Jeffrey Saltzman's Blog

Have human ethical standards been fundamentally the same over the millennia?

“What would Zeus do?” Given the ethical abuses that we constantly read about in the news and now about the news, I have been thinking quite a bit about ethics and whether changing ethical standards have an impact on our societies and organizations. As you consider the relative constancy of ethical standards over time there are only two possibilities. One is that human ethical standards are constant and the behaviors that we witness which implies differing ethics over time are really an expression of changing standards, driven by societal levels of economic well-being, sophistication or technology as humans search for what the ancient Greeks felt was a major driver of human behavior, called eudaimonia or happiness.  Or second, the possibility those fundamental ethical standards do indeed shift over time.

I would argue that at any moment of time, were you to objectively measure the level of ethical behavior shown by every individual person on the planet, that you would find a normal distribution of ethical behavior, with some behaving with the highest level of ethics (by my standards of course), others would be considered on the edge and still others would be behaving in quite an unethical manner. Further, I would argue that the distribution would be broad enough that you would find more variation in ethical behavior among people within any period of time than you would find across time periods. Those people who operate significantly below the mean or the norm, we call abnormal or criminal and attempt to stop their behavior. Now if we have a normal distribution that means that ½ of the human population is below the mean, so obviously we don’t lock away ½ of the human race, but what we do is to determine heuristically where to draw the cut score. At some point, maybe one standard deviation below the mean or perhaps two, we say that the behavior is sufficiently abnormal to be considered criminal and lock those people away or send them for treatment.

Historically, the Romans had the Coliseum in Rome and 200 other similar venues elsewhere, whose contests resulted in the deaths of millions of animals and the slaughter of uncounted numbers of people. Most of us today would find the killing of people for sport abhorrent, most but not all. But today we do have sporting events held in venues similar to a coliseum aimed at like outcomes, producing a winner and loser and entertaining the masses (or more cynically, providing an outlet for aggression not aimed at the powers that be). On the face of it they seem quite different, for instance after a baseball game rarely do you see the losing team impaled on stakes or fed to the lions. But underneath it all, are the two events playing to fundamentally the same principles in the human psyche, the need for competition, for a winner and loser to emerge, and the need to root for one’s “champion”? Is the popularity of some TV shows really due to nothing more than their nature as virtual Roman Coliseums, allowing us to peer into how people perform under stressful circumstance? Are some news shows that allow us to track crime investigations or court trials similar to the struggle for survival that the Romans so enjoyed viewing? (The normal distribution argument would imply that some Romans enjoyed the blood sport while others tolerated it and others still were perhaps appalled by it. Similarly today some are glued to their sets watching championship wrestling or reality TV shows, while others are not.)

There are layers upon layers to think through as this point is considered. Certainly ethical theories and the corresponding theories of justice have changed and have evolved over time, but the question I am posing is more fundamental. “Have humans changed?” Has our fundamental psychology changed over the last few thousand years causing our ethical standards to shift? Or are we still the same humans, psychologically, that strode the earth during Golden age of Greece, the epochs of the Pharaohs, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the age of Confucius or of the Buddha, or when the 10 Commandments first appeared?

I have to admit to some pre-determined bias, for when I look at the so-called “generational” differences that are supposed to exist among worker attitudes, regardless of what you read in the lay press, I can find no evidence in the data to support the notion that what the various generations want out of the world of work is different on a fundamental level. The differences that do exist are primarily driven by differing economic opportunity, life stage and technology rather than differences in human psychology. For instance you would be very hard pressed to find a worker who did not want to be treated with respect and dignity, have a sense of accomplishment or a sense of fairness of treatment and equity of any generation in any area of the world. And the workers today around the world who accept working conditions that you and I would find unacceptable do so out of economic necessity and for no other reason.

You may consider some ancient practices barbaric, but they were no worse than what people perpetrated on their fellows a mere 70 years ago during WWII. And today things are little better, with an estimated 12.5 million humans living in slavery with 2.5 million of those being bought and sold like cattle (Dahan 2011). Yet we could also point to progress that has been made in the USA over the last few decades with the abandonment of laws that created second class citizen status for many of our fellow humans, and the passage of  laws giving equal rights to others.

Yet positively, sports like baseball can also have a helpful effect in bringing together people who can find common cause in their efforts, including those that go beyond the sport itself. In tsunami ravaged sections of Japan, baseball is providing an aura of normalcy at some schools allowing people to see beyond the day-to-day devastation they are dealing with (New York Times 7/10/11). So I want to be careful and not paint with too broad a brush in my statements about various activities.

Here is a statement for which I have no evidence, since I did not measure the attitude nor have I been able to find any organization or person who did, but never-the-less I would argue is accurate: “Slaves were never in favor of slavery”.  Those who got the short end of the stick due to the unethical behavior of others were never pleased with their lot and why should they be? Humans have had an uncanny knack, an ability to take advantage of other humans for as long as we have been walking this planet. At the same time others give unselfishly of themselves to benefit the broader society of which they are part.

I recently got back from a trip to Costa Rica (go if you ever have an opportunity), and during the trip we stayed for a few days in a town of about 1500 people called Tortuguero. We went to this location which is accessible only by boat or plane, to see the Green Sea Turtle lay its eggs, during the start of the annual mating season. You need to have a permit to go onto the beach where the turtles aggregate and a registered guide needs to take you to make sure no damage is done to the turtles or their nests. Our guide happened to be a fellow named Fernando, who went by Don. It was truly an honor to spend a few days with him and to learn from him about the wild life and plants in the area. Don and I had several conversations over the course of a few days about how the town of Tortuguero is structured socially and politically. Tortuguero’s original residents were escaped slaves from Caribbean islands and from a slaving ship that had sunk. They chose to make a life, however hard, rather than return to slavery, they were searching for eudaimonia. Remember, “Slaves were never in favor of slavery”.

Interestingly, Tortuguero has no local government. There is a provincial police station manned by federal police, but there is no mayor, no elected officials, no one in authority to get things done. Over the last few years though cement walkways have begun to replace dirt paths in town, a major recycling facility has been built, in line with the theme of Tortuguero being an eco-vacation location and importantly creating jobs for residents, potable running water has been supplied to each house and other improvements have been made.

How do these things get done? Don indicated that a group of about 7 citizens who simply want to make things better get together regularly and figure out how to accomplish them. I asked if they were elected, but he said they were volunteers. My feeling is that they were volunteers that the other residents of the town greatly respected and willingly followed their lead in decision making, making life better for all. These volunteers in my opinion are operating with a great deal of ethical integrity attempting to improve life for all 1500 residents of the town (they are also likely acting with self-interest). And if anyone is listening, according to Don, what the town really needs next is a bank. A bank would give the residents a place to safely put their money, it would provide small businesses a place to borrow for startup costs, and it would make the town feel more substantial. Don indicated that a bank would give residents more confidence in the future of the town, with all of the corresponding benefits and is sorely needed.

