One of the great dilemmas of the modern world of work - one that, one way or another, is reflected in much of the thinking and writing about management today - is found in the conflict between personal morals and business ethics.
Sure, the invisible hand of self-interest incontestably has done incalculable good. But we, as individuals who happen to be managers, may yet feel unsatisfied that our work might be invisible, or that, upon its discovery, it might be assessed as arising from narrow self-interest.
If we enter the field in order to engage in collaborative enterprises enabling us to be a constructive part of worthwhile endeavors larger than ourselves, then we sure don’t want to learn, at the end of the day, that it was all about us after all. We really do want to do good.
We want to make a positive impact on the world, our communities, our co-workers. Finally, we want to find ourselves having become better people for the effort.
Of course, the dilemma is made all the more fascinatingly excruciating by the fact that our individual determinations of how to resolve it are themselves ultimately revealed to be self-serving rationalizations. They inescapably violate either or both of our personal morals or our obligations to our particular business ethics.
So, here are some questions for you:
- When a business donates shareholder money to charity, what is it really doing, and how does it justify it?
- What is really behind the recent “sustainability” campaigns?
- Where (if anywhere) are the morality and ethics located in out-sourcing - particularly off-shoring - of work?
- How do you respond if a segment of society adjudges your product/ service, business model, marketing practices, community/political involvement, etc. to be morally or ethically objectionable?
- What do you do if you are promoted over someone who you assumed to be more qualified than you?
- How much of your time or other organizational resources will you continue to devote to a struggling junior who has, perhaps, the deepest good intent, makes the most profound effort, and has the greatest personal need to succeed, but just isn’t getting it? How many of those factors should really influence you, and which ones?
Imagine yourself to be the decision-making manager in each of these situations. A good person, wishing earnestly to do good through good work on behalf of all who are touched by that work.
How do you most morally, most ethically, give expression to your good intentions?
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Today’s tip: Speaking of the struggle with ethics and morality, how about trying to figure out what they even are or how they ought to be expressed? Please see this piece by William Baker, of BNET, on the topic.
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2 Comments
Jim - Excellent article covering a subject that has bothered me for some time. That is, the tendency of many to consider intents superior to sustainable processes and outcomes.
Being profitable is part of being sustainable. Depending on the product or service, so is proper valuation and, if necessary to achieve an acceptable price point, manufacturing something elsewhere.
At one point, OO-RAH.com was developing, casting and molding our own statues. It took hours of work, and we sold them for a loss at $75 each. When we discovered how easy it was to move our manufacturing overseas to a nation that had a comparative advantage, we were able to cut the price to less than half and still be profitable.
At $75, our customers would have to pay more, and most wouldn’t. At $25, they could afford it and were more likely to purchase.
Given the nature of our products, there were some who felt that we should have produced our statues in the U.S. However, had we done that, and had we decided to have someone else do that so that we could focus on our core competencies, it would have been twice what we originally charged, and we wouldn’t have sold but a few — far fewer than we needed to sell — and the initial outlay of capital without quick reimbursement would have sunk us.
Hello Cam,
The example you provide has it all: your own moral/ethical considerations as managers both in the abstract and in particular application regarding price, availability, etc; the resistance on the part of some segment of the market to the idea of any US company, and especially one with your purpose, to the idea of outsourcing the work; and a hard-nosed assessment of the cash-flow implications used to integrate all the forgoing.
I think this is something that managers should go through as a regular routine in such instances - not to game the obstacles and spin the PR - but to clearly formulate the moral argument at issue and the ethical implications of the various ways of addressing it.
As it happens, I think free-market capitalism is pretty good at doing this in a highly defensible way - more than that: a way that deserves efforts at emulation even in organizations that may not appear obviously to be market oriented.
But the main issue here is for us as managers to think it through, both as individuals taking individual decisions and actions with consequences, and as the managers of organizations by means of which we do that, on behalf of those organizations, the customers they serve, the people they employ - and even the vendors they contract with.
Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful and thought-provoking observations!
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