Ethics deserve a starring role in business dealings

Barbara Lang
bizjournals.com
Originally published 5 March 20

Ethics deserve a starring role in business dealings

They created cultures of fear, deception and arrogance, and they put their own personal interests in front of all others, including their own families. They didn’t care whose lives they destroyed, using their power to conquer and destroy anyone blocking their path to money and gratification. Shockingly, they manipulated those around them — people with whom they built trust — to foster networks of secrecy and allegiance beyond anything we have seen in the history of American business. Ironically, they crucified themselves through historic cheating, lying and a breakdown of ethics never seen before.

Many are household names, and we should all cringe when we hear them, even as they are reduced to insignificance and confined to moldy jail cells. Ken Lay, CEO and chairman of Enron, was the mastermind of a historic accounting scandal at the energy company, resulting in its bankruptcy. He was found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud before he died in 2006. There are also the two infamous Bernies: Ebbers and Madoff. Ebbers, the former WorldCom CEO, was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy as part of that company’s false financial reporting scandal. Maybe the most egregious and sinister of them all was Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme defrauded innocent investors of millions of dollars and life savings. He rots in federal prison while his clients try to make sense of the destruction he knowingly caused.

The info is here.

Aiming For Moral Mediocrity

Eric Schwitzgebel
Res Philosophica, Vol 96 (3), July 2019.
DOI: 10.11612/resphil.1806

Abstract

Most people aim to be about as morally good as their peers—not especially better, not especially worse. We do not aim to be good, or non-bad, or to act permissibly rather than impermissibly, by fixed moral standards. Rather, we notice the typical behavior of our peers, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it’s not a terribly bad way to be. We are somewhat morally criticizable for having low moral ambitions. Typical arguments defending the moral acceptability of low moral ambitions—the So-What-If-I’m-Not-a-Saint Excuse, the Fairness Objection, the Happy Coincidence Defense, and the claim that you’re already in The-Most-You-Can-Do Sweet Spot—do not survive critical scrutiny.

Conclusion

Most of us do not aim to be morally good by absolute standards. Instead we aim to be about as morally good as our peers. Our peers are somewhat morally criticizable—not morally horrible, but morally mediocre. If we aim to approximately match their mediocrity, we are somewhat morally
criticizable for having such low personal moral ambitions. It’s tempting to try to rationalize one’s mediocrity away by admitting merely that one is not a saint, or by appealing to the Fairness Objection or the Happy Coincidence Defense, or by flattering oneself that one is already in TheMost-You-Can-Do Sweet Spot—but these self-serving excuses don’t survive scrutiny.

Consider where you truly aim. Maybe moral goodness isn’t so important to you, as long as you’re not among the worst. If so, own your mediocrity.  Accept the moral criticism you deserve for your low moral ambitions, or change them.

U.S. Ethics Office Declines to Certify Mnuchin’s Financial Disclosure

Alan Rappeport
The New York Times
Originally published April 4, 2019

The top federal ethics watchdog said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s sale of his stake in a film production business to his wife did not comply with federal ethics rules, and it would not certify his 2018 financial disclosure report as a result.

Although Mr. Mnuchin will not face penalties for failing to comply, he has been required to rewrite his federal ethics agreement and to promise to recuse himself from government matters that could affect his wife’s business.

Mr. Mnuchin in 2017 sold his stake in StormChaser Partners to his then-fiancée, Louise Linton, as part of a series of divestments before becoming Treasury secretary. Since they are now married, government ethics rules consider the asset to be owned by Mr. Mnuchin, potentially creating a conflict of interest for an official who has been negotiating for expanded access for the movie industry as part of trade talks with China.

The controversy over Mr. Mnuchin’s finances has become an unwanted distraction in recent weeks as the Trump administration has been engaged in intense negotiations with China on a wide range of trade matters. While Robert Lighthizer, President Trump’s top trade official, has been leading the talks, Mr. Mnuchin has been the point person for promoting the film industry because of his background as a Hollywood producer and investor.

The info is here.

Ordinary people associate addiction with loss of free will

A. J. Vonasch, C. J. Clark, S. Laub, K. D. Vohs, & R. F. Baumeister
Addictive Behaviors Reports
Volume 5, June 2017, Pages 56-66

Introduction
It is widely believed that addiction entails a loss of free will, even though this point is controversial among scholars. There is arguably a downside to this belief, in that addicts who believe they lack the free will to quit an addiction might therefore fail to quit an addiction.

