Combating Ethical Cynicism And Voicing Values In The Workplace
Recent events have contributed to an ever-growing cynicism and even a sense of futility about the values and ethics of global business institutions. We have seen, for example, the creation and marketing of investment vehicles allegedly designed to fail, so that those in the know could short them; the knowing disregard of credit-worthiness requirements by banks and mortgage brokers; the practice of “cooking the books” over long time periods until seemingly solid and successful businesses collapse under the weight of their own false information, and the prioritizing the importance of time and financial pressures over safety requirements in the mining and extractive industries.
The costs of such transgressions have had a troubling multiplier effect, causing financial, human and environmental devastation. Beyond that, they contributed to a crisis of faith in the marketplace that paradoxically, makes it even more difficult to fix what ails us. The more business leaders and employees believe that the system is corrupt, the less likely they are to feel empowered or motivated to behave differently. Research and experience suggest that among the most prevalent reasons for the failure of individuals to address problems in the workplace are a fear of retaliation, a sense that they are alone with their concerns and the belief that their efforts will be ignored anyway.1
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Whose job is it, anyway?
So what’s a business leader to do, particularly when it comes to values and ethics? How can he or she address and counter this sense of futility? This can be a daunting challenge particularly because the received wisdom is that everything “starts at the top.”
This was driven home to me recently when I was delivering a public lecture about how to voice one’s values in the workplace. I noticed a smartly dressed gentleman in the front row who was fidgeting in his seat and growing increasingly agitated. As I completed my remarks and invited comments, his hand shot up so fast I thought his chair might tip over. Wondering what was on his mind, I invited him to speak:
“I am the owner and CEO of my own very successful retail company and I care a great deal about values, but let me tell you that it is just not possible for employees to act ethically if the CEO does not create the culture and make it possible. This is not about individual action; it’s about leadership.”
And as he spoke, a number of heads in the audience were bobbing up and down in agreement.Of course in one sense there is no question that a primary responsibility of organizational leaders is to set the tone and communicate what is important in an organization, what is allowed and where the boundaries of action lie. But taken to its extreme, this perspective runs the risk of exaggerating the CEO’s power, on the one hand, and the helplessness of the employees, on the other, fueling that very sense of futility discussed above.
The B.P. oil spill in the Gulf in the summer of 2010 is a case in point. Every morning for months, stunned citizens opened the newspapers or turned on their computers, only to hear of more unheeded warning signals and more apparently known safety risks that had contributed to the environmental and financial devastation. One had to wonder why anyone didn’t speak up? But then as the story unfolded, there were indeed accounts of engineers at B.P. who had raised questions, and of managers at Transocean who had expressed concerns, and of federal regulators with the Minerals Management Service who had complained – all to no avail!
From one vantage point, this dismal story can be seen as proof that the CEO quoted above is right when he argues that individual employees have no power to make change, and that it’s up to organizational leaders to counter the cynicism that can silence an otherwise well-intended employee. But from another perspective, this story suggests a dual-sided leadership and management agenda. In reality, there is a complicated dance that takes place between organizational leaders and their employees. Employees need to learn to voice and enact their values more effectively and persuasively; it’s not enough to just speak up. Just as with any managerial decision, they need to learn to frame and explain their position in an actionable form. And leaders need to create a culture where those messages are welcomed, encouraged and in which they can be heard. This means, first of all, learning to hear dissenting voices.
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