Engineering Ethics – Section 6

Lawrence Kohlberg cited a model for his Moral improvement hypothesis. This model is famously called the Heinz’s Dilemma.

Story of Heinz

An account of a moderately aged normal working class man, called Heinz is considered for instance. Heinz is a standard man having a spouse. His significant other experiences a loathsome malady. Specialists accept that an extraordinary medication which was developed as of late and is accessible at the BIG pharma store, can just spare his better half.

At the point when Heinz went to purchase the medication, the medication dealer cost it around $2,000 dollars, while the real assembling expense of the medication is $20 dollars. Heinz acquired the cash from companions and banks and could at long last gather just $1,000 dollars. Despite the fact that Heinz argued a ton, the insatiable medication merchant wouldn’t sell the medication requiring little to no effort.

Presently, Heinz had no other choice however to take the medication from the shop to spare the life of his better half. Is this a superior alternative to do? What is your judgment?

Story of Heinz

Presently, to illuminate this present Heinz’s situation, a mastermind has the accompanying choices.

Alternatives for the Thinker

In this segment, we will talk about the choices for the Thinker.

Heinz ought not take the medication since it is the insubordination of law.

Heinz can take the medication, yet ought to be rebuffed by the law.

Heinz can take the medication and no law ought to rebuff him.

The appropriate response which you pick shows your ethical advancement. Each answer has its outcomes and clarification. Release us through the appropriate responses.

Heinz ought not take the medication since it is the rebellion of law.

This choice makes it incomprehensible for Heinz to spare his significant other. His better half passes on and the rich medication dealer winds up more extravagant. In spite of the fact that the law was complied, no ethical equity was finished. This is a pre-traditional degree of good reasoning.

Heinz can take the medication, yet ought to be rebuffed by the law.

This choice enables Heinz to spare his better half, however Heinz will be kept in jail. In spite of the fact that Heinz took an ethical choice, he needed to experience the discipline. This is a Conventional degree of good reasoning.

Heinz can take the medication and no law ought to rebuff him.

This choice gives Heinz a chance to spare his better half and them two can live cheerfully. This reasoning depends on the idea that the unbending nature in law ought to be rejected and equity ought to be done on good grounds. This is a post-ordinary degree of good reasoning.

What is Our Responsibility

Over the past few years I have worked with and met a number of social entrepreneurs. I have been struck by how many have come into the work that they do through perceiving injustice, inequity or inefficiency elsewhere. Most social entrepreneurs I know are not new to ‘doing good’ – it is in their blood. For many they have committed their lives and been working for years trying different approaches to creating change or making a better world.

A striking number have recounted to me experiences they have had in previous jobs at non-profit organizations or the corporate sector where they perceived a genuine problem. The problems people have shared have been very diverse, including misaligned strategy, poor spending, workplace bullying, mismanagement, ego-based leadership and perhaps most alarmingly, an unwillingness to listen to contrary or negative feedback. Sometimes these problems create harmful organizations or programs, and other times just keep the organization in a place of mediocrity; locked away from fully achieving greatness or their mission.

Many social entrepreneurs I have come across have actually first attempted to create change, innovate or establish new initiatives within these existing organizations. They have often experienced the resistance that comes from a system trying to protect itself, and not allowing new information to come in. Many have also experienced not being heard when trying to express counter views or challenge authority when they witness unethical behavior in leadership.

I could not even count how many people I know who have felt that they have had no other option than to leave the organization as they have been unable to create change there. In some cases, their departure has not been their choice. The information and perceptions they have had and were unable to share would have potentially saved the organizations they worked for a great deal of money, their brand and created a more aligned strategy. If they could somehow speak truth to power, their experience and the impact of the organization could have been changed.

For me, one of the reasons that people find themselves in this position is because they lack the skills and confidence to deal with and speak to power. By ‘…power’ I refer most often to people in positions of authoritative power (Board Directors, CEO’s, management), and by ‘speaking truth to…’ I mean the ability to give feedback and name what the individual perceives as going on.

I do not write this with any judgement or criticism, I write simply as an observation. I too have been in positions where I have felt unheard or unable to speak effectively ‘my truth’ to people in more senior roles to me. I have also experienced being in positions of authority (CEO, senior management, Board Director) and probably caused pain for people in terms of them not feeling like they could voice certain views with me.

Understanding power, resolving ones relationship with it and being able to work effectively with power is bloody difficult. This is not an easy journey at all. The reason many people find it difficult or lack the confidence is that they have been burnt in their past (earlier life or past-life) by the misuse of power by others. The consequences can sometimes be incredibly painful, and it is totally understandable that people avoid situations where they would need to experience it again.

