Ethics

November 27, 2015 By B. Baylis 1 Comment

Why Organizations Need a Chief Eleemosynary Officer

In my previous post on organizational CEO’s, I offered the suggestion that organizations should have a Chief Eleemosynary Officer. What in the world is an eleemosynary officer? Where did I get the idea that organizations needed an eleemosynary officer? I will admit that prior to last week I don’t think I had ever heard of the word eleemosynary. As with most word trips since my traumatic brain incidents of 2009 (the implosion of a benign meningioma and four tonic-clonic seizures within a thirty-minute time span), the journey to finding the meaning and significance of eleemosynary was not a straight line.

As I prepared the post A Proposal for Changing the Definition and Expected Behaviors of a CEO, I sat in on a number of diverse webinars. Two of the webinars dealt with creating a positive workplace environment and the benefits that accrue from such a setting. These webinars both concluded that the happy workplace was a healthier workplace, physically, psychologically and emotionally. One of the webinars presented some research data that confirmed that healthier and happier employees worked harder and produced more. Both webinars pushed the idea that the tone of an organization begins at the top. If the CEO of an organization habitually broadcasts happiness, the organization is a healthier and more productive work environment. By broadcasting happiness, I am not talking about being a clown, constantly laughing and telling jokes. Happiness or positive psychology has become a legitimate branch of science. The Declaration of Independence affirms the right of every American to posses life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. One place to begin broadcasting happiness is to make the effort to encourage those with whom you have contact, particularly anyone who is having a rough time. Happiness is contagious. It spreads more quickly, if it begins at the top of an organization. To more fully understand the attributes and benefits of a positive workplace, I highly recommend the work, and webinars of Shawn Achor, Michelle Gielan and others at Good Thinking Inc. For such a workplace to exist, the organization needs a Chief Encouragement Officer.

A third webinar looked at organizational cultures and structures, and the thorny question of how one changes an entrenched, but badly functioning culture. One suggestion popped out at me. The presenter repeatedly used the word “engagement.” Employees were more productive when they were engaged in their work. When did individuals feel more engaged? The key to employee engagement was a sense of self-determination, authority and empowerment. This webinar reminded me of one of the management principles that I claimed as an operational strategy very early in my administrative career: “Push decision making down to the most appropriate level.” This is the essence of empowerment. Very early in my administrative career I also learned that empowerment must begin at the top of the organization. If the chief executive officer is not on board with this program, people will get mixed messages and eventually gridlock will set in. Thus the chief executive officer must also be the chief empowerment officer.

Two more webinars dealt with the topic of ethics and ethical behavior within an organization. As I reflected on the content of those webinars, I remembered some of the academic conference presentations by Greg Lozier, Deborah Teter and Lawrence Sherr that I had attended over many years in higher education that focused on high performing campuses. One common theme from their work was that one characteristic of a high performing organization was the existence of a code of ethics that was well established within the organization, publicized widely across the whole organization, well known by everyone within the organization and adhered to by all members of the organizations from the top to the bottom. If the ethics of an organization is a reflection of the ethical code of its leadership, then doesn’t it make sense for an organization to have a Chief Ethics Officer?

Therefore, there were at least four different visions of a CEO: 1) Chief Executive Officer; 2) Chief Ethics Officer; 3) Chief Empowerment Officer; and 4) Chief Encouragement Officer. My mind started wandering and wondering if there were other types of CEO’s lurking out there. I needed E-words to build this model. Those of you who know my story, know my struggle with words the past six years. As part of my therapy program to hang onto and improve my memory of words, I have spent hours writing and doing crossword puzzles. It’s not uncommon for me to stop in the middle of a thought and say to my wife, “I need a word.” She usually plays along with this game and gives me the first word that comes to her mind. I will shoot back at her, “That’s not the word I need.” I proceed to explain what I want the missing word to do or mean. In my writing and crossword puzzle endeavors, in addition to Google and my wife, I have come to rely heavily on three books, The American Heritage Dictionary, with over 70,000 entries, Webster’s Basic Thesaurus, with over 150,000 synonyms and antonyms, and Webster’s New Explorer Crossword Puzzle Dictionary, with 350,000 answer words in over 150 categories. In this case, I first went to the crossword puzzle dictionary, since it was physically the closest to my computer. As I read through the e-words, I easily found 10 more options for defining a CEO.

