What makes an “ethical” organization? There are many theories. Here’s one.
The May-June 2011 issue of Communication World, the magazine of the International Association of Business Communicators, featured an article entitled “A Matter of Trust.” The author, Pamela Shockley-Zalabak, PhD, offered a framework of four “habits” that she thinks characterize an “ethical” organization. They are:
The Habit of Search – which describes the willingness of an organization “to explore the complexity of issues or problems.”
The Habit of Justice – which promotes the presentation of “information as openly and fairly as possible, with concern for distortion and understanding.”
The Habit of Public vs. Private Motivations – which “requires sharing of sources, information, special opinions, motivations or biases that might influence positions or decisions.”
The Habit of Respect for Dissent – which “encourages opposing viewpoints and argument as processes, policies and decisions are developed.”
Capsulizing from these four habits, Dr. Shockley-Zalabak said that “unethical behaviors suppress the examination of issues, withhold relevant information to pursue personal interests or motivations, and use dissent to press for special advantages.”
Now, in keeping with the theme of this blog and by using this framework, let’s examine irregular competitors, activists, as ethical organizations.
If we apply this framework strictly, then activist organizations are not ethical. Here is why.
The Habit of Search. Perhaps we can say that, yes, they meet this qualification. Generally speaking, activist organizations are willing to explore the complexity of issues. They explore a complexity of issues, but fall down on the way that they present those issues. Read further.
The Habit of Justice. Activist groups are advocates. They present cases. Like a lawyer in a court case, they seek justice but yet they will only present information which is favorable to their case. They will not present information openly and fairly for that is not their responsibility. Their responsibility is to advocate.
The Habit of Public vs. Private Motivations. This part of the framework alludes to a willingness to disclose information that can reveal biases in presenting a position. Activists generally do not meet this qualification. Yes, they may reveal the sources, experts, used in reports they issue. Yet, the activist doesn’t reveal the motivations of these expert sources so that the report reader can understand how their reading might be influenced by the positions of the expert sources. For example, I have found that Greenpeace is very culpable in this sort of motivation obscuration.
The Habit of Respect for Dissent. Activists do not encourage opposing viewpoints. At all. They are advocates, remember? In fact, when there is disagreement with activist positions, the dissenters, via demagoguery, are often characterized as liars, cheats, deniers, “fat cats” corrupted by evil corporations, or worse.
So, by using Dr. Shockley-Zalabak’s four habits of ethical organizations to evaluate activist organizations, we can see that these groups are far from ethical.
But what does that mean to you?
Simply, this means that whatever you read, hear, or see coming from activist groups should be taken with the proverbial “grain of
Continue reading On the Ethicality of Activists
In an article entitled “Activists Growing More Sophisticated with Time,” as published on StatesmanJournal.com, Michele Betsill, a political science professor at Colorado State University, in discussing the influence that NGOs have upon organizational decision-making, said:
“There’s a need for somebody to translate the science and help decision makers understand what science has to say about the decisions that they’re making. And NGOs have often stepped in to fill that role.”
Are we as a society lucky that NGOs have stepped in to fill that role? Perhaps in some cases, but certainly not in all cases. Why? As the “Activists Growing . . .” articles continues it answers this question.
The problem is that advocates are not neutral, as scientists are supposed to be. ‘Science becomes linked to particular positions, and this gets to the whole politicization of science,’ ” said Betsill.
NGOs are advocates. They’re activists. They’re not neutral parties.
The scientists hired or engaged by advocate groups are likely going to give those groups the “findings” that they’re after, just as consultants hired by corporations might, a condition that advocate groups often like to point out. Hypocritical? Yes, but that’s just how the dance between these two parties rolls.
So, the next time you read “scientific findings” issued by Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Corporate Accountability International, or any of countless other advocate organizations, please consider the source of their findings and question their accountability. These partisan groups have a position, an organization, and employees as well as other overhead to maintain. Their reason for being is not to present objectively-based arguments.
Is the Occupy Wall Street movement actually one big temper tantrum?
If you believe the thoughts of Noreen Malone, an assistant editor of New York Magazine, given today in a Daily Ticker video interview at Yahoo! Finance, then you may conclude that it is.
Now, Noreen doesn’t actually say that the movement is a temper tantrum. But the way she characterizes the movement leads me to believe that it is.