I have one friend who was until recently the CEO of a major charity. This charity was significant in size, budget and reputation, and had a number of challenges including unethical and misaligned leadership at the Board. This behavior and practice was not obvious to everyone, but certainly a strong number of staff and the community had expressed their being disenfranchised with the organization’s governance. The CEO had a choice of whether to speak against it, or play along with their power games and behavior. She chose to speak against it, which was an enormously courageous act. The consequence was that she was forced to step down from her post, representing a significant loss to the organization and her personally. Positive results did come out of it too, including the Board being forced to look at the way it governed. The courage of this CEO to speak truth to power led to a startling turnaround for that organization.

For me the single most striking problem in the ‘doing good’ or non-profit world is our understanding of and ability to deal with power. So much importance is placed on entrepreneurship, innovation and creating new change. Our ability, willingness and courage to shift existing organizations or initiatives to more ethical, aligned and positively impactful positions is critical. Otherwise we find ourselves in the position whereby creating new good only perpetuates the existing bad. We are not actually transforming that which is at worst harmful or otherwise just mediocre, into that which may be great.

A wise colleague of mine Beth Worrall champions the role of entrepreneurs within existing organizations or systems. Beth taught me a lot about the important role that individual employees within larger systems can play. When these employees work effectively with power, their impact internally and externally can be huge – even from the most ‘junior’ roles.

Whether we are committed to sticking out the journey in our existing workplaces or moving into new ventures, our willingness and ability to work with power is critical. Perhaps I will come back to this in a later post, but it starts with first seeking to understand ourselves and our own current relationships with power. This is challenging and can surface stuff about ourselves that we perhaps don’t want to face. I know for me that journey has been difficult, but one that hopefully in the end will bring me closer to being a better change maker.

 

Ethical Incentives

In the business world it is a fairly common tactic to use bonuses, commissions and other rewards to incentivize performance and retention among employees. Is it possible to create a more powerful incentive however, where the employee who does the work receives nothing personally? In addition, could it be possible to create an incentive where the individual receives nothing, but generates good will among others?

A few years ago I worked with the business development team at a well known Australian charity. It was at an important stage in the organization’s growth. They had a proven product and a good understanding of their market. The challenge was simply one of increasing volume, filling up business in quiet periods and making the whole operation more profitable. Sounds simple doesn’t it.

Specific Examples

The organization was highly effective at retaining existing clients, with over 75% having been with them for over 15 years. Each year there was a small attrition of clients, and a modest acquisition of new clients. To meet the organizations growth, profitability and sustainability targets, new sales needed to ramp up significantly. The team had participated in training, implemented new sales tracking tools and managed its contacts more closely. The organization also invested in innovating new programs and services to take to market. Aside from the new style programs, none of these made a significant difference to increasing sales.

The Executive Team considered whether the organization needed to implement an incentive scheme for its sales staff. Prior to this, business development staff were salaried and conducted sales alongside client management. There were no specialist sales people in this team – each person had a client management and a sales function. Over a two year period, the CEO proposed to the team that a bonus and commission system be implemented. Each time the proposal was rejected by staff. They stated that their motivation for working for the organization and serving their clients was not out of money, but out of a genuine desire to see the mission fulfilled.

After two years, an incentive system was implemented anyway. Staff would receive an annual bonus for making budget, and an additional percentage commission on any new clients they brought on. It was fascinating to see what happened to the team culture almost immediately. Where the team was previously highly collaborative, they were now more keen to pick up the new prospect and keep that to themselves. Some healthy competition was good of course, and led to increased motivation for some.

Problems Identified in the Model

What started to appear however were some really strong problems. One of the problems with the operational model was that the organization was already beyond capacity at certain times of the year. The organization needed new clients, but could only accommodate them in the quiet times. It seemed that every prospect that came into the sales cycle wanted the busy times. What ended up happening was that the sales staff made the sale, loaded up the operational team with a workload that would almost break them, and then the sales staff got the commission. This is on top of the sales team already earning more than the operational team.

When word got out that the sales team were earning commissions, it was perceived that they were being rewarded for burdening the staff in the operational team. The organization now had an ethical dilemma on its hands – what is the fair way to reward and treat staff as a way of respecting their various contributions?

The solution came from neither Management nor Human Resources. It came from the Sales Team itself. The sales staff got together to creatively rethink its incentive system – not the management, but the people who were to receive the bonuses. They put forward a proposal whereby the Sales Team and Operational Management Team had to work together to determine how any new business would be accommodated. Any rewards earned through new business would not be paid to the sales team, but rather to the operational team as an end-of-year gift. This recognized that it was the delivery staff that actually bore the brunt of the these decisions.

This was a remarkable cultural act in itself. Further to the cultural success, what ended up occurring was that the operational team were more open to collaborating to see new business find a place in the operational calendar. The two teams worked creatively to find a way to make it work.