No matter how much we may wish it, ethical issues and challenges, among business leaders, politicians, and others are not going to go away any time soon. Humans are not about to achieve some kind of breakthrough in our evolutionary pathway that will fundamentally change our behavior. But there are a large number of people, and I want to positively think, an increasingly larger number of people who are willing to do the right thing, not giving into the fears of our baser emotions in order to make life better for all as we each find our own personal form of eudaimonia.

_______________________________________________________________________

Dahan, Y., Lerner, H., Milman-Sivan, F.,  2011, Global Justice, Labor Standards and Responsibility, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Vol. 12, 117-142.

Hursthouse, R, “Virtue Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/ethics-virtue/.

© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit www.orgvitality.com

If you review the various major models of leadership out there a glaring hole becomes rapidly evident, and that is the relative lack of ethics as a trait, skill or critical behavior of leadership. In a cross section of studies reviewed by Peter Northouse (2010) on leadership traits and characteristics, only one major review (Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991) out of six, listed integrity or ethics as an important defining characteristic of leadership. Roughly the same results occur when other leadership models are reviewed including those that focus on leadership skills or style, a situational characteristics approach to leadership, a contingency theory or path-goal theory approach, or exchange based approaches to leadership. Only models describing transformational leadership and authentic leadership seem to have substantial ethical or moral components to them. Since the development of most of these theories is driven by data-based experiments, it leads one to questions why ethical behavior does not show up in so many of the major approaches to studying and classifying leadership.

That finding is in stark contrast to what you would find if you just asked a group what characteristics they want in their leadership, (let’s start with the folks in Egypt for instance and ask what they think about corruption), and would certainly be at odds with the vast majority of competency models that exist in corporations for defining the skill sets needed for their leadership as well as it’s prominence in performance management systems and 360 surveys which assess leadership. One Fortune 20 firm in their management competency model caveats the whole thing with *****all always done with the highest integrity*****, another starts off their competency listing with a very strong statement about ethical behavior and on and on.  So there seems to be a substantial gap between many of the influential models of leadership and what is actually happening in the organizational world.

Some of the leadership theories seem to get at ethics tangentially, for instance that a leader needs to take into account what followers desire and what their personal goals are as they set organizational goals, and by taking those follower goals into account they are acting ethically. That also seems to miss the mark, as most leaders in organizations have a vision of where they want the organization to go and while they may ask for input and help in fine tuning the tactics to get there, the leaders are often hired specifically for their vision and are paid big bucks to implement those visions. So leaders are influencing followers to do things their way and to buy into their vision without having a significant say in exactly what that vision is. Does all this add up to leadership being inherently unethical? At least as far as these definitions are commonly used?

The purpose of a theoretical model is to bring order or structure to the phenomena that surround us. Those phenomena can be observed directly, indirectly or they can be hypothesized. People have a natural tendency to build models, as it is a hardwired into our brains as a mechanism by which we cope with and process the vast amounts of information that impinge upon us every day. One common use of models in everyday life is to speed decision-making by reducing information processing time. Some people build useful and accurate models and some build models that are based on flawed assumptions, poor information, bias, bigotry, or worse.  When people build models that they use in day-to-day activities, they are called heuristics or rules-of-thumb.

“Its 20° F outside and something is falling from the sky? Could be snow or sleet, likely not rain, and in any case it may be slippery driving out there this morning.” Those assumptions about icy conditions when it is below 32° F and precipitating are based on a model that we each have in our heads about driving conditions as they relate to temperature and precipitation or moisture. We use the available information within the context of our model to make predictions and to guide our behavior.

“When you meet a human being, the first distinction you make is ‘male or female?’ and you are accustomed to making that distinction with unhesitating certainty.” – Sigmund Freud

You make that male/female distinction with unhesitating certainty because of the heuristics that you have regarding which body shapes, facial characteristic etc. are classified as a woman and which are classified as a man. When those heuristics are thrown off, you end up spending a much greater amount of time making your judgment and there are those, who, when their heuristics are thrown off become decidedly uncomfortable.

Most organizational members, using their own heuristics, would not hesitate much in classifying a leader’s specific behaviors as being ethical or not in their view, using an “ethics – I know it when I see it” kind of approach. Yet the definition of ethics and the specific behavior of what is ethical and what is not can be exceeding difficult to get everyone within an organization to agree upon, as people view ethics through different lenses, depending on where they sit within the organization. (Jolton & Saltzman 2008)

Beyond every day heuristics, models in a more scientific sense tend to include or be useful as:

• A formal statement of a problem, which if done well will require clarity about what the different variables and parameters in the model are, and how they are interrelated.
• A guide in identifying knowledge gaps, suggesting a focus for where more information needs to be obtained.
• Gaining theoretical insights which define the interconnections between various factors extending our intuition.
• Quantitative testing. Quantitative predictions will not only say that X will increase, but how much.
• Interpretation. When measuring the phenomena of the model directly is not possible, it may be possible to measure the outcomes or surrogates of the phenomena and then to use that as an interpretation of the model. (Warning, this is a source of potential bias. For instance in social models where assumptions are made that certain outcomes are due to the wrong underlying variables but are not actually causally related.)
• Forecasting and prediction. Prediction tends to be more rigorous than forecasting. For instance, I could forecast that the sun will come up in the east in the morning, which is based on an understanding of how the earth rotates. But if I can predict that the sun will come up at 5:41a.m. if I am at 42° N Latitude and 73° W Longitude, that is a prediction based on a deep understanding of the Earth’s movements including rotation, revolution, and precession.

Spinoza writing about ethics in the mid-1600’s, was afraid to publish his work during his lifetime. It was only after his death that his friends published it and then identified him only by his initials, given that his views towards ethics were considered so heretical. What was heretical about his writings? In three of his propositions below you can see that what he was essentially saying about ethics is that it is dependent on the person and the environment. In other words, one person’s view of what is ethical or unethical will vary from another’s simply because of the different natures and circumstances between them.

Proposition 29:

“No individual thing whose nature is quite different from ours can either assist or check our power to act, and nothing whatsoever can be either good or evil for us unless it has something in common with us.”

Proposition 30:

“No thing can be evil for us through what it possesses in common with our nature, but in so far as it is evil for us, it is contrary to us.”

Proposition 31:

“In so far that a thing is in agreement with our nature, to that extent it is necessarily good.”