E-Word Cloud

About halfway through the e-words, I came across one that hit me right between the eyes. Eleemosynary. I don’t remember ever seeing this word before. I know I have never used it previously. As I read the suggested crossword answers to the clue “eleemosynary” I said to myself, here is another option for CEO. The word “eleemosynary” has been used as a clue for the following list of answers:

humane, generous, altruistic, beneficient, benevolent, charitable, munificient, openhanded, humanitarian, philanthropic.

“Just click the Donate button, fill out the form that pops up selecting your favorite charity, and the company will match your gift.”

“Let’s make this is a Merry Christmas for every child in our community by making sure they recieve at least one toy this year.”

“Hello! Let me welcome you to our company and family.”

“Here, give me your hand. I’ll help you up.”

“Lean on me! I’ll help you get to where you’re going.”

This is a great list of adjectives, that would describe a great organization. In order for an organization to be truly humane or philanthropic, the leadership of the organization would have to define such a vision, set such an example, and encourage such behavior within the organization. Leadership would have to empower the individual members of the organization to demonstrate these traits. Does the organization give to charitable causes? Does the organization encourage employees to give? For non-profits, does it make it easy for employees to give back to the organizationa? Does it match charitable contributions? Does the organization have a volunteer program? Does it encourage employees to volunteer on their own time? Does the organization treat everyone fairly and equitably within the organization, without discrimination? Does the organization welcome new members and help them acclimate to the organizational culture? Every well-functioning organization needs a Chief Eleemosynary Officer.

Since this is Thanksgiving week, I am taking a break from my list of planned blog posts and preparing my next post on the meaning and celebration of Thanksgiving.

November 16, 2015 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

What Is the Difference Between Ethics and Ethical Behavior?

The past two weeks have been a huge struggle for me. I spent much of that time fighting the pain from an infected tooth which had a broken root. It took me several days to get an “emergency” appointment with my dentist. During that appointment the determination was quickly made that the very loose and painful tooth had to be extracted. Because of the infection, I had to take a full week run of antibiotics. In addition, I had to be taken off my blood thinners slowly. Thus, I had to wait another full week for the oral surgery. During that time, in the periods of calm generated by acetaminophen and benzocaine, I struggled with this post.

The question, “Why do people do what they do?” kept hitting me in the face.

When not sleeping, eating or working at my computer, I watched sports and newscasts on television. What did I see? 1) Two Presidential debates with candidates questioning the behavior of rivals and impugning their ethics; 2) A report of an automotive manufacturer installing software in its cars that only shuts off high carbon emissions when the car is being tested for those emissions; 3) A report of another automotive manufacturer not acting on knowledge of dangerous defects in its cars for years; 4) A report on dozens of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys passing around hundreds of emails with pornographic pictures and offensive stories; 5) A report on a State Attorney General indicted for leaking Grand Jury information and the commission of perjury by lying about it; 6) A report on a township supervisor voting positively on a zoning petition and building permit for a family member’s project; 7) A report on what appears to be wholesale, systematic doping by a country’s sports infrastructure in a recent Olympics; and 8) A popular race car driver appearing to intentionally wreck another popular driver in retaliation for a perceived intentional wreck the previous week.

I turned off the television and went to my computer. What did I do at my computer? When I was not working on this post, I was cleaning up my email backlog and sitting through three webinars. What did I find in my email newsletters? 1) A report on scholarly authors attempting to “game” the JIF (Journal Impact Factor) by self-citing their own articles, or by bartering citations from friends and colleagues by citing their articles in a pyrimad-type scheme called citation stacking; 2) A report on a scientist who pleaded guilty to fraud for faking data involving a study of HIV vaccine; 3) A report on a recently published article entitled “The Mirage of Prestige: The educational quality of courses in prestigious and non-prestigious institutions” that attempts to measure the difference in academic outcomes between the so-called prestigious and non-prestigious institutions; 4) Reports on several institutions faking data on campus crime statistics, salary information on graduates and admissions profile data; and 5) A report that estimates the costs of complying with federally imposed regulations across the higher education sector to be $27 billion annually.