This is an example in behavioral ethics of something called ‘bounded awareness’. According to Bazerman and Tenbrunsel in Blind Spots, “bounded awareness refers to the common tendency to exclude important and relevant information from our decisions by place arbitrary and dysfunctional bounds around our definition of a problem”. The problem was initially defined as purely and simply a ‘sales problem’, which led a simplistic ‘incentive solution’. The initial incentive created a blind spot to the more complex dynamic that was happening in the organization around operational flows, interdepartmental management, client needs, impacts on delivery staff and the cultural values of the organization. A simple incentive blinded the staff to seeing that complexity and what was actually needed.

Conclusions

While the new incentive did not necessarily achieve the significant increase in sales that the organization was seeking, it did allow the organization to see and understand itself more effectively. It managed to understand client needs, test the limits of its operational model, push the creative and ethical skills of its staff, build more healthy workplace relationships and bring its multiple stakeholders together around this complex problem.

Incentives can be powerful, and have far greater ethical impacts than we perhaps give credit it. Rethinking incentives in this case opened hearts and minds, and led to a more ethical outcome for all concerned.

 

Beyond Disadvantage

I have long been conscious of words, labels and how language can shape our reality. Initially my experience of labels was a personal one. Not just because of my sexuality, but indeed loads of experiences throughout my life have taught me the power and limitation of words.

After some harrowing times, at fifteen I embarked on a quest to reconstruct my world by being careful of how I spoke of myself and what I was prepared to accept from others. I had previously heard teachers and peers at school describe me in ways that I simply accepted and adopted as truth. More insidious were the words I used internally; flowing without filter or question. I was creating my world and reality in every thought.

My Story

Later in my twenties I became a teacher and heard this language from the other side. I heard teachers refer to students as bad students, good students, ADHD students, non-believers, distracted students and more. These words were used so unconsciously and I doubt the users had awareness of their power in shaping the young people they were supposed to be serving.

This understanding of the power of language is not revelatory. The positive psychology and personal development movements have helped open the world up to understanding how language can shape reality for individuals. While our systems and cultures still perpetuate some of these habits and misuses, I witness greater consciousness among teachers and youth workers now.

Community Development

One field that this has not been as developed or mainstreamed is community development. In my working with communities and non-profit organizations, I continually hear leaders, CEO’s, organizations, politicians and social workers refer to communities as ‘disadvantaged’, ‘deprived’, ‘poor’, ‘developing’ and more. There are endless labels that are used to diagnose, describe and distinguish communities. None of these, or indeed any label is truth in itself. It may provide one way of looking at the total story, but it is not the total story.

The diagnosis of communities via labeling is so prolific, incredibly unconscious, and its impact is profoundly destructive. There is a problem in defining problems. As soon as you give a label to it, that label and its descriptions actually become the problem. By giving collective attention to something, you invariably create that as a problem. Diagnosis limits thinking, not open it up. It narrows focus on just that one way of seeing something.

Last week I was fortunate to do some work in a community in Tasmania. This community has been described by the Government as a highly disadvantaged community. This label was not uninformed of course, just poorly informed and constructed. The label was derived from statistical data that shows the prevalence of unemployment and education outcomes. It is a giant leap to see data like this, and create that language to talk about it. My experience of this community is that it is full of wonderfully creative and highly intelligent leaders. Yes, the community may have challenges in certain parts, but we need to be conscious of how the language we use might fuel or escalate those challenges.

Does this mean that we stop talking or using language? In my own life there was a moment when I came to use labels consciously and powerfully. I struggled for a long time with calling myself gay, and not because of my identity or how I experienced myself. I struggled because I didn’t want to be defined by the word ‘gay’. I saw myself as something more than this. I have now come to be able to powerfully use the ‘gay’ word in my life. For me labels are powerful when used to help describe, and incredibly dangerous when used to define someone or something.

There are two other important aspects to my use of the word ‘gay’. Firstly, I use it in a positive context to describe an aspect of myself that I love. Often the word gay is used in derogatory and negative ways to describe not just people but experiences, objects and more. Secondly, I am conscious when I use the word to describe myself; I am giving meaning to my own life and identity. I am not ascribing a label to others to talk about them. When we use words to diagnose others, we are violating the spiritual laws of freedom. Who am I to give or limit the meaning or identity of another.

The last thing to say about labeling communities or collectives is that they comprise such diversity. To apply simple descriptions to communities, we deny and ignore the magical multiplicity of experiences that live within them. Even individuals are dynamic – changing and growing with life experience. We can label food (as the image at top suggests) because they comprise consistently the same ingredients that should have little variance. Individuals and communities do have elements of variance, and that’s what makes them magnificent.

My Recommendation

If you are a community leader or worker, entrepreneur, business person or whatever, your opportunity here is to become more conscious of the language that you use and accept. Be wary of jumping to simple, quick and accepted diagnoses of problems, especially with labels. As soon as you apply a label to something, it will constrain your thinking. Liberate yourself and your communities by staying in empathy, following creativity, and avoiding the limitation of jumping to labels and diagnosis.