Baruch Spinoza, 1677

Given that, one explanation for the lack of prominence of ethics as a critical leadership characteristic in models, may have more to do with the varying nature of the definition of ethics and less to do with the importance of ethics in and of itself.  The common wisdom, as evidenced in organization after organization, is that ethics is critical to successful leadership. Perhaps by furthering the research on the definition of ethics or how ethics breaks down into commonly agreed to subcomponents, we would begin to see it showing up more strongly in the research models of leadership. The ultimate goal of a better definition would be to predict to what degree how much a leadership that is stronger on ethics would outperform those that are not.

References:

Jolton, J. & Saltzman, J. 2008, Preventative Maintenance: How Industrial/Organizational Psychologists Can Build and Maintain an Ethical Culture, SIOP annual convention

Northouse, P.G. 2010, Leadership, 5^th Edition, Sage Publications

Spinoza, B., 1982, Ethics and Selected Letters, translated by Samuel Shirley, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis

Turchin P. 1998. Quantitative analysis of movement. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland MA.

© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

The arrow of time in our universe is unidirectional, moving from the past, to the present and forward into the future.  No matter how much we might desire to freeze moments that are precious to us, capturing forever their special meanings, they slip through our fingers as time marches on oblivious, neither slowing, standing still, nor retreating from its own journey. Though we sometimes seem to view ourselves as disconnected observers of time, remembering past and projecting or modifying the future from some place outside of the flow, we live within the time flow and are firmly subject to it.

One thing that is certain, as time moves forward things change. Things change for people as well as for organizations, inexorably. And just like you cannot control the flow of time in which we reside, you cannot slow down, stop or reverse change from happening. But both individuals and organizations can do things that will help them cope with change and to deal with, mitigate and even use its effects to personal and organizational advantage.

One key to dealing with the effects of change is to become more resilient, on an individual level and an organizational level.  How does a child raised in poverty in the Bronx rise to become a Supreme Court judge, or a child from humble roots in Ohio become the Speaker of the House, or a child raised by a teen mom, in an unstable, unpredictable environment, rise to become President of the United States? These were not children of privilege, these were children of resilience. Look at the innumerable children of immigrants, living and growing up in marginal conditions, who over the years became the engines of our economic prosperity, the pillars of our educational institutions, the creative geniuses behind our innovations and technological breakthroughs, or perhaps simply the doctor who saves the life of your child.

Organizations of resilience are seen everywhere we turn, from family farms, to single proprietor craftspeople, to large private sector corporations, to governmental entities, to NGOs and educational institutions. During the course of a year these organizations may be dealing with recession and the resultant drop in business, the next a merger or acquisition perhaps a hostile takeover, the next a disruptive new competitor, the next a disruptive new technology.  Each and every organization out there today will have a continuous stream of challenges that they will need to successfully overcome. And in today’s environment those challenges are coming at them at a faster and more furious pace.  How do these organizations become more rather than less resilient to the forces that will constantly impinge and perhaps even use the constant state-of-change to their advantage?

Resiliency is the notion of positive adaptation when faced with significant adversity or environmental threats. This definition implies that significant threats or severe adversity is present and that the individual or organization positively copes with those threats. The research that has been done on resiliency has shown that being more resilient rather than less leads to more positive outcomes for both individuals and organizations. And it is pretty clear that organizations that partake of certain activities can enhance their resiliency. Cutting across the literature the activities that make organizations more resilient seem to fall within 3 main buckets. The first one is paying attention to and mitigating the effects of the external environmental factors. The second bucket is investing in organizational capabilities and the third is recognition of achievements. Each of these buckets has sub-activities that could be summarized as follows:

Environment

Monitoring: Information collection, environmental monitoring and the appropriate analysis, dissemination and actions surrounding that information (for example, employee, customer and supplier surveys, mystery shopper, competitive benchmarking, technology awareness monitoring, market trends, the gathering and analysis of other business metrics)

Reducing: Minimizing the occurrence of negative chain reactions that can occur from one threat, before they spiral out of control. Compartmentalization of negative events so that they do not affect the entire organization. (for example, by the use of strong internal and external communications networks, strong accountability systems).

Investment

Warding: Investing in a shared vision, a shared operating style, senior leadership, employees, products and services, and quality—the standardization of those products and services as well as organizational procedures. (for example, creating a customer service culture, of a values statement, or a standard of operational excellence)

Transforming: Turning risks into opportunities by developing a culture of innovative and creating organizational capabilities (for example, rewarding innovative ideas and performance that goes above and beyond to solve problems, creating deep bench strength, tapping into the diversity of talent and developing that talent)

Enhancing: Increasing organizational effectiveness and efficacy (for example, cost control, state-of-the-art business processes, contingency planning)

Achievement

Celebrating: Celebrating and rewarding organizational and personal accomplishments (for example, successful completion of organizational and personal goals; installing robust reward and recognition systems)

In reviewing a number of models and then stepping back from any single model of organizational performance, there appear to be six enduring challenges that virtually any organization faces in its pursuit of growth and financial sustainability, in terms of increasing its resiliency or, more generally, Organizational Vitality. These are the challenges that organizations need to become more resilient upon. Three of these challenges can be viewed as internally focused and there can be viewed as externally focused. They are:

Internally

Clear and Compelling Leadership. The overarching mission and direction of the organization needs to be developed and translated through its leaders in order to properly secure and align resources.

Engaged Employees. Organizations need to create an engaging experience to encourage the most from the people who fuel the processes, create the innovation, and deliver for the customers.

Quality Work Processes. Products need to be efficiently created and, along with services, effectively delivered.

Externally

Attractive Offerings. Organizations seek to create value by providing customers—particularly paying customers—with valued and competitive products and services.

Service Orientation. Organizations need to instill a service orientation. No matter what the organization offers, it must be offered in a manner that distinguishes the organization.

Customer as Brand Advocates. Developing brand advocates who are willing to speak highly of your products or service in this interconnected age is critical.

Increasing an organization’s resiliency like any other activity is not a magic bullet that solves each and every problem faced, however the evidence does seem clear that resiliency enhancement can have positive and lasting organizational performance improvement affects.

References:

Saltzman, J.M. & Brooks, S.M. (2010), Strategic Surveying in the Global Marketplace and the Role of Vitality Measures. In Lundby, K. (ed.), Going Global: Practical Applications and Recommendations for HR and OD Professionals in the Global Workplace. Jossey Bass.