Methods
A correlational study tested the relationship between belief in free will and addiction. Follow-up studies tested steps of a potential mechanism: 1) people think drugs undermine free will 2) people believe addiction undermines free will more when doing so serves the self 3) disbelief in free will leads people to perceive various temptations as more addictive.

Results
People with lower belief in free will were more likely to have a history of addiction to alcohol and other drugs, and also less likely to have successfully quit alcohol. People believe that drugs undermine free will, and they use this belief to self-servingly attribute less free will to their bad actions than to good ones. Low belief in free will also increases perceptions that things are addictive.

Conclusions
Addiction is widely seen as loss of free will. The belief can be used in self-serving ways that may undermine people's efforts to quit.

The research is here.

Republicans redefine morality as whatever Trump does

Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
Posted on January 26, 2018

Someday, likely three years from now, perhaps sooner, perhaps — gulp — later, President Trump will depart the stage.

But what will be left of us?

New evidence suggests that the damage he is doing to the culture is bigger than the man. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found that two-thirds of Americans say Trump is not a good role model for children. Every component of society feels that way — men and women, old and young, black and white, highly educated or not — except for one: Republicans. By 72 to 22 percent, they say Trump is a good role model.

In marked contrast to the rest of the country, Republicans also say that Trump shares their values (82 percent) and that — get this — he “provides the United States with moral leadership” (80 percent).

And what moral leadership this role model has been providing!

The article is here.

The Normalization of Corruption in Organizations

Blake E. Ashforth and Vikas Anand
Research in Organizational Behavior
Volume 25, 2003, Pages 1-52

Abstract

Organizational corruption imposes a steep cost on society, easily dwarfing that of street crime. We examine how corruption becomes normalized, that is, embedded in the organization such that it is more or less taken for granted and perpetuated. We argue that three mutually reinforcing processes underlie normalization: (1) institutionalization, where an initial corrupt decision or act becomes embedded in structures and processes and thereby routinized; (2) rationalization, where self-serving ideologies develop to justify and perhaps even valorize corruption; and (3) socialization, where naı̈ve newcomers are induced to view corruption as permissible if not desirable. The model helps explain how otherwise morally upright individuals can routinely engage in corruption without experiencing conflict, how corruption can persist despite the turnover of its initial practitioners, how seemingly rational organizations can engage in suicidal corruption and how an emphasis on the individual as evildoer misses the point that systems and individuals are mutually reinforcing.

The article is here.

Lack of Intellectual Humility Plagues Our Times, Say Researchers

Paul Ratner
BigThink.com
Originally posted November 12, 2017

Researchers from Duke University say that intellectual humility is an important personality trait that has become in short supply in our country.

Intellectual humility is like open-mindedness. It is basically an awareness that your beliefs may be wrong, influencing a person’s ability to make decisions in politics, health and other areas of life. An intellectually humble person can have strong opinions, say the authors, but will still recognize they are not perfect and are willing to be proven wrong.

This trait is not linked to a specific partisan view, with researchers finding no difference in levels of the characteristic between conservatives, liberals, religious or non-religious people. In fact, the scientists possibly managed to put to rest an age-old stereotype, explained the study’s lead author Mark Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke.

The article is here.

Economics should incorporate ethical considerations

By Sean Sinclair
The Lancet, Volume 382, Issue 9909, Pages 1978 - 1979, 14 December 2013
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62651-3

In support of Richard Horton's idea that “economists have stripped morality from economics”, I identify two issues with health economics: first, the conservatism of positive economics (the descriptive branch), and second, the way values are illicitly transported from positive economics to normative economics (the prescriptive branch).

Positive economics takes some basic assumptions for granted, a priori. Most obviously, mainstream neoclassical economics starts with a default model of the citizen as Homo Economicus, an entirely self-interested being. When this model does not predict observed events, it is adjusted with additional assumptions, but not replaced entirely. Against this, David Parkin and colleagues (Oct 12) state that nowadays, empirical analysis dominates economics. However, recent introductory textbooks on health economics still propound a model of markets based on the concept of the utility-maximising individual. Therefore, theory change in economics does not come in the form of scientific revolutions on the scale we find in physics or chemistry, for which current mainstream theories would be barely recognisable to theoreticians of 150 or 200 years ago.

The entire article is here.