs should reap the benefits of financial success in sync with traditional business and social ethics.
Anurag Batra is real life, first generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. When he is not busy writing such columns, he can be reached at anuragbatrayo@gmail.com. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Anurag is the co founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.
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written by designer , March 17, 2011
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