More than 200 business and academic leaders came to the Swiss alpine resort of Zermatt to try and change the anti-globalization attitudes that persist in many countries. The Zermatt Summit: Humanizing Globalization (June 16-18) heard testimony from CEOs, academics and spiritual leaders from 18 countries about how to change the business-as-usual practices in today’s globalized business environment

A survey in early June by the French polling agency IFOP indicated that 33 % of those polled in ten countries still have doubts about globalization with France being the most skeptical. The results may be a far cry from the1990s which saw violent protests around the world by those objecting to what they saw as the effects of globalization: closed factories and outsourced jobs but it reflects a persistently held view.

In Zermatt however, there was a general consensus that globalization, like money, is not the root of all evil, it is rather how globalization is used.  The ethical responsibility of CEOs was emphasized under a concept called Servant Leaders – those who recognize that the real goal of any business should be to serve a given community, not simply generate profits for invisible shareholders.

Much of the 3-day discussion revolved around the banking collapse of 2008 and the real possibility the world may experience another if there is not a radical change in business thinking.  Banker Gilles de Margerie of Credit Agricole noted that in recent decades, capital markets became “progressively self-centered and disconnected from their original role” and “dominated by the sole value of money and profit.”

It was a sentiment echoed by others at the conference, over a quarter of which were CEOs, some from as far away as Chile and Argentina. 

Belgian social anthropologist Paul Jorion, worked at the Wells Fargo Bank in the United States as a risk management consultant specializing in sub-prime mortgages. With the banking collapse of 2008, he watched in horror as workers lost their jobs and others lost their homes.  “Man needs laws,” he told the group, “that’s why we have the Ten Commandments.  We should also have a commandment that says ‘thou shalt not wager (speculate) on price fluctuations.”

For many of those present it was a call to return to the business ethics of the days when people went into business to provide a service that the community needed instead of being stock market speculators like those described in the film Inside Job for whom making money is a drug like cocaine.