The Rocket Science of Ethics

By George Anderson


Marc Lampe is all business when it comes to a discussion about ethics.


“More than ever before, unethical behavior has the potential to do tremendous harm to our world and humanity,” the professor of ethics at the University San Diego’s School of Business Administration told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “We need to find new ways to explain our conduct.”


The new way of explaining human conduct will require ethics to move from common philosophical discussions to a scientific analysis of the subject.


“By better understanding, for example, the evolutionary reasons and neurological processes involved in self-deception and other human traits that lead to unethical behavior, we can develop more effective techniques for educating to improve individual ethical behavior,” he said.


Prof. Lampe calls his work “Applied Evolutionary Neuro Ethics.” It attempts to combine research from fields including psychology, biology, anthropology and sociology to get at the why behind human behavior.


The need for his work is clear, says Prof. Lampe.


“I think we have reached a point where ethics in business is critical. We have seen companies with ethical problems like WorldCom and Enron that have been devastated by it and investors and employees really harmed by the actions of a few executives. If a couple of people in Enron can make small decisions that injure the company, we have to take it seriously. If unethical behavior starts to snowball and everybody rationalizes that ‘everyone does it,’ we’re in big trouble.”


Prof. Lampe wants the students in his classes to come away with five key understandings when it comes to ethical issues:


  1. Ethics is like rocket science. It isn’t easy and doing the right thing can often be a struggle.

  2. The more vested your interest, the more likely you are to make bad ethical decisions.

  3. People can rationalize almost anything when it serves their interest.

  4. Decisions affect others. Understand how your ethics impact other people.

  5. Making ethical decisions is easier when you have people you can trust to help you decide what is the right thing to do.

Moderator’s Comment: What aspect of the work being done by Marc Lampe do you find most interesting and what implications does it have for managers in
the retailing and related businesses?

George Anderson – Moderator

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

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Ben Ball
Ben Ball
18 years ago

Perhaps Immanuel Kant might be more accurately credited with “creative adaptation” as the source of the sentiment contained in his “categorical imperative” is most often cited as the Sermon on the Mount as told in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Seven, Verse 12 in the Christian Bible.

Once again, full disclosure. I am NOT Biblical scholar enough to recall this detail on my own. But I was able to confirm a vague recollection through Wikipedia. Thanks, Google.

Clay Boatright
Clay Boatright
18 years ago

The fact that supposedly intelligent people view ethics as difficult as rocket science, is itself indicative of a problem. Any 8 year-old knows that it takes more effort to deceive than to be honest. You may not like the outcome of honesty, but it ain’t that tough.

Warren Thayer
Warren Thayer
18 years ago

I can think of six ways to make this a terrific skit for Saturday Night Live.

Bill Bittner
Bill Bittner
18 years ago

Ethics is always an excellent topic for business discussion and it seems that Professor Lampe has rightly recognized how difficult it is to both define and practice. Gordon Gekko would have us all pursuing greed as the ethical basis of a capitalistic system. But even Henry Ford realized if he did not return some of the profits from the assembly line that there would not be anyone able to afford his cars. The best managers are the ones who can keep the corporate goals aligned with the individual motivators whether they are monetary, recognition, or camaraderie. Some people need the money, either because of life circumstances or because that is how they measure their own success. Some people need recognition and get a sense of reward from awards presented by management and their coworkers. Finally, some people need the sense of camaraderie that comes from being part of a “winning team.” Their motivation comes from the team’s success.

As a manager, you must understand what drives each individual and use that factor as the way to keep them on-target. Is this “manipulation” ethical? Is it ethical to give one person a higher salary and another person a gold watch? Is it ethical to have a surprise birthday break for someone you would probably never talk to outside of work because you know they are a good contributor to the team? Where should the line be drawn between the business and the personal relationships we have at work?

There is no one answer to the question of ethics. I guess the popular term is “situational ethics.” There are always circumstances for lying. To avoid hurting someone’s feelings or prevent a confrontation, we have all faced the need to tell a lie. Was that ethical?

The danger is that because there is no clear answer, ethics are left up to individual interpretation. This is where “actions speak louder than words.” Management can make all the public speeches in the world about ethics, but if they tell subordinates to “make the numbers any way you can” then they have gone too far. The manager has to be ready to accept bad news, be willing to act upon it, and find a way out when the unexpected occurs without manipulating the reporting systems.

Bill Clarke
Bill Clarke
18 years ago

The definition of ethics is a set of rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the conduct of the members of a profession. There is no rocket science about ethics, either you conduct yourself ethically or you don’t. No need to take it to a higher philosophical level. Teach the students to use the Golden Rule as they advance in their careers. If they can remember to treat everybody the way they like to be treated, then they will never have to worry about the impact of their decisions. Keep ethics simple. Do the right thing.

Gary Joyner
Gary Joyner
18 years ago

It seems that the only thing that exceeds a person’s ability to do unethical things is their ability to rationalize their lack of ethics. Corporations have become slaves to a speculative securities market that values short-term tactics rather than long term strategies, which in turn often results in situational ethics being applied. What we’re talking about is rationalization of what certain individuals institutional “white lies” that have a much heavier impact that that term implies. And a lack of perspective that acknowledges lying to one’s self.

Henry Ford has it right — hitting the number is important, but if in your short term tactics, you have compromised your longer term market, you eventually fail. Who will be left to purchase your products and services when you have either broken them in the stock market or right-sized or outsourced them out of your demographic.

