Dan Erwin

A Critical Look at Organizational Ethics

In Alexandra Levit’s glorious new book, Blind Spots: 10 Business Myths You Can’t Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success, she states her rationale for writing in clear, uncompromising terms. Blindspots is a book written by a Gen-Yer for Gen-Yers basically because she was tired of reading silly theories and platitudes by business and career authors who sell their work by giving these myths credibility and by telling readers what they want to hear.

What’s clear is that we have a new page in business authenticity. She shrugs off the irrelevant, the obvious and the trite, landing us squarely in reality. In that same spirit, I want to think and talk critically about business ethics. Firms can say an awful lot about organizational ethics, and they have good reason to talk about the issue. The Ethics Resource Center released, in 2009, a survey which indicated that unethical behavior is prevalent in the workplace. Some of the relevant findings include:

• 22% observed abusive or intimidating behavior toward employees
• 16% observed a situation that places employee interests over organizational interests
• 11% observed violations of safety regulations
• 10% observed misreporting of actual time worked
• 14% observed discrimination on the basis of race, colord, gender, age, etc.
• 9% observed stealing or theft
• 7% observed sexual harassment
• 19% observed lying to employees, customers, vendors, or the public

These statistics demonstrate that unethical behavior does not seem to be rare in organizational life. The consequence is that organizations have attempted to establish ethics programs. About 70% of employees indicate that their organizations had implemented ethics training. And, the results also indicate that ethics training seems to have a positive effect on organizations.

In the spirit of Blindspots, not least because many have asked about ethics in organizations, I want to look at the realities of organizational ethics. I believe firmly that the more we understand the organizational setting, the more potential we have for work security and career success. And yeah, organizational ethics is one area where we need to get our head straight.

Organizational ethics is a very mixed bag. As a consequence, it’s important to stop thinking that the world is a just place. One of the first reactions many employees have is that the organization is going to be loyal to them. After all, ethical codes socialize an organization’s members into a culture of acceptable behavior, and announce that the organization is a worthy partner. That’s just not always true. Another reaction is that employees can be counted on to be honest in their dealings with the organization. That’s not true, either. So where is ethical reality in the typical organization?

Specialists in organizational communication have been looking at this question for some time. I’m especially indebted to the work of Modaff, Butler and Dewine in the growing field of organizational communication. They find that the answers are nuanced. So keep the fact that organizational ethics is a mixed bag in your front lobes. It’ll help you learn from all situations and all people, even those you don’t like or respect. Furthermore, it’ll keep you from naivete, and make it possible for you to deal with ethical and political reality.

1. Never forget that sometimes an organization’s code of ethics could be a public relations gimmick, designed to lure stakeholders into a false sense of security. And, of course, serve as a recruiting means for highly prized recruits.
2. An organizational code of ethics could be a means of imposing values upon employees upon employees that are not truly accepted by those employees. My own experience with that very issue created tensions impacting my productivity and personal life.
3. The code of ethics could be a way of regulating the behavior of employees in the interests of management.
4. Even though a code of ethics may encourage whistle-blowing, it’s clear from data that the worker who does so may face organizational retaliation.

As I write this, what crosses my mind is that the very people who educated me on the organization’s ethical realities were not low level employees or managers. They were senior execs, people who’d achieved at the highest rungs of organizational life. Once they became clients and friends they regularly urged me to deal with the inherent negative conflicts of corporate reality. These same execs who might reinforce the ethical codes were also telling me that I needed to recognize the implications of these rules. To recognize them meant that I was able to be more vigilant and proactive to ensure my own success. Those execs were very good at the process. Understanding these issues can also serve your interests.

Elie Wiesel on the Sexual Imbroglio

Although some of the articles on the current narcissism of public figures can be voyeuristic, Elie Wiesel put it all in a unique context. Here's his fascinating Talmudic saying, which pulls together the acts of betrayal with the cultural and historic implications.

In expressing sadness for Strauss-Kahn's wife, Anne Sinclair, the very well-known French journalist, Wiesel reminds us of the Talmudic saying:

No one is the owner of his instincts. But controlling them, that is civilization.

Anne Sinclair's comments, April 30, regarding the wedding of Prince William provide even further insight into her rich awareness of human life.

