Financial Times

Positivism of JKH in Telekom’s Shining Light
The outgoing chairman of John Keels Holdings (JKH) was reported to have used the term “positivism” to signify what he said was the company’s “guiding philosophy”. In reporting it, one newspaper suggested that the term was of JKH coinage, perhaps as a warning to the reader not to take the use of it too literally or seriously.

The term “positivism” of course is not new. Historical sources attribute the first use of it to Saint-Simon (1760-1825) to designate the construing of science as “a crudely pragmatic observationalism”. After its adoption by Auguste Comte (1798 -1857), who is credited with inventing the word sociology, positivism is said to have become an intellectual excitement in France.

The use of it by JKH may have been intended to be casual, clever and provocative rather than formal. Yet there is an interesting sense in which “positivism” could be said to signify the ethos of JKH. An indication perhaps that in spite of what the journalistic imbibing had to say about the term’s coinage, the chairman of JKH at least knew what he was talking about.
“To know for the sake of prediction and to predict for the sake of action” is the principle of Comtean positivism.

“For Comte scientific knowledge is knowledge, not of what things are, but how they act, of what they thus appear to be”. The object of science was thus intensely pragmatic - a science of understanding was either impossible or unimportant. In social thinking, “Comte came out of French experience, not British Liberalism: he stood for organization, paternalism, centralisation, expert social control, not individualism and liberty”.

This is not to suggest that JKH is nothing but intensely pragmatic and illiberal in its ethos. Rarely is anything perfectly consistent. Besides, the spirit of an administrative method is best left uncommented on by outsiders.

However, consider the functional structure of JKH distilled into its vision statement: “To house a portfolio of diversified businesses that lead in strategic growth sectors of the economy and to be globally recognised.”
Now some will object that this no vision. It affords no measure of progress, no standard by which to discriminate between better and worse. It admits, in short, no conception of the business activity’s ideal, no vision of its own perfection. The vision statement does admit this, for sure: go where Profit resides and be measured by that.

However, the ultimate folly of such a measure was made plain in a telling business section editorial in this newspaper last Sunday: “Dialog Telekom in just a few years has begun generating profits that exceed even those of our most venerable [companies with] roots to the colonial era”.

Indeed, because profit admits of degree, it can never be a measure of progress. Profit is integral to a business. Profit sustains, improves and perfects an activity, just as pleasure sustains and improves human activity. But neither pleasure nor profit is an activity’s aim. A pleasure chaser is called a hedonist.
Profit or pleasure, in a word, is the touchstone of value or progress, but not the measure of it. It functions as an adjective not as a noun. How then are we to measure the progress of a company that lacks a core and does not envisage a vision of its own perfection as its judge – especially in light of the Dialog Telekom earnings?

There is real sense in which JKH could be deemed the “leading light of Lanka’s corporate sector”. It has made the highly diversified conglomerate, whose measure of progress is not an ideal but profit, the most desirable organisational model in this country.

But in what other sense could it be said that JKH is a leading light? How often has JKH by its own initiative internationalised the standards of its offerings? And what sort of a leading light has it been to the tourism industry, one of the “two natural growth industries”, which is mired in poor infrastructure and low-budget tourists?

Perhaps, it is, at least partly, because of the business positivism for which JKH has been the leading light that the nation is dependent, for much of its wealth generation, on our common folk’s servitude to oil-rich and not too infrequently abusive Arabs.

JKH, to be sure, has the potential to be a leading light. To do this, it must transform itself into a private-equity firm specialising in the leisure sector. Private-equity firms, with the ability to make long-term investments, are said to be emerging as the successors to hedge funds. But the first step must involve the Rajaratnam–Balendra–Captain triumvirate taking JKH private.
(The writer could be reached at ft@sundaytimes.wnl.lk)

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