[1] Is it ethical for an employee to accept a new job knowing he
will leave it as soon as a better one appears? Is it ethical for an
employer to hire a new employee knowing the position will be
eliminated as soon as the human resources department can find a
suitable outsource? These were the types of questions being tossed
about in the rear seat of my car on the way home from an "ethics
breakfast."
[2] This paper will report on the way a small group of lay
people can develop a forum for ethics in the workplace which will
serve a community of 250,000 people. It can easily be
replicated.
[3] It all began about eight years ago when a group of
laypersons from the major churches in western Allentown,
Pennsylvania, met to discuss the creation of an organization to
support Christians in the workplace. We wrote a mission statement
and a work plan. We then went to local business owners and managers
for feedback. Our intention was not to deal with the high profile
situations such as Enron or Arthur Anderson, but rather local
persons and organizations.
[4] After about 10 feedback interviews we discovered
surprisingly consistent advice. First, a Christian-based "support"
organization will raise questions about our purposes. Few employers
would endorse such a group. We should become an interfaith group.
Second, they all encouraged the creation of an independent
organization that supported ethics in the workplace.
[5] We expanded our board to include Muslim and Jewish business
persons. We rewrote our mission statement and became incorporated
in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as The Interfaith Coalition on
Ethics in the Workplace. We filed for and received our 501 (c)(3)
tax exemption status. (Our board has always had an attorney
member.) The Mission Statement is simply "to provide opportunities
for people to come together for study, reflection, conversation and
action on ethical issues in the workplace."
[6] We decided that our program would initially be built around
Spring and Fall Ethics Breakfasts that would be open to the
community. Knowing that our initial breakfast had to be a very good
one, we asked a high profile retired priest, who serves on many
local business and charitable boards and is an excellent speaker,
to be our keynote presenter. He was pleased to do so since he
highly supported what we intended to do. The topic of our first
breakfast was "Ethics in the Workplace: Challenge and Opportunity."
He delivered a terrific speech which earned good headlines and
reports in our two local newspapers. We had hoped for 50
participants. We got over 100! It was a great start.
[7] The breakfasts at $25 per person cover the cost of food and
table programs. The expense for designing and printing a four-fold
two-color program on heavy stock and mailing to about 700 addresses
is covered by our operating budget. Speakers have been willing to
contribute their services. Because we want to cover a broad
territory we vary the locations. Buffet breakfasts begin at 7:00 AM
and are over by 9:00 AM. The programs are structured to offer at
least 30 minutes for table discussion.
[8] The topic of our second Ethics Breakfast was
"Whistle-Blowing: Virtue or Betrayal?" We had a panel of three plus
a moderator. The panel consisted of the CEO of a fairly large local
corporation (350 employees), an attorney with whistle-blowing
experience and the senior manager, Diversity Management/Ethics of a
national corporation. The moderator was the dean of the School of
Business at one of our large local universities. The CEO, who was
well known for his highly ethical business practices, felt that his
company was so structured that any employee with an ethical concern
could express it to someone in management without fear of reprisal.
The attorney pointed out that in his experience it is always risky
to blow the whistle on a person or policy without ultimately paying
a price. The senior manager for corporate ethics agreed and
outlined an ombudsman process that she said protects whistle
blowers. Table discussion on this topic was robust.
[9] Another breakfast was titled, "Employer/Employee Loyalty: An
Ethical Issue?" We had two speakers with vastly different
employment experiences. One was the president of a local public
utility where he had spent all of his forty-some years with the
same company. He decried the loss of employee loyalty in recent
years. The second speaker was an entrepreneur for 25 years, working
for many companies as an employee or consultant and jumping from
one to another whenever he spotted an opportunity. As kindly as he
could, he pointed out to the CEO the loss of employer loyalty over
the past two decades. "How many of my friends have been the victims
of outsourcing, downsizing, reduction of health plans and even loss
of pensions? Where is the employer loyalty to them?" The table
conversation was similar to the questions raised at the start of
this article.
[10] In an effort to attract more women to our breakfasts we
presented one breakfast with the theme, "The Ethics of Gender in
the Workplace: A Woman's Perspective." Our featured speaker was a
young woman who is vice chairman of her family-owned publishing
company. She presented an excellent lecture, making the case that
"A woman is not a little man." The issue is more than sexual
harassment or sexual discrimination, she said. It is not seeing or
hearing a woman at a company meeting, or not asking her to join the
"guys" at lunch or on the way home from work. It is tuning out her
report whenever she speaks. Even women tune out other women as not
being important. Her many challenges provided much table
conversation. But our effort to attract more women was largely
unsuccessful. Perhaps up to ten more women than usual attended, but
that did not make up for a lower attendance by men. It proved the
speaker's point: If the topic was about women, it could not have
been very important.