I can understand those who didn’t miss a crumb. As if, quite simply, we were like children who, before going to sleep, want a tale, a story with a princess and a dream, because real life catches up with you soon enough....

Reflecting on Sinclair and her French family's heritage of wealth, education and the Holocaust, those of us with a more ethical simplicity may be challenged to rethink our own perspectives.

Still, Peg Noonan adds a more explanatory comment when she writes that human sin is a constant, none are free, and anyone who is shocked by it is a fool or lying.

Quotation of the Week: On Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

Given the recent WikiLeaks, I want to surface a realistic understanding of the relationship between diplomacy and transparency with a quote from a 17th century British ambassador to Venice:

    A diplomat is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.

In a Washington Post op/ed, Throw the Book at WikiLeaks, Charles Krauthammer does an excellent job of explaining the damage done by WikiLeaks.  He calls the leak sabotage, arguing from a number of perspectives.  He points out that WikiLeaks damage our war-fighting capacity, are a blow to our ability to collect information, and make the U.S. look very bad.

You can almost sort levels of journalistic responsibility by how the various members of the media reported on the WikiLeaks.  Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times and the DesMoines Register, among our truly great newspapers, took a far more nuanced perspective.  Ha'aretz, the leading Israeli news media, was unsurprisingly cautious.  Even the Wall Street Journal was very careful in its writing, although the Journal's sister medium, Fox News, took the Leaks as an opportunity to badmouth government and the Democrats. 

My suspicion is that WikiLeaks may well be the nail in the coffin of transparency.  Thirty years ago when I was a faculty member at a theological seminary, transparency in psychological training was viewed as an absolute necessity in human relations.  But just a couple years ago, I had a drink with a former psych colleague of mine, and he referred to transparency as the "naivete" which he espoused early in his career.

Secrecy and deception are an inevitable, if not an occasional necessity, in all human relations.  And not just in diplomacy or negotiation.  No serious political compromise, corporate merger, complicated legal settlement, negotiation or even healthy human relationship could ever be managed without a reliable level of confidentiality and secrecy.  Even in the most intimate of human relationships, complete transparency is not always the best long term strategy for a healthy relationship.  Now that my beloved wife is beset with Alzheimer's, her occasional defensiveness becomes obvious, and our daughters and I chuckle about it openly, which reflects the acknowledged admission of its existence.  It's clear that our daughters and I have been aware of that defensiveness for years, but no longer need to keep it confidential.  My own attitude is that openly discussing that defensiveness was not especially useful in relations with my kids prior to her illness.  Much of our intimate relations are like that.  And that's a strength.  Besides, there's intriguing research that indicates that the best marriages survive because of the male's deference to his spouse.  I've followed that rule for years and found deference, confidentiality and secrecy, even though obvious, very useful strategies for a rich relationship. 

After all, as research has shown, lying is ubiquitous in the brain.  Max Bazerman and his Harvard colleagues' research has made clear that we all lie.  And though they believe it not to be especially so, they admit to its occasional usefulness.  So there are plenty of occasions in which transparency is not a useful strategy.  My own attitude is that the huge majority of the time truth-telling is the route to go.  For example, I despise sucking up and distrust those who do.  I've worked diligently to gain my reputation as a straight shooter.  But white lies, protective lying, and diplomatic lying are not only useful strategies, but can be a form of highly liberating street smarts.

Yeah.  I've pushed the envelope on this.  But largely to make the point that transparecy can be destructive.  The rest of the time, you'll get kudos for authenticity. And never forget that deception and lying require a lot of energy.  Energy that sometimes can be better used.

Quotation of the Week: Belinda Luscombe, Time Magazine

How does someone raise almost $1 million before his 19th birthday?

--Belinda Luscombe, Senior Editor, Tim

This is an instance when the quotation is just a simple question.  But it's a very important question about a 19 year-old golfer, Ben Sater, who started a charity golf tournabment in Dallas when he was just 11 years old.  Ben and his dad are fans of golf, the world's richest sport. 

Ben has a unique and irresistible formula for his charity.  Ben requires every kid who plays in his golf tournament to raise at least $100.  One girl mustered $15,000 by soliciting everyone on her parents' Christmas-card list.

Ben and his parents get individual and corporate sponsors to cover the tournament's costs.

