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Welcome

This month we are delighted to have Professor Ian Angell as our featured author. Nobody can accuse Ian of being conventional, but, whether you agree or disagree with his views, Ian is guaranteed to give you plenty to think about.  Enjoy.



Ian Angell has been professor of Information Systems at the LSE since 1986. His research work concentrates on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and risk (opportunities and hazards).
 
Angell’s reputation comes as the culmination of over twenty-five years work developing a perspective that stresses the social, economic and organizational issues over the merely technological ones: because of complexity, even the very best investment in new technology can be a source of commercial risk.

He has a high profile reputation as a ‘futurologist’. His radical, controversial, and increasingly accurate forecasts of the global consequences of ICTs in The New Barbarian Manifesto has generated substantial media interest, and he is frequently interviewed for radio, television, and newspapers. He also writes a quarterly column for CIO Connect, the magazine read by CIOs across the UK, about the major ICT issues of the day.

Professor Angell’s presentations of his controversial position means he is in great demand as a speaker on the international lecture circuit. He has gained notoriety worldwide for his aggressive polemics against the inappropriate use of artificial intelligence, so-called knowledge management, and the hyperbole surrounding all things ‘e-’.

click here for previous issues of the newsletter

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FSA NEWS & SPEECHES 

FSA bans IFA from doing business, 25 January 2007

"... gave false and incomplete information to prospective employers and to the FSA, including an inaccurate CV, a bogus reference, and inaccurate details on applications"

New FSA team to crack down on financial crime, 22 January 2007

"All of us involved in the fight against financial crime have to recognise that risks in this area inevitably evolve quickly and our responses have to match them.  This is a continuing challenge: as we react to the most recent attacks, so the criminals move onto new ways of achieving their objectives.  We have to keep raising our game and the FSA is responding to this by creating the Financial Crime and Intelligence Division."  John Tiner

John Tiner to step down as CEO in July 2007, 16 January 2007

This ban should be a lesson to us all, by Simon Biddle, 15 January 2007

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Upcoming Conferences and Events




ACAS training sessions 2007

Practical Application of the Approved Persons Regime, SII, 8 February 2007, London

6th Annual MLRO Convention, Osney Media, 12 February 2007, London (quote reference 906PWX)

2nd Annual Internal Fraud Convention, Osney Media, 13 February 2007, London (quote reference 906PWX)

Enhancing Competitive Advantage through People, UNICOM, 21- 22 February, 2007, London (quote reference POWERCHEX - 20% discount)

Employee Engagement, Linking Human Capital Strategy and Business Productivity, 27 February 2007, London

Money Laundering & Financial Crime Conference 2007, Securities and Investment Institute, 22-23 March 2007, London

Employing Non-UK Nationals, 22 March, 2007, London

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Articles of Interest

Time to act? , by Alice Snell, HR Management

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...the lighter side of HR

The following were taken from real resumes and cover letters.

1. I demand a salary commiserate with my extensive experience.
2. Received a plague for Salesperson of the Year.
3. Reason for leaving last job: maturity leave.
4. Wholly responsible for two (2) failed financial institutions.
5. Failed bar exam with relatively high grades.
6. Its best for employers that I not work with people.
7. I was working for my mom until she decided to move.
8. The company made me a scapegoat, just like my three previous employers. 

 

Ethics: a county east of London

By Ian O. Angell

Is it me? Am I the only one concerned about all the ethical posturing prevalent in business and government? Am I the only one to see these moralistic positions as highly problematic, and all recommendations phrased in terms of virtue rather than pragmatism as highly suspect.

It’s too easy to blame this on Enron, Worldtel, Parmalat, and all the other corporate scandals. Each society is a world of its own moral intent; but it exists in a world of perverse amoral and immoral consequences. So does espousing a sanctimonious ethical stance actually change anything?
 
Ethical behaviour does not form a causal link between intention and consequence. In the world of real politik it is simply not good enough merely to comply with the uncritical usage of morality. Only an unsentimental understanding of what is ‘sensible’ will do. Moralisers can bleat all they like, that this is unfair: natural forces, in particular economic forces, have no conscience.
 
Why is it that so many fail to see the absurdity in this moral bluster? For there is nothing absolute about ethics. Morality is self-imposed and society-imposed constraint. According to Nietzsche:  “the victory of the moral ideal is achieved by the same ‘immoral’ means as every other victory: force, lies, slander, injustice?” All morality is partial, in both senses of the word: it is incomplete, and biased. It is hypocritical, aimed only at safe targets – Situation Ethics: the doctrine of flexibility in the application of moral law according to circumstance. In this brutal and brutish world it is well to remember Baudelaire’s words: “one is punished for being weak, not for being cruel”.

There is no intrinsic power in morality, in societal truth. Power always has to be there first. Morality is a reflection of this power, in essence the prejudices of the powerful. That makes Ethics mere socially constructed bigotry. Every society’s underlying order, its certainties and truths, its sense of self-righteousness and goodness are flawed. What if societal power is failing?

Who knows what good is any more? The genie of moral relativism is out of the bottle; the word relativism merits a particularly virulent sneer from moralists. But is it moral relativism … or moral choice? In this unfettered atmosphere, the moral, indignant with virtue, will target the waverers along with the amoral, immoral. The now degenerate leadership claim the right to pass their comments on anything, and that all in society must loyally concur. Hence the surfeit of political correctness, and a recent vast increase in its formal expression, regulation: ‘domination transformed into administration.’

We see displacement activity of pious leaders; vacant and repetitive chanting of the rules; gratuitous acts of societal self-abuse and self-mutilation. The greater the threat, the greater the dependence on morality: hence Sarbanes Oxley, Basel II etc. Much of the confidence we feel in applying ‘best practice,’ and various related standards like ISO17799, comes from their hoped-for confidence-inspiring ritualistic nature, rather than their masquerade as ‘mechanistic solutions.’ They solve nothing, and ‘when empires are doomed, they have many laws.’
 
Furthermore, information and communication technologies have complicated matters by introducing dissatisfied members of society to alternative world-views. Many are experimenting; and the Internet makes it is so very much easier to find out about other communities, other moralities, other ideas, and then to compare and contrast their relative merits. The malcontents now have a choice, a world of choice. No longer isolated among the moralists of their society, and hence compliant, the disillusioned have no difficulty in using new technology to find fellow travelers with similar immoral and amoral urges. Who is to say they are wrong? Indeed, morality is a business opportunity for the amoral: ask any visitor to Las Vegas.

The many alien choices are not new, but in the past, borders have kept the influx to a minimum. However, now it is easier for individuals to act upon immoral and amoral opportunities. There can be no meeting of minds when fundamentally different views of the world are in conflict. And if the bigots don’t like it and try to prohibit it, then the amoral will escape outside of their jurisdiction, physically or particularly electronically.