LOVE IN THE BOARDROOM Can love be the central guiding value in big business and in complex decisions? BETH AMATO
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he executive team of a corporation went away on a strategic retreat. Bonding around a late-night fire, they talked about the company they wanted to create – caring, inclusive, compassionate, fair, transparent … A young male executive asked, “Aren’t we just talking about love?” The company now operates in a culture of love and research reveals love in the smallest of big corporate places. Could love alter the course of late capitalism, which has revealed exploitation, degradation of the environment, and the entrenchment of poverty and inequality? This is what Julie Courtnage, part-time Lecturer in the Wits Business School and Wits Mining Institute aims to answer
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through her research: Small Stories of Love and Sustainability in the Boardroom. She interviewed directors and board members of big companies, with the purpose of investigating the lived experiences of love, or not, in business. “The research so far shows that love is indeed present in big companies and that it acts as a challenging and useful decision support frame,” says Courtnage. Ordinarily, love is a nebulous concept to define – and even more so in the workplace, where love and business seem an oxymoron. How is it clearly articulated? “When a company operates in a culture of love, relationships come first. It takes a lot of time to learn to be vulnerable with