This is a unique way to call your attention to Bill Gates' and Warren Buffett's challenge for all billionaires to give away at least half of their fortune before they die.  We knew that when my generation and the Boomers retire there was going to be a lot of money crossing the table.  A smart gift to charities is an important use of all our tax benefits.  And it deserves to be in our wills.

Maureen Dowd on Lies as Wishes

Maureen Dowd of the Times is one of those hilarious Irish Catholic feminists who can be a great deal of fun.  Her ability to insert the knife and twist it for an entire column is unsurpassed.  She's especially good with politicians.  Typically, though, there's more than a little truth in her column. 

I quote from today's column on lies as wishes. 

T. S. Eliot wrote about when memory mixes with desire. Politicians get in trouble when desire nixes memory. They know they are misrepresenting an experience, but can’t help themselves. Their desire to be the person they describe is too overpowering. Politicians are actors trapped in the same part, and some occasionally feel the need to punch up the script. They are salesmen engaged in the hard sell, and some occasionally get carried away.

On this occasion, Richard Blumenthal the attorney general of Connecticut who is running for Chris Dodd's senate seat got carried away and announced that he served in Vietnam when he never left the States.  If you've read Dowd, you can imagine how much she used the knife on Blumenthal.  Truthfully, the list of politicians and plenty of the rest of us who engage in aspirational lying is not small. 

The most fascinating insight which had never crossed my mind with much clarity is the notion of Bella DePaulo, a psych prof at the UC Santa Barbara.  Lies, she suggests, are like wishes.  When you wish you were a certain kind of person, but are not, and maybe not willing to do what it would take become that person, then it becomes very tempting to lie.

One of my past colleagues never finished his doctorate, yet on numerous occasions he introduced himself as "Doctor. . . . "  Although I have a great sense of having worked my ass off to finally get that credential at age 50, it's lustre lasted only a short time.  Most of the time when he made that claim I was not especially perturbed.  After all, some of the dumbest people I've ever known have a doctorate.  One day, however, he sat with a potential HR client who commented about his frustration with consultants who claimed the degree. I watched my colleague turn a bright red, and realized he wasn't a very good liar.  Touche.

Dowd's point, however, is not merely pungent, but also instructive.  "Lies are never merely about words.  They're more profoundly about identity."  That insight will reverberate for quite a while.  It gives me a new frame for assessment.

Maureen Dowd of the Times is one of those hilarious Irish Catholic feminists who can be a great deal of fun.  Her ability to insert the knife and twist it for an entire column is unsurpassed.  She's especially good with politicians.  Typically, though, there's more than a little truth in her column. 

I quote from today's column on lies as wishes. 

T. S. Eliot wrote about when memory mixes with desire. Politicians get in trouble when desire nixes memory. They know they are misrepresenting an experience, but can’t help themselves. Their desire to be the person they describe is too overpowering. Politicians are actors trapped in the same part, and some occasionally feel the need to punch up the script. They are salesmen engaged in the hard sell, and some occasionally get carried away.

On this occasion, Richard Blumenthal the attorney general of Connecticut who is running for Chris Dodd's senate seat got carried away and announced that he served in Vietnam when he never left the States.  If you've read Dowd, you can imagine how much she used the knife on Blumenthal.  Truthfully, the list of politicians and plenty of the rest of us who engage in aspirational lying is not small. 

The most fascinating insight which had never crossed my mind with much clarity is the notion of Bella DePaulo, a psych prof at the UC Santa Barbara.  Lies, she suggests, are like wishes.  When you wish you were a certain kind of person, but are not, and maybe not willing to do what it would take become that person, then it becomes very tempting to lie.

One of my past colleagues never finished his doctorate, yet on numerous occasions he introduced himself as "Doctor. . . . "  Although I have a great sense of having worked my ass off to finally get that credential at age 50, it's lustre lasted only a short time.  Most of the time when he made that claim I was not especially perturbed.  After all, some of the dumbest people I've ever known have a doctorate.  One day, however, he sat with a potential HR client who commented about his frustration with consultants who claimed the degree. I watched my colleague turn a bright red, and realized he wasn't a very good liar.  Touche.

Dowd's point, however, is not merely pungent, but also instructive.  "Lies are never merely about words.  They're more profoundly about identity."  That insight will reverberate for quite a while.  It gives me a new frame for assessment.

