The most crucial raw material for business success is becoming increasingly scarce. We hear about problems accessing rare earth metals, but something even more indispensable to business has become even scarcer: respect. 

Respect is the consideration we have for something or someone we consider important. It is the indispensable foundation for an effective and balanced organization. Camaraderie, friendship, if possible, but at least respect. We all like, desire, and crave respect; we must respect others. The alternative is contempt and aggression, which ruin the institution. 

In a company, everyone must respect each other. Respect for superiors and subordinates; respect for colleagues and, even more so, for adversaries; respect for the efficient, but also for the clumsy, lazy, and malicious; respect for those wo command respect and those who not, because, as people, they deserve respect. 

Respect does not mean condescending, tolerating, or being complicit. It means facing flaws and conflicts without forgetting that the dignity of those who oppose us is much greater than the harm they do. It means understanding that each person, by the simple fact of being, is an incomprehensible mystery, has a superior excellence, and this must be factored into the attitude we have towards them. We can debate, we can discuss, we can punish, we can fight, we can even dismiss, but we must always do so with respect. 

This substance, respect, has many curious properties. It can be said to work like a virus. The more we give, the more we receive in return; on the other hand, disrespect generates a loss of respect around us. In an epidemic of disrespect, the whole community collapses. 

Today, respect is in decline. We live in an age where politics, economics, and culture are based on accusation, insult, and contemp. We fight passionately for noble causes, but without the nobility of respecting those who oppose us. We care about the elevation of our goals, not the decorum of our means. We greatly value originality, rebellion, and heterodoxy, and we confuse this with disrespect. Even those who fight for the rights of minorities and the disintegrated often do so by disrespecting those they accuse of disrespect. We intend to build the ideal society using crude methods. 

It is worth looking at the causes of the problem in order to eradicate it. The evil comes from the origins. Our modern civilization began by disrespecting the church, protesting for the purity of doctrine; then it disrespected the king and the government in the name of social justice; lately it disrespects any authority in favor of the individual. In all these cases, we promote disrespect for others while demanding that they respect us. 

Many point to technological factors. It is true that the internet, and especially social media, have lowered the level of our debates. People write in posts and say in podcasts things they would never say face to face or even in a letter. Alleged digital anonymity publicly reveals the crudest instincts of our nature. 

Worse is the curious evolution of media fiction. The information age, claiming to be democratic, must respect rights; but all adventures need villains, whose hatred forms the very basis of the plot. To create an enemy that viewers can despise without violating democratic respect, it was necessary to resort to characters devoid of dignity. Thus, our screens are full of psychopaths, zombies, aliens, orcs, and similar, absolutely evil entities that we can abhor without complexes. Today, political speeches and coffee shop conversations are as swarming with vampires and monsters as video games. 

However, beyond all this, family and society, but also business, the market, and the economy are communities of people. They only work with respect. 

João César das Neves, professor at CATÓLICA-LISBON