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 Moral
concerns are outside the purview of most common frameworks for management
decision making. Just as a doctor using diagnostics for detecting
cardiac problems might fail to see symptoms of breast cancer, a
manager using the tools of competitive or financial analysis might
fail to see important moral issues, writes Lynn Sharp Paine
In the coming years, the level of moral
scrutiny given to corporate behaviour by employees, customers, investors,
communities, and governments is only likely to increase. Even as
pressures for financial performance continue to mount, companies
will also be expected to operate within a moral framework, given
the evolutionary path we have charted and the needs of the world’s
people. Inside companies, this trend means that individuals and
groups at every level—frontline employees, functional managers,
business unit managers, executive leaders, boards of directors—must
become more sensitive to the moral aspects of their dealings with
one another and with external parties. They will need to become
more skilled at identifying ethical issues, engaging in moral deliberation,
and making decisions that stand up to moral as well as financial
tests of rationality.
As things now stand, moral analysis is rarely
a defined part of management decision making, and ethical issues
are generally managed by exception. To the extent that moral concerns
have come into corporate decision making, they have typically taken
the form of "smell tests," "sleep tests," and
"newspaper tests": Does it smell okay? Will it keep me
awake at night? How would it look on the front page of the newspaper?
Like corporate strategy before the days of competitive analysis,
moral assessment had been more a matter of instinct or gut feel
than a considered and informed thought process.
What’s more, moral concerns are outside
the purview of most common frameworks for management decision making.
Just as a doctor using diagnostics for detecting cardiac problems
might fail to see symptoms of breast cancer, a manager using the
tools of competitive or financial analysis might fail to see important
moral issues. Thus, a proposal may pass rate-return-hurdles and
competitive analysis screens while at the same time failing even
basic moral tests.
What’s needed is a method for integrating
the moral point of view into the management decision process. A
structured process for identifying and evaluating moral concerns
can correct for the blind spots inherent in many conventional frameworks
and help decision makers more effectively link, the values they
espouse with the choices they actually make.
Ask, don’t tell
This framework exploits the power of questions
to engage people’s moral faculties. For many, the idea of ethics
is strongly associated with codes of conduct, values statements,
or lists of moral imperatives. Certainly, history has given us a
long tradition of such "to do" and "not to do"
lists as sources of moral guidance. However, another classic approach
to moral insight has less to do with answers and more to do with
the kinds of questioning and discussion used by two of the great
practical moralists of all times—Socrates in ancient Greece and
Confucius in ancient China.
These thinkers thought to guide behaviour
not by issuing directives but by engaging their listeners in a collaborative
process of discussion and deliberation. Socrates, in particular,
relied on an incisive process of questioning and probing that came
to bear his name—the "Socratic method." Confucius depended
more on illustrative examples and stories to bring out important
points, but again in the context of discussion and mutual exploration.
These masters knew that moral insight is
more apt to come from live interchange among informed and inquiring
minds than from lists of abstract principles. Or put differently,
principles and codes are nothing until brought to life in the context
of human activity. Anyone who’s looked at a typical code of conduct
or statement of business principles knows how hard some documents
are to read, let alone understand and retain. It’s only when they
are connected with actual concerns in the context of real situations
that they engage the mind and the will.
Codes and principles are neither self-applying
nor self-interpreting. In the end, they derive whatever force they
have from people’s decisions to follow them, and they must be interpreted
in light of facts and circumstances that themselves may be open
to interpretations.
Few decisions of substance have only one
moral aspect. More often, two or more important values conflict,
as when a duty of confidentiality to one party conflicts with a
duty of candour to another. Often a course of action that meets
the needs of one group will create hardship for another. Codes,
value statements, and the like help to identify and frame the issues
in such case but they cannot resolve moral conflicts or create a
practical path of action. For that, the only answer is informed
judgment based on thoughtful consideration of competing claims and
differing perspectives. Working through a situation to arrive at
a reasonable course of action calls for imagination as much as analysis
and may even require in-depth research. Given the inherent variability
of circumstances, a set of questions is likely to prove far more
useful than a set of pre-packaged answers.
Will this action serve a worthwhile purpose?
This mode of analysis has to do with the
ethics of ends and means, or "pragmatic analysis." "Pragmatic"
is sometimes used to mean "expedient rather than moral,"
but I am using the term in its more general sense to mean "goal-directed"
or "purposeful."
Pragmatic analysis examines the quality
of goals and the suitability of the means we choose for attaining
them.
This mode of analysis thus calls for clarity
about both ends and means, but the ends must be judged worthwhile
and the means found to be effective as well as efficient.
The central question is whether a proposed
course of action will serve a worthwhile purpose. But an answer
to this question will normally require answers to a cluster of subsidiary
questions calling for facts as well as judgement.
- What are we trying to accomplish?
What are our short- and long-term goals?
- Are these goals worthwhile? How do
they contribute to people’s lives.
- Will the course of action we’re considering
contribute to achieving these goals?
- Compared to the possible alternatives,
how effectively and efficient will it do so?
- If this is not the most effective
and efficient course, do we have a sound basis for pursuing the
proposed path?
Is this action consistent with relevant principles?
A second mode of analysis examines actions
from the standpoint of applicable principles and standards. Its
roots lie in the ethics of duty and ideal. Let’s call it "normative
analysis" since it references various norms of behaving those
entailed by self-imposed ideals and aspirations as well as those
found in bodies of standards such as law, industry codes, company
codes, and the emerging body of generally accepted ethical principles
for
business.
In contrast to pragmatic analysis, which
uses instrumental or means end reasoning, normative analysis relies
on reasoning from general principles to specific instances—what
has sometimes been called "formal reasoning."
The central question is whether a proposed
course of action is consistent with the relevant principles. Among
these may be principles that express duties or obligations whose
fulfillment is required as well as principles that express ideals
or voluntary standards associated with good practicing.
Normative analysis involves subsidiary questions
such as:
- What norms of conduct are relevant
to this situation—including that found in law, customary practice,
industry codes, company guidelines or the emerging body of generally
accepted ethical principles?
- What are our duties under these standards?
- What are best practices under these
standards?
- Does the proposed action honour the
applicable standards?
- If not, do we have a sound basis for
departing from those standards?
- Is the proposed action consistent
with our own espoused standards and ideals?
Excerpt from ‘Value Shift’
by Lynn Sharp Paine; Tata McGraw-Hill
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