Ethics or Excellence? Conscience As a Check On the Unbalanced Pursuit of Organizational Goals

Summary

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In this article, the hazard is described and some suggestions are offered for a preventative ethical response. Most executives and managers have to confront the three important symptoms of the hazard: 1. fixation, 2. rationalization and 3. detachment. Teleopathy values certain limited objectives as supreme - to the exclusion not only of larger ends but also of moral considerations about means, obligations and duties. In its most extreme form, teleopathy amounts to the suspension of ethical awareness as a practical force in the decision-making process. When teleopathy governs decision making, the selection of goals and the means chosen to pursue them tend to be myopic. To avoid this hazard, leaders must avoid the causes that give rise to its symptoms. And to avoid these causes, they need new initiatives both in corporate executive education and in university business school education.

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Ethics or Excellence? Conscience As a Check On the Unbalanced Pursuit of Organizational Goals

If the contemporary business with its foundation of human assets is to survive, it will have to find better ways to protect people from the demands of the jobs it gives them. Neglecting the environment may drive away customers, but neglecting people's lives may drive away key members of the workforce.

- Charles Handy

Excellence and competitiveness in a global economy are aspirations that we renounce at our peril. At the same time, there is a hazard associated with these aspirations that can threaten the ability of both individuals and organizations to achieve them ethically. Is this the choice: excellence or ethics, competitiveness or conscience? The answer to this question has never been more important for business decision making.

In this article, I describe the hazard and offer some suggestions for a preventative ethical response. I begin with two illustrations that represent the tragic side of decision making, but I am not suggesting that these cases are the norm in business. Still, in a July 2003 Zogby Poll of college seniors, 56 per cent of respondents agreed (41 per cent disagreed) with the proposition that "the only real difference between executives at Enron and those at most other big companies, is that those at Enron got caught."

Two tragic events in 2003: An individual...and an organization

The individual

The story of Andrew Fastow, ex-financial officer of Enron, is an intriguing one. Fastow was a corporate climber who saw in Enron CEO J...

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