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

There is an old tale, coming out of the middle ages (13^th century) that describes the difficulty in understanding or knowing about a concept without a framework that lays the foundation upon which understanding can be based. This story tells of a traveler, a man, who is making a dangerous ocean passage with his infant son. Their ship is wrecked in a severe storm, the man, carrying his infant son are the only survivors. They are washed up on a deserted island. Without any books, drawings or other possessions of consequence, the man and his son still somehow manage to survive. The years go by, with just the two of them on the island, and one day the son turns to his father and asks, “Dad, where did I come from?” The man struggles to convey to his son the concept of a woman and the process of reproduction. The ideas were absolutely meaningless to the son, since he has no concept of woman, never having seen a women or even the image of a woman, and he has no basic frame of reference upon which to base his understanding.

CEO’s have taken a lot of heat over the last few years, whether it is for exorbitant salaries, perks of the office, stock options, or other activity that pad their own wallets, seemingly at the expense of other constituencies who rely on the organization (e.g. investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, perhaps the planet itself). They have also taken heat for off-shoring jobs, layoffs/downsizing, lack of job creation, having a short-term orientation, which goes along with a lack of vision, a lack of sensitivity, a willingness to cut on product and process safety issues, and poor skills in general on decision-making. Many of these criticisms are tinged with more than a hint of CEO’s having morality issues, that they are in it for their own personal benefit, rather than for the benefit of those whose interests they are supposed to be looking after.

Whose interest comes first and foremost? Is it the CEO him or herself, employees, investors, customers, suppliers, communities, the general public/society? Are CEO’s supposed to weigh the greater good when making decisions, or should the emphasis be based on the notion of protecting the rights of the individual or a particular group, such as investors, or should they make decisions based on the Aristotelian concept of best fit? Are they forever relegated to a balancing act, compromising and leaving everyone somewhat less than fully satisfied?

What is an appropriate frame of reference upon which we can evaluate a CEO, or any manager within an organization regarding their morality or ethics? And without a framework to build upon, how do we judge the morally correct and incorrect things to do? The different answers that are likely to come from answering the questions posed suggest that evaluating the morality of a CEO is difficult, since there is no commonly agreed to framework to base an understanding upon. What is the right thing to do, what is the wrong thing – well it depends on who you happen to be talking to and their point of view.

We could likely all agree that CEOs should not commit murder or rape for instance, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are after much more subtle morality issues, like when is it ok to layoff or fire people, to renege on a contract, to off-shore jobs, to close a plant, to pay a bribe or do special favors, to pick cheaper product or production options that might increase the likelihood of death or disaster, or perhaps simply the durability of a product, etc.

There are a number of approaches one could take in evaluating morality, and at least three major ones come to mind immediately. First there are the concepts of distributive justice, which attempts to be independent of organizational context. These include the notions of utilitarianism (managing for the greater good), libertarianism (a don’t tread on me kind of approach), meritocratic philosophy (giving everyone an equal starting point, then rewarding performance), and the difference principle (acknowledging that the starting points will never be equal, so provide equal opportunity). Other approaches are imbedded within the context of the organization itself and would include attainment of triple bottom-line goal metrics, which are ratings of organizational performance on people, planet and profit. And there is the adherence to an organizationally defined value system defining what the organization stands for and how it will treat its’ customers, employees, communities, suppliers, the planet etc.

We could start by looking at the stakeholders to which CEO’s have a legal obligation. They have, for instance, a fiduciary responsibility to the owners or shareholders who hired them. They also have statutory obligations and regulations that must be fulfilled. Sometimes there is a contract with the employees of the organization that must be followed. But legal obligations are thoroughly grounded in the mores of our society at one point in time, as legality is a shifty substance, with different interpretations over time and geography. It used to be legal in the USA for instance to dump raw wastes into rivers and streams, even if it was never an environmentally sound practice. And of course there are businesses that have moved some of their operations to third world countries where it is still legal to dispose of such waste, circumventing current USA environmental laws, enabling them to operate in a more profitable fashion. Is that moral? If it is not ok to dump the raw waste in the USA, why is it ok to dump it elsewhere?

From my own research over the years it is very apparent that the interpretation of morality or ethical behavior within a corporation varies by position and level within the organization itself. Blue collar workers are much more likely to classify reductions in benefits, salary freezes, layoffs, and a lack of control over schedule as not ethical. Among professionals the interpretation of ethical or moral behavior tends to revolve around doing what you committed to doing, promises made and not violating agreements and contracts. More senior managers will view it as adhering to legal standards. So adding to the difficulty of determining performance on morality is the various interpretations of moral and amoral behavior even within the same organization with everyone creating their own framework.

Looking at owners or shareholders, customers, employees of various levels, communities’ etc. one might rapidly come to the conclusion that an obligation to one group or subgroup, and maximizing their interests, may not be in the best interests of another group. One can only maximize a group’s benefit at the expense of others, a zero sum game.

As an aside: Those of us who are of the belief that the planet exists simply to provide for humans might argue the point, but the argument could be made that this planet is the bearer of many species, all of whom could theoretically lay claim that they have as much right to exist as humans do, if they could so argue. And so our obligation to the planet is not merely an obligation to diversity of species for the reason that said diversity benefits mankind, or an obligation to preserve the planet for future generations of humans, or that by taking care of our environment we can maintain our population, or create a healthier environment for ourselves and our children. Our obligation to Earth runs much deeper than long-term exploitation for human success. As the species that has made it to the top of the food chain, able to kill or exploit any other species that resides on this planet at will (with the exception of some bacteria, viruses and assorted others), we have an obligation as planetary caretaker to look after the Earth for the planet’s sake itself.  We are not mere residents of this planet. We have the power to shape this planet and with great powers come great responsibilities. Playing this out, just as you now can be charged with crimes against humanity for gross violation of human rights, in the future perhaps you could be charged with crimes against the Earth for the gross violation of planetary standards.

One approach that might be used in evaluating the morality of the CEO includes their adherence to achieving goals on what is known as the triple bottom line (TBL), which has been described as people, planet and profit. The people component is how employees are treated, the planet component is operating the business in a sustainable, environmentally friendly fashion and profit is furthering the value of the organization and the money that is made for the investors and owners of a business. If the organization achieves it goals in each of these three areas, it could be stated that the organization and hence the CEO is operating with high ethics or morality. But of course that depends on exactly what goals are set in each of the areas.

Another approach that some organizations have used revolves around the creation of values statements around how they are going to behave as an organization and how they expect their people to behave. These definitions are usually defined by a senior group within the organization and take shape based upon the individual values systems of the senior management team. An organization’s stated values provide a common definition and understanding of what is morally acceptable behavior and what is not. These value statements provide a framework. Organizations with these frameworks in place, I have found, are better equipped to quickly adapt and address new and challenging conditions that arise, since a common understanding is in place regarding what would be acceptable courses of action, or not, when addressing the challenge.