What did I hear in the webinars?: 1) The first webinar dealt with plagiarism. The primary assumption was that faculty increasingly believe that students do not know what plagiarism is. However, even in the face of that previous assumption, faculty increasingly believe the frequency of plagiarism is increasing and more students are intentionally participating in it; 2) The second webinar was a presentation from the field of professional training. The primary point of this webinar was that compliance training is one of the most difficult areas of professional development in which to produce quality eLearning programs, while at the same time, it is one of the areas of fastest growing demand. In this webinar one question was continually raised: “Should we train people to act ethically or just to meet compliance requirements?” No matter how we answer the previous question, the webinar suggested that the CEO must lead the organization by exhibiting a constant pattern of ethical behavior, because the organization will rise to a level no higher than the one set by its leader. 3) The third webinar focused on the teaching of ethics. One of the foundational assumptions of the webinar presenters was that ethics was only a matter of content knowledge that could and should be taught within the confines of an academic discipline. The presenters kept saying that within a given context, there were rules, regulations and obligations that had to be met. The presenters dismissed any comment or suggestion that there were universal principles that applied across disciplines. Ethics were situational and behaviorally oriented.

I return to my original question, “what is the difference between ethics and ethical behavior?” I admit that I come down on the side of the universalists on this question. I believe that there are universal rules of right and wrong. In this sense one’s ethical behavior is a result of one living ethically. It becomes a matter of living by principles, not according to specific rules that can change when circumstances change. For students and faculty, honesty requires telling the truth, not lying, not stealing or not cheating, no matter the personal consequence, no matter whether every one else is doing it, or whether you can get away without getting caught. Living the principled life means doing the same thing whether someone is watching you or not. The second great commandment “Love your neighbor” is a principle, not a rule dependent upon whether the individual in need is “like you” or is “very different.” The great requirement from Micah 6:8, “what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (KJV) presents us another set of principles. Ethics and ethical behavior are not only matters of content, but of values. They are matters of the head and the heart. They require not only comprehension and accession, but also action by the individual based on the individual’s knowledge and beliefs.

Ethics and ethical behavior are not the same thing. However, ethical behavior should be the outgrowth of ethics. One should act based on one’s principles. How do we discover our principles (ethics) and translate those into actions (ethical behavior)? Two suggestions from Scripture provide us guidance in this endeavor. The first is Paul’s admonition to Timothy: “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (II Timothy 3: 14-17, KJV) The second is Solomon’s advice to his son: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3: 5&6, KJV)

If we diligently seek God’s principles, He will show them to us and guide us in the way we should go. We can follow in His footsteps on the path to righteousness and salvation.

My next post continues this discussion by raising the suggestion that the CEO of an organization should be its Chief Ethics Officer and Chief Encouragement Officer in addition to being its Chief Executive Officer.

July 28, 2013 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

The Bart Simpson Defense

This post is drawn from an Op-Ed piece that I wrote in 2008 for The Herald, the student newspaper at Cornerstone University. At the time I was provost of Cornerstone and regularly wrote opinion pieces for the paper. The only real change that I have made from my 2008 piece is some updating of the Hall of Shame.

I begin with an admission that although The Simpson is the longest running scripted show in television history, it is definitely not one of my favorites. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have actually watched an episode all the way through. However, if one watches any Fox network programming such as NFL games or NASCAR races, which I do, one will be exposed to Simpson commercials. In one unforgettable commercial, Bart is accused of doing something wrong. His response has become known as the infamous Bart Simpson Defense: “I didn’t do it….You didn’t see me….You can’t prove it.”

Within the context of a cartoon family such a statement may appear funny. I must admit that on occasion when asked by my wife the whereabouts of the iced tea that she had made, I will reply, “I didn’t do it….You didn’t see me….You can’t prove it.” Both my wife and I understood completely what I was saying. It was obvious that my statement was an attempt at a humorous confession of guilt.

