Today's Globe & Mail (Canada's leading national newspaper for business) regular column, Workplace Ethics 101 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070131.CAETHICS31/TPStory/?query=ethics+101), addresses a dilemma that is at the nexus of ethics, trust and loyalty and is fundamental to understanding business best practices. Last week, the columnist posed an ethics question:
"As a front-line manager, you learn from higher up that layoffs are a real possibility in the coming weeks. You are sworn to secrecy about this. One of your workers lately has been making noises about plans to buy a house. This worker likely would be a candidate for layoff. Should you maintain the secrecy? Or risk your own employment by telling the worker what's in the offing knowing that in all likelihood it will become a rumour?"
The question provoked numerous responses, most focused on balancing personal ethical obligation of protecting the employee's welfare with their obligation to protect the company secret. Here is one answer that also addresses a "trust" issue:
"In this situation, I would keep the secret. I consider trust as one of the most important things in my life. It doesn't matter if the secret is tiny or huge. Trust takes such a long time to develop, but only a second to destroy it. Certainly, telling the secret is another way to help my co-worker. However, it would just be by luck that I know this secret and tell him. Instead, if I truly want to help him, I will try to determine what he is doing wrong and help him to change. Hopefully, this will prevent him from being laid off."
I find this reasoning particularly interesting, because it illustrates a divergence between trust and ethics. Most of us intuitively feel that good ethical behaviour promotes trust. In fact, many thought leaders on business best practices say that ethics is the starting point for trust. However, our example suggests that ethical behaviour may erode trust.
What most published responses to the question failed to identify is the unethical behaviour of the superior ("higher up") manager who disclosed the information and subsequently prohibited its disclosure. In this example, it is the company's business practices themselves that are unethical and therefore put the front-line manger, unfairly into an ethical dilemma. This dilemma manifests itself by putting the front-line manger in a position of having to choose between "trust" (loyalty to the employer) and personal ethics (see Aside below for more on this point).
At the risk of oversimplifying, if good ethical behaviour can be summarized by the "golden rule", which says "treat others the way you would want to be treated", then in order to behave ethically, the superior manager should either disclose the possibility of layoffs to all employees or protect them by establishing measures that transfer risk away from affected employees. In both cases, there would likely be a cost to the organization.
It is common business practice to withhold such information, as it can adversely affect business performance. However, ethical standards are not a matter of convenience. They should not be subordinated by selfish considerations, such as business performance. In fact, good character (namely good ethical behaviour) is illuminated precisely when such costs or other self-induced pain accompanies it.
This brings up a broader question. If maximizing profits is the prime directive for all corporations, is it reasonable to expect corporations to act ethically (in the generally accepted sense of the term)? But if corporations are to be held to different "ethical" standards, then is it appropriate to still call them "ethics"? Perhaps they should be more appropriately called "Our Rules for the Game of Business". Such rules would likely still allow us to be loyal to and even to trust unethical organizations. For example, we would know that "the rules of the busienss game" allow adversers to lie, which would allow us to trust them to falsify some information, which would, in turn, allow us to make better judgements when relying on advertisements.
In a different scenario, do you think Pepsi's Code of Ethics would have compelled them to disclose having access to Coke's secrets had it not been illegal for them to accept them (see http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/06/coke.secrets/index.html)? In other words, do ethical standards also apply to threats, such as competitors? What should competitors trust about each other?
Aside:
In our example, it is also valuable to distinguish between trust and loyalty. A person trusts another person when they make themselves vulnerable to that person. A person controls another person when they "entrust" the other person with something, but have power (over that person) to control the outcome. Loyalty is an example of the contol one party has over another, because it is an obligation (or debt) that the loyal party has to the empowered party. In this case, the superior manager has power over the front-line manger. Therefore, to be more accurate, disclure of the secret would be a betrayal of loyalty, rather than a breach of trust.
Alex Todd
President & CEO
Trust Enabling Strategies
rate
email
print
link to this page
