Anatoly Karachinsky, President of IBS Group Holding, believes that the big business imposes the big responsibility on the person who runs it - obligations in front of investors, towards people who work for you. And you can't ignore these obligations.
1. How important are values in business?
Very difficult philosophical question on which there is no concrete answer. The base values of those people which operate business are important: are they ready to kill, steal or aren't they?
2. Under which conditions these base values work?
Everything works well, when we live in a stable society, stable economy. But I'm still not sure that it works in the emerging economy because there are a lot of distortions.
3. Can you give an example of such a "distortion"?
I know people who are saying one day that they are transparent and fair, and another day they help others to steal. I'm asking them why they do that, since their base principle is not to steal, and they answer that they cannot refuse this client because he paid them a lot of money. They also claim they got money under the contract for professionally performed work, not from the place where their client has stolen them. This happens pretty often.
4. Why such "distortions" occur?
In theory everything is good, but there are a lot of temptations. There should be a stable situation, and people should believe that the law is the most important. But here it's not like that.
5. How important are the obligations to you?
Business inherently is only about obligations, and you cannot do anything what you want. Certainly, you can, but then don't try to build a big business. For example, now there are more than 8 thousand people who work for us. There should be some responsibility for them, for their families. There are people who if something happens will find another job, and there are those who won't, there are people who have worked with us for almost 20 years. It means that these people count on us. It is a huge responsibility! There are investors who invested in our company, and I talk in front of them: «Invest in us because we are a good company, we will grow, and we will aspire to a greater challenge ». All these obligations are important, and there are loads of them. And as an honest person, I should deliver what I promised.
6. Give an example of some restrictions imposed by these obligations?
In my point of view, it is important, not to be engaged in politics. Because investors, who have invested in our business, expect that the company management will act responsibly. If I would decide to be involved in politics, I should leave the business, sell all assets and retire. Only after doing so I if I want could become, for example, a mayor of some village. It is true not only for Russia, but also for any other country.
7. Are there base values which apply to all companies?
Values necessarily exist, each person has a set of base values: someone has a big set of them, someone - average, someone - small. Everyone has values but they can simply be different. For someone the most important is not to betray friends, for someone it is important to stay honest, someone values reputation, for someone it is important to earn money, without thinking about what his reputation will look like, etc. We live in a world, where there are a lot of combinations, and all of them don't coincide - all people are different. Even the identical twins are different: I have looked recently on their gene, and even they coincide by 95 %. Anyway they differ by 5 %, therefore they are different. It's very difficult to find something what has an absolute analogue. It's impossible to know what would happen if a gene would coincide by 100 % because in genome there are 3 billions of sequences, and their combination gives even more variants. Therefore there are no identical things in the nature.