The bottom line, so to speak, at the moment is that CEO morality is an exceedingly difficult and slippery concept to grab hold of and tends to most often be measured by a “knowing it when I see it” mindset, rather than as a rigorously measured or defined construct, but adding rigor, a common framework to the construct can be of great value to the organization and to those constituents who interact with it.

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Are you one of the lazy ones? That has been one of the charges leveled by some of those in congress at people who are unemployed. The idea apparently is that there are plenty of jobs out there, but “lazy” Americans are unwilling to take them. One member of congress wants all unemployed people who receive assistance to take mandatory drug tests, implying that at least a portion of those unemployed are in that state because of drug or alcohol addiction (likely so in any economic climate), and are unworthy of assistance (that is a different issue). Both of those charges carry with them a judgment that people, by-and-large, have gotten into the predicaments they are in due to character issues.

This is at the heart of locus of control research, which demonstrates with some variations, that people tend to credit their successes to internal strengths, (e.g. smarts, friendly, innovative, drive and hardworking) and their failures to outside influences (e.g. economy, unfair competition, changes in technology). Others who succeed are labeled as lucky, in other words, they happened to be in the right place at the right time and others who fail are labeled as having personality, character or ability issues. In other words there is a natural tendency among humans to see our personal success as being due to who we are, our failures as being due to circumstances, other’s successes being due to circumstances and their failures as being due to who they are.

You could surmise that this mental coping mechanism evolved as a survival technique, allowing, say hunters (or politicians, sales people etc.), to attribute their lack of hunting success to circumstance, and enabling them mentally get back out there the next day and the next and the next. Hunters who were unsuccessful however, could be seen by others as not very good hunters ability-wise, and may have been avoided, since I would want to hunt along-side someone who had a track record of success.

One recent research study explored the concept of “laziness” and came up with a somewhat remarkable finding. Participants in this experiment came to a research lab having not recently eaten. A subject upon entering the lab found on the table two bowls. One bowl contained freshly baked, very aromatic, chocolate chip cookies. The other bowl contained radishes. Each participant was told that the experiment was about taste and smell sensations. Half of those in the experiment were instructed to have a few chocolate chip cookies, the other half were allowed to nosh only on radishes.

The researchers then left each subject alone in the room for a period of time; the idea was to induce temptation on the part of the radish eaters to have a cookie. As it turns out, no one in the radish condition snuck a cookie so there was a certain level of will-power being demonstrated. And here is where it gets interesting. A second researcher now entered the room and asked the subject to participate in a supposedly unrelated study about solving puzzles. Each subject was given a complicated geometric shape to trace with the requirement that they not retrace any lines.

These puzzles were unsolvable and each participant in the experiment was measured on how much time they would spend on attempting to solve the frustratingly difficult, unsolvable puzzle. Those who got to eat chocolate chip cookies originally, using up lower levels of “will-power expenditure”, spent on average 19 minutes and made 34 attempts at solving the puzzle. Those who had to use will-power and only eat radishes in the original condition spent on average 8 minutes puzzle-solving, making 19 attempts. The conclusion that the researchers came to is that will-power is an exhaustible resource.

If we stretch this finding a bit to present day job searchers, we could perhaps conclude that if day-to-day circumstances create frustration, and require you to “use up” the amount of will-power you have available to you, that when faced with a difficult task, such as a job search, those who have already used up their will-power will give up on the task sooner, perhaps being labeled as lazy. This notion shifts at least part of the definition of lazy from an internal condition, a personality issue, to an externally influenced condition. People can tend to act “lazier” when certain trying external circumstances must be coped with. The research on learned helplessness would have a substantial impact here as well, I would imagine.

All of the research on employees at work points to a differing conclusion than the one suggested in which the unemployed are labeled as lazy however. You see the evidence suggests that the vast majority of people want to do a good job at work and in fact would much rather be overworked than underworked. For when I am overworked I feel valued, when underworked I feel dispensable and not of value.

Like most things we measure in life and at work, the desire to work falls along a normally distributed continuum. There is a small portion of those at work, who no matter how they are treated will continue to work hard. And there is a small portion of those at work who will do whatever they can to get out of working. And then there is the vast majority, 85 to 90 percent of us, who want to work hard, want to be engaged by the organization, but if we view ourselves as not being treated well, or our circumstances as frustrating (e.g. working for an ineffective organization, maybe one with no vision, or one that treats people as disposable) we will retreat from the organization, some faster than others.

So those organizations out there that have lower employee engagement scores, congratulations, you have overcome a natural tendency on the part of most people to want to be engaged, to want to participate in the organization in a meaningful fashion, and a desire to contribute to success.  And to those who accuse others as being lazy? First understand your own internal tendencies towards labeling and second understand how environmental conditions impact people’s ability to perform. Try to avoid another natural tendency on the part of humans – a rush to judgment.

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Suppose you worked in a company that had 20,000 employees and was overall very successful, but had a dirty little secret, one that was widely shared by most of those in its employ. Those who worked in marketing, accounting, sales, human resources, treasury, logistics, engineering and most of the other departments were well treated. They were often described as being well paid. They were treated respectfully and had generous benefits. They enjoyed development opportunities, so that they could stay sharp and employable in their various professions. The company had never experienced a layoff and people felt secure in their jobs. In general people liked what they did and they liked their immediate supervisors. It was a very collegial atmosphere and after work people would often get together and visit socially. What was the dirty little secret?

Deep in the bowels of this organization’s headquarters there was one worker who did a job that was critical, more than critical, it was essential to this organization’s manufacturing process. Without this one person doing this critical job, this organization’s product could not be produced and the organization would cease to exist. It would have to shut its doors and layoff its entire staff. To say that this one person’s job was mission critical was an understatement. Unfortunately, this one job had a nasty side effect. After working at this task for 6 months the worker would perish. You see this job was 100% guaranteed to be lethal. Being on this job was a death sentence, no ifs, ands or buts. And no one could prevent, reengineer, modify or otherwise change this task from its ultimate lethal consequence. Every six months the one person who worked at this task died so that the rest of the organization, the 20,000 others could flourish. Now, also suppose that workers were hired from the outside for this job and were not told about the ultimate price that they would have to pay after working on the job after six months. They worked in ignorance, happy, well paid, until exactly on the six-month mark they would drop over dead.