Quotation of the Week: Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek

Differences between parties are often small.  Democrats want to spend more and don't want to raise taxes, except on high earners.  Republicans want to reduce taxes but don't want to spend less.

--Robert J. Samuelson

Samuelson, no relation to the economist, is a contributing editor to both Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Politics are a tribal matter.  We are born into our politics.  Once we've bought into the party line, we tend to reside in homogenous neighborhoods where residents support our party.  We tend to adapt our ideas to the party, ignore ideas that differ from our party, paying little attention to the ideas of the opposition party.  As Samuelson notes, the other side cannot be merely mistaken.  Instead, differences are morally distinct.  It must be evil, selfish, unpatriotic, immoral or just stupid.  Polarization deepens and compromise becomes more difficult.  That, also, makes it more difficult for us to talk about political or governmental issues. 

Matt Damon and the "Green Zone"

I’m a sucker for espionage and war stories with a lot of action so I headed for the movie yesterday, hoping for a couple hours of escape.  The ultra-earnest Matt Damon was his serious, stoic self throughout the entire movie.  He was the good guy up against the bad guys from the Pentagon. 
 

The movie was a very bad case of the simples, unsatisfying in its reflection of “Bush lied, people died” reductionism.  It lacked the fun of Damon in “Oceans,” and the occasionally conflicted story line of his Bourne episodes.  Not even a romance intrudes.  The failed character development contrasts Damon as good-guy warrior and the weaselly Greg Kinnear replaying, as Ross Douthat put it, some combination of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer and Douglas Feith.  The grizzled CIA operative, played by Brendan Gleason, is also a good guy in this movie, knowledgeable of Iraq, attempting to get the real story behind the war.  A grimly farcical movie, it circles around Damon gone rogue, searching to find the truth about WMD and learning that it’s all a ruse for war against Saddam.  Ho hum.

So why am I writing this review? 

Actually, it’s a ploy to get my readers to think about two important, but related matters.  These are matters which, I hope to show, influence how we think about this business of being human and eventually how we think about our careers, the main focus of my blogs. 

Why does Hollywood look upon American politics as an inevitably toxic world, and distance itself from that reality?  Successful politicians can never be good or evil.  They will always be good and evil. 

Growing up in an evangelical church, I was taught that one would never really want to get involved in corporate business.  It was too political and thus too evil.  Of course, governmental politics was way off the screen for any "true christian.”  The issues were always presented as a matter of personal christian ethics.

Those of us with the slightest knowledge of the founding fathers and their genius displayed by the constitution realize that they understood and used the self-interested agendas of political players to cancel each other out.  Their obvious intent was to limit the damage that one branch can do.  Indeed, they openly acknowledged their cynicism, and built upon flawed human nature.  They had no difficulty with self-interest.  It's inherent in the political nature of humans.

It’s also a profound mistake to think that career success will ever come without political knowledge.  Hard work and deep smarts will have to be supported by political action.  Political action in most any arena is eventually about high compromises and low moral trespasses.  We might just as well get over the adolescent notion that we can honor the distinctions between our messy, conflicted, self-interested lives and remain morally pure.  Contrary to the “righteous,” I’m quite certain that wherever Yahweh resides, He is quite aware, willing to affirm our necessary foibles.

In sum, the aftermath of this recession suggests that all of us, professionals, businesspeople and “politicians” need to recognize that the lines dividing the ethical are not nearly as clear as we might wish and that political action is inevitable.  Hopefully, you see that like much of Hollywood's attempts at righteousness, the Green Zone is an ethical farce. 

What's the Last State You'd Ever Expect to Willingly Raise Its Taxes?

Initially, I thought it might be Mississippi, but in fact, it's Arizona.  The governor, Jan Brewer, despite a stff primary challenge from a tea-party-aligned Republican, will send a 1% sales-tax increase to voters in May.  Not quite slam-dunk, but, still, a pretty good chance of passing.

Having lived in that backward, medieval, yet beautiful state, for a couple years until the Ponderosa Pine pollen and wild daisies got the best of my allergies, I could only howl with laughter when I learned the reason why.  Bet you can't guess what's driving the referendum in addition to a huge state deficit!!?? 