Below is the interview video.
At about minute 2:20, Noreen says that she believes the OWS demonstrators are showing discontent because in growing up they “checked all the boxes,” went to college, and expected a “good, solid job” to be available to them when they graduated.
Huh?
If that’s the truth, and of course this is only Noreen’s opinion, then what we are really seeing is one big, media-fed, crowd-sourced temper tantrum. And if this is true, then the OWS demonstrators need to get over themselves. I offer that advice from personal experience.
After graduating college, in an economic period that was much worse than the one we now experience, I had a similar attitude. I thought the world owed me a good job. I maintained that attitude for about my first five post-college years, until I met a woman who “smacked it out of me.” She reached me with the message that the world doesn’t owe me, or anyone else, a good job, a living, food, shelter, health care, or anything else.
Through a series of “discussions” with her, I finally realized, perhaps late in life but better late than never, that my life is what I make it. My life would be what I would make it based on my ability to deal with the conditions and situations I would encounter in life.
Perhaps if colleges started impressing this fact upon students and taught them how to make “lemonade out of lemons,” everyone, including the demonstrators themselves, would be a lot better off.
A few days ago I was discussing the precautionary principle with a colleague. It’s that conversation which inspires this post. With reference to a particular case of irregular competition, we talked about the capriciousness of the precautionary principle and its lack of certainty, and how those characteristics of confusion make it a tool tailor-made for activist (irregular competitor) application in engagements against companies. For those readers who aren’t familiar with the concept of the precautionary principle, I’ll use the Wikipedia definition of the precautionary principle to explain further.
The precautionary principle or precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.
What this definition implies is that, say for example, if a business wants to introduce a new product, then when the precautionary principle is imposed upon that business either by activists or via governmental authority it becomes necessary for that business to prove beyond a doubt that the product will not be harmful to anyone or anything under any circumstances. Proving a negative under any and all circumstances is, of course, impossible. And requiring a company to do so is akin to placing a basic judicial tenet on its head and forcing a defendant to prove that he/she is not guilty.
The precautionary principle, as defined above, is often the version that American activists invoke when there is even the slightest doubt, a doubt often created by those activists themselves, about an action to be taken by a business. In opposition to the proposed action by the business, the activist will deploy their scientists who say that the action may be harmful and to be “100% safe” the company’s proposed action should be prohibited. This tactic achieves the lack of scientific consensus, regardless of whether the activist’s scientists are correct or not, so necessary for the above definition of the precautionary principle to kick in. And how hard is that? To create the “absence of scientific consensus”?
As we all know, there is no “100% safe” in anything and to expect such is unreasonable and potentially harmful to economic progress. Yet, because of the recent social uptake of the precautionary principle, for whatever reason, it appears to be something that will be with us into the near future. It will be something that business will need to deal with on an ongoing basis. So, if we have to have this principle, couldn’t we – shouldn’t we – have at least a more reasonable interpretation of it? (I know the activists out there will say “No,” or rather shout “NO,” because the word “reason” is often absent from their lexicon. And from their professional perspective I understand why.) Finding that more reasonable interpretation may be as simple as taking a “walk across the pond.”
The government of
Continue reading Toward a More Reasonable Precautionary Principle
Evgeny Morozov said in his book “Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom” that although the Internet can be used for organizing activism, the virtual connections made in that environment lack depth; a human depth that is required to drive the emotions which drive activism. He maintains that to drive activism there still needs to be “analog” connections made on an interpersonal basis and that digi-inspired causes tend to be more shallow and non-focused.
Human relations drive activism, not, as some have observed, Facebook. Perhaps that’s why there are the questions about non-focused objectives on the part of Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.
The recent anti-capitalism demonstrations by Occupy Wall Street (whoever they may actually be) show a significant strategic weakness as compared to a similar business protest group which debuted earlier this year, US Uncut.
US Uncut, which was modeled after UK Uncut, is anti-capitalist in nature, but strategically they set the target of their protest as specific corporations, e.g. Bank of America among others. Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, set the target of their protest, I think, as just capitalism in general. (I say “I think” because their strategy was largely indiscernible.)
Audiences have more trouble relating to general concepts than they do with specifics, and it is in that way that US Uncut may be more strategically successful than Occupy Wall Street.
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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