How would you feel about working at that company? Would you? Supposed now that instead of one person dying every six months to ensure happiness for 20,000, it was 5, no make it 500, no let’s make it 5000. Supposed every six months, regular as clockwork, 5000 people had to die to ensure the success of the organization, so that 20,000 others could lead their lives in a secure fashion. Would you work at this organization? Would you let someone else pay that price for your security? What if it ensured the security of 20,000? Do you feel any differently about the death of one, so that 20,000 could be secure vs. the death of 5000, so that 20,000 can be secure? Should you? If you happen to be the “one” hired into this position you are just as dead after six-months as if you were “one of the 5000”. Is your one life any less valuable than the lives of 5000? Your shortened life was as meaningful and as full of happiness as anyone else’s until you took the job. What if the person toiling at this lethal task was an informed volunteer? Someone who knew the price that was to be paid, but for the sake of the 20,000 decided to pay the ultimate price. Does being a volunteer, someone willing to die at a task, so that others can live pleasant lives change anything?

Suppose instead of the total organization being 20,000 it was 20,000,000. Yes, 20,000,000 people could live happy harmonious lives, if only one-person performed a task that every six months led to their death. How would you feel about being associated with that organization now? Is one life too much to ask for the happiness of 20,000,000?

Now suppose instead of six-months carrying the death penalty for this task it was 5 years, no, let’s make it 10 years, no, let’s make that 25 years. Now, to-the-day, after 25 years on the job, each and every worker who performed this job would drop over dead. Does that make you feel any different about working for this organization?

What variables matter when it comes to paying a price as an individual so that society as a whole can benefit?

Let’s twist this just a little bit more. Suppose instead of the consequence of death being the price paid, it was that the workers on this mission critical task simply had to toil away at an assembly line sixteen hours a day, six days a week for a salary that barely allowed them to put food on the table. Instead of a quick death, after six-months, it was a very slow death, allowing them to toil away for their entire lives, barely able to stay alive at starvation wages, never able to get ahead or exit the harsh realities of their low pay world. The idea being that this group of workers being paid as little as they were allowed the organization to stay competitive globally, allowing the larger organization to flourish and all the other people within it to live happy lives. Does that change the picture? Does that make it any better?

Now, suppose you were the leader of this organization. You have the ability to decide where to locate jobs, how much to pay your workers, how to compete in the marketplace, what conditions you were going to allow some in your employ to suffer in order for the others to flourish. What would you do?

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

“An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure”

Benjamin Franklin

In the last two weeks, in various venues, the name of Benjamin Franklin has come up a number of times as a way of explaining some research or circumstance. That his name still comes up so often really does indicate the kind of impact he had on society with his forward looking ideas and actions.

One occasion where his name was mentioned was a lecture I attended where a categorization scheme of the various types of leaders was reviewed. It was a great lecture even though I disagreed with some of the premises and conclusions stated. This talk by Mike Mumford covered the notion that leaders tend to fall into one of 3 distinct categories.  A leader can be charismatic, an ideologue or pragmatic based on this body of research, and there were some interesting characteristics ascribed to these various types of leaders. The 3 types of leadership could each be described on a separate scale of effectiveness, so that you could have effective charismatics, ideologues or pragmatists at one end of the scale, and ineffective ones at the other.  Much of this research can trace its roots back to the work done by Max Weber, a German sociologist (1864-1920).

A charismatic leader is one that has a “vision” of the future and while they may be short on details on how to get there, they are good at persuading their followers that they should be followed. Interestingly, the research indicates that charismatic leaders create schisms among the larger population, with one segment buying into their “vision” and joining up while another segment really dislikes the charisma and the vision and are vehemently opposed. Charismatic leaders can generate substantial followings but can fall prey to narcissism, convinced to their inner core that they have the right answers and they are on a crusade to convince others to see the light. This narcissism can fuel the abuses that you see among some leaders in terms of the rich rewards they indulge themselves with, because in their mind they of course deserve it, since no one else has the vision and can accomplish what they are doing.

An ideologue is a leader who tends to live in the past, wanting to take society or an organization back to its fundamentals, or the good-old-days, reverting to a concept or an idea of what the past was like. They often do not want to repeat past mistakes but want to capture, from their point of view, the best of what has worked previously. In addition to the obvious ideologues that run some religious groups, political organizations and terrorists organizations around the world, you can see ideologues among serial entrepreneurs. You see entrepreneurs are creating something new and they are doing so by making use of previous lessons that they have learned, not wanting to repeat past mistakes that may have led to previous failures. Ideologues tend to generate smaller followings that charismatic leaders.

And then you have pragmatics. These are people who are driven by the need to get things done and people follow them because they are perceived as someone who can, in fact, get things done. Pragmatists are willing to compromise to bring as many people to the table as possible, but can be seen as comprising ideals in order to do so. This notion of compromise can generate anger or apathy among some followers for “not living up to promised made”. Pragmatics live in the present, analyzing what needs to be done to solve current problems and getting-on-with-it, having less emphasis on future visions of grandeur or a need to return to the good-old-days orientation when things were done right.

When these differing styles of leadership interact with each other or attempt to negotiate, conflict can arise when contrasting leadership styles are present. For instance, if one head of state is a pragmatist, negotiating with another head of state who is an ideologue, about how to resolve a conflict, successful negotiations may be difficult to achieve.

Within this schema, Benjamin Franklin was characterized as a pragmatist, as was President Obama. I had some difficulty with those classifications. I could see how they were arrived at, but the notion that these two gentlemen did not have the future vision thing going on just did not resonate with me. Perhaps I am in error.

Benjamin Franklin it was noted was a problem solver. One example given was that he was the originator of the notion of backing US currency with land, as gold and silver were in short supply within the new nation. He saw a problem, in this case how to generate confidence in a new currency, and he fixed it by having the currency backed up by land.

Benjamin Franklin was also the originator of the first volunteer fire department. He saw a problem, the way fires were being fought, and set out to fix it as a pragmatist would. Here is his description of the problem. “Soon after it [a fire] is seen and cry’d out, the Place is crowded by active Men of different Ages, Professions and Titles who, as of one Mind and Rank, apply themselves with all Vigilance and Resolution, according to their Abilities, to the hard Work of conquering the increasing fire.” But goodwill and amateur firefighters were not enough. Franklin suggested a “Club or Society of active Men belonging to each Fire Engine; whose Business is to attend all Fires with it whenever they happen.” (www.ushistory.org). But in my mind fixing the problem required a vision of the future regarding what firefighting could and should accomplish and I would suggest that leaders would not necessarily fall cleanly into only one leadership style or another.

Another example of his future leanings and vision, if you will, comes from his desire to reduce the risk of fire by arguing that “chimney sweeps should be licensed by the city and be held responsible for their work”. He saw a positive role for regulation and also what oversight accountability could accomplish. Yes, solving current problems, but in my mind with a vision of the future. Through his work and urgings Philadelphia, which once greatly feared fires, became one of the world’s safest cities from a fire damage perspective.

