Absolutely convinced corporates are more ethical today: Azim Premji
Wipro founder Azim Premji is of the view that corporates today have got a broader sense of ethics guiding them.
Wipro's founder chairman Azim Premji on Friday said he is "absolutely convinced" that corporates of today's era are more ethical than 20-40 years back and attributed this to "cleaner" governments and businesses' own sense of ethics.
Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit, Premji, who is counted among India's top philanthropists, said he believes that the younger lot who have built professional organisations and made it really big by the age of 30-40 years are more conscious about philanthropy and their responsibilities towards the society.
"I am convinced that the corporates of today are more ethical than the corporates of 20-30-40 years back ... One is because governments are cleaner, two is because they have got a broader sense of ethics guiding them ... They are definitely cleaner, no questions about that," he said.
The doyen of the tech industry also said that, in his view, the older generation in wealthy and affluent families "probably gave much more to charity".
"I think, some of the current generation is living in the shadow of that legacy, and they find that they don't have to increase the amount of giving ... because giving by their fathers and grandfathers was so much, so there is an automatic bias," he said.
Premji exhorted companies to come together and contribute to the larger good of society and its people.
"When we look collectively at the role of businesses and enterprises in our country, we must go continually beyond any framework that we have set for ourselves, we must ask the most basic, fundamental questions of where is our society, workers and work," Premji said.
He urged companies to prioritise important issues and challenges facing society and work out ways to address them for the betterment of society.
Edited by Swetha Kannan