At least one of the tax issues is that 13 highway rest stops had to be closed because of lack of funding.  That's a no-go in a state with long distances between towns and gas stations.  We will raise taxes, the Arizonians suggest, when it's in our own self-interest, and at no other time.

Managing deficit issues with referenda is a poor way to handle state needs.  Anyone with any brains should be able to draw that conclusion from California's mess.  When general funding that should cover service issues must be handled by special taxes, it's a sign that the political process has become very short-sighted.  It's also an issue of the citizenry.  Has civics gone out the window?   Significantly, it's a gross failure of the media to act in any role except that which will bring in profits.  Historically, media took on a community leadership role but that's gone also. 

The worst example of media failure may well be Fox News.  In a better-late-than-never Op-ed in last Sunday's Washington Post, Howell Raines takes on Roger Ailes of Fox News.  Raines writes:

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals.

Raines continues:

As for Fox's campaign against the Obama administration, perhaps the only traditional network star to put Ailes on the spot, at least a little, has been his friend, the venerable Barbara Walters, who was hosting This Week, ABC's Sunday morning talk show. More accurately, she allowed another guest, Arianna Huffington, to belabor Ailes recently about his biased coverage of Obama. Ailes countered that he should be judged as a producer of ratings rather than a journalist-- audience is his only yardstick. While true as far as it goes, this hair-splitting defense purports to absolve Ailes of responsibility for creating a news department whose raison d'etre is to dictate the outcome of our nation's political discourse.

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.

Arizona's tax issues, the ethical irresponsibility of Fox News and visual media, as well as raucous talking heads have contributed to the failures of personal and community responsibility.  It's no wonder the schools are falling apart and our kids are failing to get the needed education for success in the 21st century. 

It's not just media's failure to emphasize community and responsibility.  The issues seep out of every rathole, including many of the so-called Christian churches.

One of the best and most thorough popular analyses of the failure of community is Fareed Zakaria's book, The Future of Freedom.  Although, it should be noted that David Brooks regularly deals directly or indirectly with the failure of community.  See, for example, his recent column, "The Power Elite."

In short, our system has grown some pretty serious problems which are more evident with every passing day.  The Arizona tax referendum is just a small potatoes example of our problem.  

Poll Shows Americans of Both Parties Oppose Supreme Court Ruling

In a just-released poll, Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose a Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations and unions unlimited spending on political campaigns.  Furthermore, they favor new limits on such spending according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

In a recent post, I argued from two distinct perspectives that the Court had seriously blundered. 

• The action showed a monstrous lack of awareness of the political facts on the ground, and the role of special-interest groups. 
• The action showed an originalist or fundamentalistic handling of the Constitution that is not only asinine, but profoundly lacking in perspective.

What was striking to me about the poll was the level of rejection.  Eight in 10 poll respondents opposed the high court's decision "to allow unfettered corporate political spending.  Furthermore, the poll revealed little difference of opinoin among Democrats, Republicans and Independents. 

What does this mean?  The Post suggested that it implied a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and Democratic legislators who are crafting legislation to limit the effects of teh ruling.

I am inherently cautious about drawing much from polling results until I know the size of the sampling, something about the actual form of the questions, who commissioned the poll, and the size of the results.  There was enough information available in the article on all of those subjects, except the actual form of the questions.  But when ABC and the Post commission the poll, that's a fairly trustworthy sponsor.

It will be very interesting to see the response to the poll and whether previous supporters of the decision back off from their support.  What do you think?

Martin Luther King, Jr. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

Although the public is most familiar with King’s “I have a Dream” speech, I have always thought that his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was a far better and even more passionate explanation of his commitment to civil rights.  In the letter King explains why negotiation and postponement of actions are no longer a viable option and argues for direct action in the form of “sit-ins, marches and so forth.” 

Here is his argument:You are quite right in calling for negotiation.  Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action.  Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.  It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.  My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking.  But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.”  I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.  Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understand and brotherhood.

“Nonviolent gadflies?”  Indeed.

Underlying all of King’s philosophy is his concept of the interrelatedness of all communities and states, best phrased in the early paragraphs of his rather long letter: I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. . . . Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.  I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

As I read through these familiar lines, I am aware of how much King's statements have become a part of our heritage and, indeed, a part of the world's heritage.  For that, I am grateful.

The "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" can be downloaded here.