Devilish Business

The folks at Strategy + Business, (Booz Allen Hamilton's fine publication) today posted an online story that I found pretty disturbing. The piece, written by Elizabeth Doty, is entitled, Winning The Devil's Bargain. The article chronicles a couple of Ms. Doty's personal experiences with unethical business practices, experiences that led her to dig more deeply into the questions of business ethics. Here's Doty:

In 2005, I began a more focused interviewing project to see whether others experienced tension between their work personas and their core values. How did they reconcile the challenge? Did they find ways to “make a difference without getting killed,” as one person put it?

The results are not comforting. It seems that conflicts between personal integrity and business practices are pretty routine, if not universal.

I expected to hear cynicism mixed with arguments for separating work from “what really matters.” Although I did hear some of that, I also heard people express a deep commitment to high ideals and a strong desire to believe in their organizations, even in the face of moral ambiguity. Some of those whom I talked to had confronted gross ethical violations, to be sure; but it was much more common to feel ensnared by subtle inconsistencies and contradictions that gradually raised nagging doubts about the nature of one’s employer. As one woman put it, “You always worry that you might have made a deal with the devil.”

So, while malfeasance at the Enron and Arthur Andersen scale are rare, it's the little "contradictions" that breed cynicism among the ranks. In other words, most employees know that they will be faced with unethical conduct at work. The only question is: "how much do I overlook?"

Who suffers most? Those who work in organizations with the loftiest missions.

I don't know about you, but I don't find the whole thing particularly heartening.

Comments

[Rob]

Hi

Thanks for the great heads up on this article.

I've been troubled for some time about the extent that people's actions seem to be out of synch with their consciences, in particular relating to their attitudes to gambling.

This article relates the issues to the wider world of business in general with some useful research.

By the way, I like the title of your blog. A lot of stuff could be made better in the world if people could more often speak 'the truth'.

[Mike Wagner]

When I read your words, "the little contradictions" I thought of a friend commenting on the same issue.

His phrase was "ethical sloppiness".

Thanks for directing us to this article.

Keep creating,
Mike