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Conscience and its Counterfeits in Organizational Life: A New Interpretation of the Naturalistic Fallacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Kenneth E. Goodpaster
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Abstract:

This paper explains and defends three basic propositions: (1) that our attitudes (particularly American attitudes) toward organizational ethics are conflicted at a fairly deep level; (2) that in response to this conflict in our attitudes, we often default to various counterfeits of conscience (non-moral systems that serve as surrogates for the role of conscience in organizational settings); and (3) that a better response (than relying on counterfeits) would be for leaders to foster a culture of ethical awareness in their organizations. Some practical suggestions are made about fostering such a culture, and a comparison is made between this late-20th-century response to the problem of counterfeits and the classic “naturalistic fallacy” identified in early-20th-century ethics by G. E. Moore.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 189 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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References

1 For a fuller definition of “teleopathy,” see Blackwell’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics (1997), p. 627.

2 David Whyte, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 270.

3 We could add scores of similar stories based on well-researched case studies of business organizations. We could also discuss the widely quoted “Parable of the Sadhu” by Bowen McCoy (Harvard Business Review 1983, 1997) in which an executive loses his sense of humanity on a Himalayan mountain-climbing expedition and leaves a man to die on the slope. Many companies have ended up in scandal during the last quarter of this century due to goals or targets presented to management as overriding—to be met “come hell or high water.”

4 Ron Daniel, former Managing Director, McKinsey & Co., Fortune, November 1, 1993, p. 72. We see from this example that teleopathy can afflict organizations as well as individuals!

5 “The Search for Spirit in the Workplace,” by Chris Lee and Ron Zemke, pp. 21–28: “It seems that mid-life crises combined with economic insecurity are persuading some boomers to return to their childhood religions, some to turn to unconventional churches and some to the various 12-step programs of the “recovery” movement…. Besides boomers’ mid-life crises and general economic insecurities, we might add to the list of contributing trends: downsizing and “delayering” as a result of global competition, decisional and informational overload, social disintegration through crime, broken marriages and families, and fractured urban education systems.”

6 Peters quoted in Lee and Zemke, p. 26.

7 RPM’s “Direction Statement” opens with: “RPM is a team dedicated to the purpose of operating a business based on the practical application of Judeo-Christian values for the mutual benefit of: co-workers and their families, customers, shareholders, suppliers, and community. We are committed to provide an environment where there is no conflict between work and moral/ethical values or family responsibilities and where everyone is treated justly. The tradition of excellence at RPM has grown out of a commitment to excellence rooted in the character of our Creator. Instead of driving each other toward excellence, we strive to free each other to grow and express the desire for excellence that is within all of us.” See K. Goodpaster and L. Nash, Policies and Persons, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), pp. 135–150.

8 “By adhering to the following principles, we are challenged to work and make decisions consistent with God’s purpose for creation according to our individual understanding: DO WHAT IS RIGHT—We are committed to do what is right even when it does not seem to be profitable, expedient, or conventional; DO OUR BEST—In our understanding of excellence we embrace a commitment to continuous improvement in everything we do. It is our commitment to encourage, teach, equip, and free each other to do and become all that we were intended to be. TREAT OTHERS AS WE WOULD LIKE TO BE TREATED; SEEK INSPIRATIONAL WISDOM—by looking outside ourselves, especially with respect to decisions having far-reaching and unpredictable consequences, but we will act only when the action is confirmed unanimously by others concerned.” Policies and Persons, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), p. 145.

9 American Law Institute Proceedings, ERISA language on pension fund managers’ responsibilities, etc. See my 1991 article in Business Ethics Quarterly, “Business Ethics and Stakeholder Analysis.”

10 “For those who want to lobby for a more radical effacement or shift in the locus of the public/private boundary, there is opportunity for attack along the lines of unseating corporations from their entitlement to ordinary constitutional liberties. Some of the liberties that protect natural persons might not apply, or might apply less stringently, when corporations and other associations of various sorts are the claimants. The less heavily we weigh their liberty claims, the more we would be justified to encumber them with obligations…. I do not doubt that if we could see to origins, we would find what is public and what is private lying close to the heart of the human feelings that give rise to governments.” From “Corporate Vices and Corporate Virtues: Do Public/Private Distinctions Matter?” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 130, no. 6, June 1982.

11 This is, of course, the now-classic argument of Milton Friedman in “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970.

12 Oxford English Dictionary: counterfeit — adj. 1 (of a coin, writing, etc.) made in imitation; not genuine; forged. 2 (of a claimant etc.) pretended. — n. a forgery; an imitation. [Counterfeits or surrogates are in some ways like autopilots, external systems that free us from the tedium of having to pay attention. They become substitutes for “guidance by awareness” or mindfulness; indeed they are tools for (temporary) thoughtlessness.]

13 Mention of codes here deserves some qualification. The point is not that codes of conduct (industry codes, company codes, professional codes for engineers, accountants, and consultants to mention only a few) are in themselves objectionable, but that in the absence of a culture of dialogue surrounding them, they have the potential to become counterfeits for conscience

14 See Goodpaster, “Ethical Imperatives and Corporate Leadership.” This paper was first presented as a Ruffin Lecture in Business Ethics at the Darden School, University of Virginia, in April 1988. It was later published in Ethics in Practice: Managing the Moral Corporation, ed. Kenneth R. Andrews (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1991).

15 Choruses from the Rock, VI (1934).

16 Anthony DeMello, S.J., Awareness (New York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 56.

17 DeMello would have agreed wholeheartedly with philosopher Hannah Arendt’s observation that “A life without thinking is quite possible—but it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers.” Hannah Arendt, “Thinking,” The New Yorker, December 5, 1977, p. 195.

18 As we contemplate our answer to this question, we might consider the remark of political scientist Glenn Tinder, who warns us that at the end of the 20th century “Our position is precarious, for good customs and habits need a spiritual base; and if it is lacking, they will gradually—or perhaps suddenly, in some crisis—disappear. To what extent are we now living on moral savings accumulated over many centuries but no longer being replenished?” Glenn Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 51. Tinder also remarks that Jews and Christians “will be deeply suspicious of the maxim that the invisible hand of the market is always to be trusted in preference to the visible hand of government. Such a maxim has a look of idolatry. The principle that only God, and never a human institution, should be relied on absolutely suggests a far more flexible and pragmatic approach to the issue” Ibid., p.185.

19 For a much fuller discussion, see K. Goodpaster and T. Holloran, “Anatomy of Corporate Spiritual and Social Awareness: The Case of Medtronic, Inc.,” Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Catholic Social Thought and Management Education, Goa, India, January 1999.

20 If we ask whether the awareness that comes from conscience is self-sacrificial, the answer might surprise us. It may be different from that usually intended by those who see sacrifice as destructive. Consider the words of British philosopher Richard Norman: “The sacrificing of one’s own interests need not be a sacrificing of oneself to something external. My commitment to my friends or my children, to a person whom I love or a social movement in which I believe, may be a part of my own deepest being, so that when I devote myself to them, my overriding experience is not that of sacrificing myself but of fulfilling myself.” (The Moral Philosophers [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983], p. 249)

21 In Minnesota and nationally, Dayton Hudson Corporation is perhaps best known for institutionalizing corporate community involvement, but as this article goes to press in the summer of 1999, the Twin Cities community is quite concerned about the loss of Honeywell, Inc. (acquired by Allied Signal of New Jersey). Honeywell’s record of corporate community involvement has been extraordinary in private-public partnerships for improving neighborhoods, increasing minority employment, work-family balance, and many other arenas.