Fast forward to the present day, “Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 fee. Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the Sept. 29 fire, along with three dogs and a cat.” (MSNBC) I have to wonder what this response by the fire department says about their leadership and what Benjamin Franklin would have said about a fire department which let a house burn down. Now there is a lightning rod topic for you. Positively crackling with electricity.

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

“Tell me why you are crying, my son

Are you frightened like most everyone

Is it the thunder in the distance you hear

Will it help if I stay very near, I am here”

Day is Done, by Peter Yarrow

of Peter, Paul and Mary

There has been much written about the greed of Wall Street, the pay of CEOs, the off-shoring of jobs to enhance corporate profits while eliminating jobs locally, the evils of globalization, the increasingly powerful corporations doing as they feel, ignoring or bending national governments and political parties to their will. Over the years, other corporations have been shown to skimp on key issues such as safety, increasing risk for their employees, or adopting procedures or processes that put their customers or the general public at risk (minimally at risk of purchasing an inferior product, but rising up to and including the risk of death).

All you have to do is read the descriptions of the egg farms associated with the recent salmonella outbreak, with bird droppings so thick that doors could not open, rodents running rampant in the henhouses, dead birds lying around, and horrible conditions for the birds themselves, to be put off of eating eggs for a long time. You question the methods of the corporate world when explosions and oil spills, that seemingly should have been prevented, contaminate vast expanses of water, destroying communities and livelihoods. Option backdating, sales figure manipulations, kickbacks, bribes, corruption, and Ponzi schemes, the selling of smoke and mirrors, snake oil and other worthless products, market manipulations, false valuations, shell corporations, tax havens, shelters and evasions, and on and on. It can be a bit overwhelming, if you let it.

The Institute for Policy Studies recently conducted research that correlated CEO pay to layoffs. CEOs among “50 companies — “layoff leaders” in the study — that laid off the most employees took home an average pay of almost $12 million in 2009, 42 percent more than the average CEO pay. Most firms — 72 percent — announced mass layoffs during periods of profit, reflecting a growing trend in corporate America: tightening the workforce to increase profit and maintain high CEO salaries.” (CBS News) Corporations seem to be rewarding to a greater extent those CEOs that can layoff the largest number of people. If everyone is laid off though, just who do these corporations and CEOs think will be buying their products and services? The notion is one of passing the buck onto someone else, some other organization or government entity to worry about, as though organizations have no social responsibility, even when the evidence suggests that organizations that minimize or have no layoffs perform better in the long-term (Cascio). The logic in the CEO’s head seems to be that “I am just paid to worry about the health of my organization, not that of society” and boards, apparently in agreement, are rewarding CEOs accordingly. To worry about society, it would require the CEO and the organization to take a long-term view of their business, its overall long-term potential growth, and not be focused on simply the next quarter’s numbers.

Consider Afghanistan, the country and its government, as an organization. In a scathing review of the corruption that is rampant and part of the “normal” operations of the government, the New York Times describes sentiments from decision makers about the need to squash the corruption in the country that flies in the face of everything we know about how people behave – what they want from life, what they expect from the heads of the various organizations to which they belong, and how they are similar to, or differ from other people elsewhere. “Since 2001, one of the unquestioned premises of American and NATO policy has been that ordinary Afghans don’t view public corruption in quite the same way that Americans and others do in the West.” (New York Times) Those sentiments are intellectually shallow and inherently wrong. Those in power in Afghanistan may not view it quite the same way, or they may rationalize that the citizens view it differently, but I can guarantee you the citizens do in fact view it like people all around the world do. They may not feel they can do anything about it, they may be resigned to it, but they resent it as much as the citizens of the USA resent corruption in their own government. (I am sure there are some in the Afghan government who are honest civil servants). And this resentment opens them up to being influenced by those (read Taliban) who promise something better (even though they are likely as corrupt as the government).

The difference between the corrupt power brokers in Afghanistan and those in the USA is not that somehow our western culture is inherently more honest, or that somehow we possess a larger percentage of people with honesty traits. The difference is that with our free press and some regulatory oversight, those in the USA are more likely to get caught and punished, and hence reign in their corrupt instincts, and given the more open, transparent nature of our society, they may find it more difficult to rise to a position of power in the first place. I am not painting a picture of inherent dishonesty being rampant, rather that if you create opportunity for individuals to behave inappropriately, a portion of them will. One role of society is to eliminate the temptation and opportunity for dishonest behavior to the extent we can.

“So you ask why I’m sighing, my son

You must inherit what mankind has done

In this world full of sorrow and woe

If you ask me why this is so, I don’t know”

Peter Yarrow

All of this behavior is in pursuit of profit or personal gain. If one were to talk to a dispassionate outside observer, you could not blame them if they were to question whether there was a better way for societies to provide for their members than those currently in use. The outsider would observe, for instance, ample evidence of organizations and individuals doing their best to maximize their positioning vis-à-vis others as though they were in some kind of race, a race that promises profit, money and personal gain laying just across the finish line.

The underlying question is this: Is the pursuit of profit and personal gain antithetical to the best interests of society as a whole, does it tend to create amoral conditions or conditions in which the average person is not treated justly? Are the conditions generated by profit seeking entities, whether they are organizations or individuals cause them to be inherently in conflict to the best interests of society as a whole?

The short answer is “no”. But it takes some explanation as to why, when we see so much abuse of the profit motive around us. In fact it gets to the point, think of Enron or even the drug cartels in Mexico for instance, where the pursuit of personal profit, personal gain or profit for the organization is clearly detrimental to society at large. Capitalism and democracy is clearly the best mechanism that we humans have devised so far to create conditions which furthers the well-being for large segments of society. But it is too easy to turn to an approach that seemingly simply provides for the greatest good, neglecting individual rights, or alternatively an approach that we should not impinge on the freedom of others to do as they choose, emphasizing individual rights, even if what they choose to do imperils others.

John Rawls (1921-2002) provides a path forward, and in recognition of that he was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 1999 for helping Americans revive their faith in democracy itself. You see, the struggles we are facing on these issues are really nothing new. John Rawls was an exceptional American philosopher who worked in the space of morality and political science.

He allowed that people are born with differing natural abilities and with uneven opportunities being handed them, because of the economic status of their parents, ethnicity, religion etc. His thinking was that “the natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.” In other words, yes, people are different and have different opportunities due to circumstance, but that fairness or morality when applied to these differences means that organizations are required to provide equal opportunity regardless, in order to be just. His famous thought experiment describing the “veil of ignorance” illustrated his point. What is critical is that access to differing opportunities is not institutionalized, memorialized into law, or are available simply by social contracts or norms. In the veil of ignorance, the morality of a concept is determined by how it would be implemented in society if no one knew what opportunities they would personally receive under the concept.

