Unethical Pressure
At the end of March 2020, the prestigious Harvard Business Review published the results of a major survey and study on corporate ethics. The research was conducted by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Faas Foundation. More than 14,500 individuals were interviewed.
I will be commenting on the article, entitled “How Common Is Unethical Behavior in U.S. Organizations?” in today’s post, using the findings as a “spring board” for discussion.
Don’t Overlook the Small Stuff
We are all familiar with the major ethics scandals of the past few years. As an ethics keynote speaker, I have written and spoken extensively on scandals involving corporations such as Wells Fargo, Boeing, Volkswagen and even the Houston Astros (make no mistake, an MLB franchise is a corporation). However, on my desk at this very minute are scandals involving a pet food company, a software development company, a chain of chiropractic studios and more than a few politicians. It made me “pleased” that the survey represented a demographic diversity as well as numerous industries.
The survey focused in on ethical behavior:
“We asked how often workers experienced pressure to act unethically and to what extent they were afraid to speak up at work.”
The authors of the article stated that what the survey found worried them. In truth, it terrified me. In terms of being pressured to act unethically:
“11% experienced this pressure sometimes and 12% experienced this pressure often to almost always – that is, 23%, or nearly one in four people, feel pressured to do things they know are wrong.”
The survey went on to try to elucidate the unethical behaviors forced on the employees. I will point out the most significant: “Rule violations – 29%, Lying – 27%, Unhealthy Work Environments – 27%, Sacrificing Safety – 9%”
In addition, participants pointed out numerous examples of discrimination, harassment, bullying, and stealing company property.
Isn’t This 2021?
We are often led to believe that modern organizations are fully “woke” and aware of maintaining a strong sense of ethics. Unfortunately, that message did not trickle down to nearly one-quarter of the participants.
There is no “weighting” of the results. While corporate ethical violations are serious no matter what the situation may be, it is obvious that a small manufacturing firm with 25 employees making swimming pool liners with “safety violations,” pales in comparison to a commercial airplane manufacturer with 15,000 employees exhibiting the same types of violations.
And while we “feel good” about the downfalls of the Harvey Weinstein’s, Bill Cosby’s and Kevin Spacey’s of the world, sexual harassment, bullying, gender, LGBT+ discrimination are unfortunately alive and well, pandemic or not.
As a virtual and in-person keynote speaker on ethics, sports ethics, sexual harassment and other damaging corporate behaviors, I am alarmed that these workplace issues are far from resolved. My belief is that in most corporate situations, there continues to be a set on in-bred biases and pressures that are often self-perpetuating. The assumption that HR is able to act as watchdog or monitor on its own, is rather naïve.
Taking just the issue of “Lying,” where, I presume, sales, marketing or even customer service are coerced into falsely misrepresenting their products or services, I can well imagine the fine line an HR manager must walk. I know this for a fact. It’s unethical.
It is one thing to talk to a sales rep about lying, and quite another to enter the “C suite” of sales and marketing and blast the head of sales and marketing for coercing their people to lie. I have no such constraints. I am independent and I call it the way that I see it.
No matter the ethical miscues, the organization, the industry or the setting, unacceptable behaviors still occur because there is an opportunity to do so, the need to do so and the rationalization to justify the behavior. Unless unethical behaviors are addressed, they will continue to fester. They will not go away of their own accord.
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