Unfortunately, almost every day, we hear entertainers, athletes, politicians, and even ministers say in effect in all seriousness, “I didn’t do it….You didn’t see me….You can’t prove it.” Are they really trying to convince us that they didn’t do it? The hall of shame list seems unending — Brittany Spears, Floyd Landis, Mel GIbson, Marion Jones, Spiro Agnew, Jim Bakker, Mark Mcquire, Lindsay Lohan, Pete Rose and Martha Stewart are names almost everyone recognizes. There are other names that are somewhat less familiar. However, if we were to attach particular descriptors to these names most people would recognize the situation — Ken Lay and Jeff Skiling with Enron; Charles Graner and Lynndie England wtih Abu Ghraib; Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken with insider trading; William Jefferson with “$90,000 of frozen assets” found in his freezer; Jayson Blair and the New York Times with a revoked Pultizer Prize; Ted Haggard and his removal from the leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals. Over the years related to this phenomenon, we have been introduced to expressions that will always be associated with the speaker. Richard Nixon will always be remembered for his statement, “I am not a crook.” BIll Clinton will go down in history for his assertion, “I did not have sex with that woman.”

“I didn’t do it….You didn’t see me….You can’t prove it.” This trio of expressions begins with a personal denial. The speaker is asking the recipient to trust him or her. The ability to trust the speaker depends upon his or her reputation and relationship with the recipient. The second expression throws the burden of proof onto the recipient. Did the recipient actually see any transgressions? If not, the speaker is claiming his or her innocence. The third expression raises the level of proof even higher. It throws the case into a legal sense, where the burden of proof is even higher. It must be “beyond a shadow of doubt” as judged by a jury of one’s peers.

Since I wrote the first version of this essay in 2008, unfortunately the Hall of Shame has added a number of new celebrities from all areas of public life. The most tested cyclist of all time, Lance Armstrong finally gave up defending himself, essentially admitting blood doping. He was stripped of his Tour de France wins and banned from all competitive sports. In baseball, all-star and MVP, Ryan Braun accepted a suspension, and in effect admitted use of a banned substance. In line right behind Braun is Alex Rodriquez. The evidence is piling up against A-Rod, who is now facing a stiffer suspension than Braun. In football, college star and potential NFL star, Manti Te’o had to admit lying about a fake girlfriend. Another football star, Aaron Hernandez is facing direct murder charges and possible charges in two other murders. Tyson Gay, Olympic track and field star, has failed a number of recent drug tests and been suspended from upcoming track participation.NY politician Anthony Weiner, who had already admitted inappropriate texting of explicit photos, has been caught again in the same behavior. San Diego major Bob Filner is under fire for inappropriate behavior toward women. He has admitted “having a problem” and checked himself into a rehab program. He has indicated that he hopes this will satisfy his critics and that he will be able to maintain his political career. Celebrity cook Paula Dean had admitted using racial insensitive language. As a result she has lost her television show and many endorsement deals. Actress Amanda Bynes is facing hospitalization for her wild behavior.

For those who use the Bart Simpson defense something very important is missing. That something is the realization of personal responsibility. Some individuals eventually reach the point of saying, “I did it and I’m sorry.” Many do not. Track star Marion Jones finally admitted the use of performance-enhancing drugs and plead guilty to lying to federal investigators. In a tearful apology, Jones said, “It’s with a great shame that I stand before you and tell you that I have betrayed your trust….” On the other hand in a letter asking for leniency just prior to a sentencing hearing, football star Michael Vick wrote “I am not the bad person or the beast I’ve been made out to be.”

In chapter 12 of II Samuel, the prophet Nathan tells King David a story of a rich man taking advantage of a poor man. David is incensed and demands to know the identity of this rich man. Nathan tells him that he is the culprit himself. Nathan then confronts David with what he did with Uriah and Bathsheba. David immediately recognizes what he had done and says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” David does not try to claim his innocence, indict his accuser, or challenge the evidence against him. David did not use the Bart Simpson defense. David accepted full responsibility and asked God for forgiveness.

We see what happens to public figures when they are caught doing something they shouldn’t. We see what happens when they claim, “I didn’t do it….You didn’t see me….You can’t prove it.” What will happen the next time that you or I do something wrong and we are confronted with it? What should we expect of ourselves? What does God expect of us?