The profit motive is moral and it has proven much more effective than the alternatives. It has lifted countless people out of poverty and has greatly improved the lives of billions. The abuse of the profit motive, that is, profit at any cost, to the detriment of an individual or society as a whole is not moral. What Rawls would argue is that regulatory oversight of how organizations and individuals achieve profit is proper to ensure that abuse does not occur. It is up to us as a society to strike the proper balance between oversight, checks and balances that limit opportunity for improper behavior and so much regulation that we choke off the vibrancy of capitalism.

Why are you smiling, my son

Is there a secret you can tell everyone

Do you know more than men that are wise

Can you see what we all must disguise, through your loving eyes

And if you take my hand, my son,

All will be well when the day is done

Peter Yarrow

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as the end.”

Immanuel Kant

After reminding my daughter what is was like when I gave birth to her, with my wife smiling peculiarly in the background, I often remind her of what things were like when I was growing up. I regale her with stories of how we made do with so little compared to today. For instance, I don’t know how many times I have described how I used to carry my little sister to and from school on my back, while barefoot in the snow, uphill, both ways – - before breakfast. And how when my shoes got a little small, how we would cut off the toes (of the shoes), to make them last just a bit longer, or how we lived in a house so small, that you had to be careful not to break the window in the back when you put the key in the front door to unlock it. And after amusing ourselves just a bit with these tales, it tends to take on a more somber note as we realize just how lucky we really are.

When we were kids we had a much better standard of living than what our parents had and lived in much better circumstances, and if you go back one additional generation, circumstances and living conditions were truly awful. My mom’s parents had gotten as far as Ellis Island in the late 1910’s before being told that the quota was full. They were given a choice of Canada or Cuba and I guess Cuba sounded warmer. So my mom was born in Havana, Cuba, her first language was Spanish with a heavy dose of Yiddish, and Russian. Her dad started off manufacturing ties in the living room of their small rental apartment at night and then took to the streets during the day to sell his wares. For one of her birthdays she got a roller skate, just one, as her parents could not afford one for each foot, so she learned to skate using just one of those old fashioned skates with four wheels, one in each corner. When her shoes did wear out, with a hole in the bottom, her father would carefully cut newspapers to line the shoes so that they would last just a bit longer. And after that unexpected side trip and struggle in Cuba, twenty-some years later they finally made it to the USA, their dream, where my mom and her parents eventually became naturalized US citizens. She was introduced by a cousin to my dad, who was returning from WWII, after serving in the army in Europe, doing stints in England, France and Germany, and they soon fell in love and got married.

My dad, of course, had no end to the stories he could tell about what it was like growing up in Providence and Brooklyn. He was the oldest son of three, born in 1920, just a day after his parents landed in New York and that accident of timing made him an instant US citizen. He remembered how horse drawn carts would deliver milk and other goods to the various neighborhoods as he was growing up and how a Coke and hotdog was 5 cents. His father worked repairing radiators in the streets of the lower east side of New York (and was exposed to some nasty chemicals that likely finally killed him) and eventually saved up enough money to open a small candy shop in Brooklyn, and after that did not work out, became a furrier in the garment district. Two of my grandparents three sons fought for this country in WWII, one in the Pacific Theater (who slightly exaggerated his age at enlistment) served in the Navy and one in the European Theater in the Army. The third son was too young at the start of the war to serve. All three brothers now lay side-by-side in a cemetery just north of New York City.

The thing that is the most remarkable about these stories is that while the details of the events may be, the essence of the stories are not unique, with the vast majority of families in the USA today able to share similar stories of their own family’s struggles and tumults as they sought to gain a foothold in this great country. When you look at the bigger picture, we are a nation, by and large, of immigrants and we are all more similar than we are different. The drive and desire that the immigrants brought with them powered us to the heights that we have achieved. Yet there are those who tend to look for the differences between us rather than the similarities that bind us together. Differences can of course be found if you want, but we are better served by examining and building on our similarities. Most of us for instance, want a better future for our children than what we or our ancestors may have had or at least one similar to our own. All of us want to be treated with respect and dignity, our humanity being recognized and valued. We all want to be given a fair shake by society, an equal chance to succeed, as others have had. And we all want to be able to pursue our cherished dreams, our happiness that our constitution lists as a fundamental right.

The same holds true in the world of work, and no one should be surprised by that for the world of work is nothing more than a reflection of our society as a whole.

Utilitarian philosophy as described by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham is a worldview that societies should exist and decisions should get made in service of the greater good, majority rules. That logic can be used when laying off workers, the greater good of preserving the organization and jobs for the other employees being served. But it is not difficult to knock holes in the efficacy of this approach for every situation. For instance, say you were a doctor and had 5 very sick people in your office. Two needed kidneys, one a lung, one a heart, one a liver. In the next room you had one healthy patient. That one healthy patient, if sacrificed, could save the lives of the 5 other people and thereby increase the greater good, by donating the needed organs. Does that one person, representing a minority in that doctor’s office have rights to keep his organs, even though it would serve the greater good to give them up? Of course it becomes rather obvious that we don’t make decisions that way when it comes to such an example. But that argument was used by the advocates of Proposition 8 in California which barred non-heterosexual marriage, that simply because the majority (52%) of Californians voted for it, that homosexuals and lesbians were forfeit of their rights. What if the 5 sick patients in the doctor’s office voted to have the organs removed from the only healthy patient? Would that fly?

John Locke, widely known as the father of liberalism, countered that approach by stating that man has certain inalienable rights, that even if the majority or the greater good is not served, that each individual has the right to life, liberty and property, which Thomas Jefferson broadened out later on to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. One major point of Locke and Jefferson is that majority rule could not simply erase the rights of an individual even if that individual was a minority of one; these inalienable rights were fundamental and as such could not be pushed aside by legislative decree. And building on that, Kant’s moral imperative can be summed up as not treating people as a means to achieving your own self-serving goals, but treating them in accordance to their humanity, as humanity is the end state which we all have in common.

Back to the world of work. Many organizations today benefit from their ability to promote their products as being “green”. One recent research study concluded that being green was not a passing fad, but that it is here to stay and those companies that operate in a green fashion are more likely to have greater increases in sales than those with similar products, but are not as green or green at all. So here is a question that I pose. Given what roles humans have in organizations, how do we create organizations that are “GREEN” when it comes to their PEOPLE and not just around their products and services? How do we employ people in a sustainable fashion? How to they treat people so that they support the notions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and treat people for the sake of their humanity and not as a means to an organizational end? Are the rights of the individual forfeit when it comes to organizational or employee life? What are the obligations of organizations to operate in such a manner that reflect the greater values that we as a society have adopted?

I would expect, of course, a great diversity of thought.

© 2010 by OrgVitality, Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com