[11] At one of our board meetings we discussed how moral
reasoning is developed in people. We agreed that parents had a
somewhat limited time to teach values to their children. The
teachers on our board told of the limitations in teaching values
placed upon them by school boards. Yet we tended to agree that,
along the way, human beings naturally tend to develop certain moral
values that are essentially objective, eternal and universal. What
is not learned naturally is how emotions and drives tend to affect
rationality. This is where teaching ethics, especially applied
ethics, is important in our colleges and universities. So we
decided to offer a breakfast with the theme, "Teaching Ethics: When
Everyone Is Responsible, No One Is ..." Actually the title should
have been "Teaching Applied Ethics: When Everyone…etc." We
were concerned that many people would misunderstand the
significance of using "applied" in the title and thus not be
interested.
[12] The first speaker was a university professor who would deal
with the classical thinking of philosophers as to behavior ethics.
The second speaker was to deal exclusively with teaching applied
ethics at colleges and universities. Since I had taught business
ethics for six years as an adjunct professor at a local college, I
was selected to do the job. The moderator was the president of one
of our colleges who had great interest in what our organization was
doing.
[13] I began my talk by reporting on a survey I did of five
universities and six colleges within a 20 mile radius of Allentown.
Of the 11 colleges/universities only two required some type of
ethics course. One of the two was taught in the Philosophy
Department, the other in the Religion Department. For students
majoring in business, only four of the 11 offered business ethics
courses in the business department, and only two required it.
Applied ethics, which may include business, is offered by four
schools, but only one required it.
[14] My conclusion is that in most of the 11 schools I studied
it is possible that a business major can graduate without ever
having taken a course in business ethics, or general ethics. Only
two schools require general ethics.
[15] Our area is typical. The Association to Advance Collegiate
Schools of Business, which accredits business school programs,
found that in 2003 only 35% of its member schools required students
to take an ethics course. It wasn't until the business scandals of
recent years that some of the elite business schools like Harvard
started requiring ethics courses. On the other hand the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania has required MBA students
to take an ethics course since 1975 and began offering a PhD
program in business ethics in 2003.
[16] This brings us to a very important issue. M.B.A. stands for
Master of Business Administration. M.B.A. students are steeped in
various principles of economics, and the basic goal of business
economics is to maximize profit for shareholders. The bottom line
is it. M.B.A. students must learn the various scientific approaches
to economics that will maximize profits. The quest for academic
excellence in economic theory has "high-jacked" any concern for
ethics or management. Henry Mitzenberg, a Canadian business
professor, writes, "The M.B.A. trains the wrong people in the wrong
ways with the wrong consequences. What is needed is a greater
emphasis on Master of Business Management, where business ethics is
a required core emphasis."
[17] There was very good table discussion and many
comments/questions from the floor. An interesting outgrowth of our
ethics breakfasts has been the development of a subgroup that
specializes in sports ethics. One of our board members, a professor
of kinesiology at a nearby campus of Penn State, gathered a small
cadre of coaches, referees, parents and school directors with the
intent of offering sports ethics breakfasts. The concern is the
inadequate attention to ethics on the part of some volunteer
coaches, officials and parents involved in club and scholastic
sports of all types. With the support and advancement of seed money
by our Forum for Ethics in the Workplace, the Sports Ethics group
offered its first evening public meeting. It was well attended by
coaches and officials, but few parents. The Sports Ethics group is
now an official program of the Forum for Ethics in the Workplace.
They have their own board of directors but can secure financial
contributions under our 501 (c)(3) tax exemption provisions.
[18] Our Forum for Ethics in the Workplace has a speakers'
bureau and from time to time we get a request for a speaker.
Service clubs such as Rotary or Kiwanis are our usual source of
requests. We have twice received a request from a company to send
someone to help with the creation of a code of ethics.
[19] Quarterly, the Forum for Ethics in the Workplace produces
and distributes a newsletter of four to six pages, mailed to all
persons on our breakfast mailing list. The newsletter reports on
the most recent ethics breakfast and announces the topic of the
next one. We frequently include an ethics "case study" and invite
readers' responses. Cost for the production and mailing of the
newsletter comes out of our operating budget.
[20] Each copy of the newsletter invites readers to become
"partners" in the Forum for Ethics in the Workplace by making an
annual contribution. Individuals contribute $50 per year.
Organizations (businesses, churches, human service organizations,
etc.) pay on a graduated scale depending on the number of their
employees. These receipts, plus grants we receive from businesses
and charitable organizations, make up our annual operating budget.
We have not been successful in raising enough money from these
sources to support the hiring of a paid executive director.
[21] Efforts are underway to partner with a local university and
there are some hopeful signs that this can be accomplished.
[22] Based on our experience I am convinced that what we did for
ethics in the workplace in our region can be done by any small
group of persons committed to the principle.
© January 2007
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 7, Issue 1