Ethics is much more than not cooking the books, it is also being responsible to those who have supported your growth by either working for your company or investing in your company. And both of those groups deserve some loyalty beyond the ruthless bottom line pursuit at any cost that characterizes so much of the American corporate business model.

M. Jericho Banks PhD
M. Jericho Banks PhD
18 years ago

Here are my five key understandings of ethics:

1. Ethics isn’t anything at all like rocket science. It’s easy, because nearly all of us know what’s right.

2. The more vested your interest, the more important that you operate ethically.

3. People must understand and be reminded of what “rationalization” means.

4. Decisions affect you, your reputation, and your future. Understand how your ethics affect your decisions.

5. Making ethical decisions is easier when you depend on truth rather than on people.

Would everyone who has burned themselves on a hot stove after being warned about it please raise your scarred hands? My experience was in ’54 on a gas range that had a small, exposed pilot light located on the top of the range among the burners. It looked like one of those little white “Barbie tables” that come with delivery pizza. Same size and shape, but metal and protecting a small blue flame that I ignored or didn’t understand. I touched the top of the flame protector and carry the scar to this day.

Here’s the psychology: We don’t usually do the right thing because it’s right, but because we’ve previously been burned by doing the wrong thing. With regard to ethics, we generally aren’t ethical because it’s right, but because we’ve been caught doing the wrong thing. Enlightened self-interest all the way.

Our problem is not lack of ethics. Instead, it’s a failure to say something about unethical behavior when we see it. We let things slide. We go along to get along. We want friends so badly that we tolerate unethical behavior. We don’t want to be called “judgmental.” We fail to stop malicious gossip when we hear it. We don’t take responsibility for our employers’ actions because we’re just following orders.

The issue is not ethics, but in our failure to figuratively throw a flag when we spot unethical behavior.

Bernice Hurst
Bernice Hurst
18 years ago

Ethics is like rocket science in that it obviously does not come naturally to many people and therefore needs time, effort, concentration and willingness to make it work. All that makes it hard.

Bill Bishop
Bill Bishop
18 years ago

It’s all refreshingly interesting, but what caught my attention was the relationship between a person’s commitment to a particular interest in the likelihood of unethical behavior, i.e., the more committed, the more likely it becomes that you’ll behave unethically in the interest of that cause.

On the one hand, the implication for managers in the intense, fast-moving retail business is negative in that the need to make things happen in a tough situation is likely to increase unethical behavior.

On the other hand, his appeal to greater awareness of the impact of what we do on others in the workplace is positive and resonates with a lot of what’s being learned in the current Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council study on improving store management effectiveness. This is still a “people” business.

Matt Werhner
Matt Werhner
18 years ago

In a time where the line between right and wrong is becoming increasingly blurred, it is important for companies to re-examine ethical standards. I believe companies are rewarded for holding to high ethical standards and acting in accordance with those standards. Prof. Lampe’s work is commendable. Please don’t make it too complicated.

Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
18 years ago

There were antecedents well predating the Sermon on the Mount. As Wikipedia says, “similar injunctions can be found in virtually all cultures and societies.” And Kant wasn’t referring to how you might like to be treated yourself, but what would be the global effect on society. This more closely aligns with outcome based ethics than does the golden rule.

Gene Hoffman
Gene Hoffman
18 years ago

The sage responses above remind me

of this verse by Willaim Wordsworth,

“One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the all the sages can.”

Ben Ball
Ben Ball
18 years ago

Like several other commentators, I gravitated to the professor’s posits regarding “vested interest.” One of the very first entries in a mishmash of musings that I refer to as my “Miscellaneous Maniacal Ramblings” is called “Ben Ball’s theory of greatest vested interest.” This theorem simply states that the responsibility for getting anything done will ultimately fall to the person (or group) with the greatest vested interest in the result. It is a theory that has proven correct throughout my life and career.

I hadn’t considered varied definitions of “vested interest” until reading Bill Bishop’s comment above. Bill raises the question as to whether managers “commitment to an interest” will necessarily lead to unethical behavior. I think the extension of that question is “should we therefore avoid committing managers to outcomes?”

Management theory typically views commitment as a good thing — a logical result of our efforts to motivate managers effectively. And in most cases I would argue that is correct. Perhaps where the ethical issues begin is when the degree of “vested interest” becomes too personalized or the penalties for failure too severe. (e.g. I will do things to avoid harm to my family that I would not do to avoid missing a quarterly budget number.)

But there is still an unexplained element of why different people choose different paths to achieve the same interest. For example: I usually wound up writing the group projects in college because I had a higher vested interest in getting a good grade than my fraternity brothers. But I was not so vested as to cheat for the grade, even though opportunities were available. Others took the easy way out. Now if our mutual “vested interest” was a good grade, why the difference in behavior? It seems to me this is where we revert from the science to the philosophy…i.e. what values were instilled in us and how?

This has turned into a “maniacal rambling redux.” but in the interest of full disclosure I must state that the inspiration for my theory was my grandfather “Pop Flynn.” He’s also the reason I didn’t cheat. Thanks, Pop.

Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
18 years ago

Ethics is an attempt to answer the question of how “ought” we to behave, and it is a complex and difficult topic. For business purposes, predictability of behavior is crucial. If people can’t predict how you will behave, and rely on that, they will simply avoid doing business with you in the future.

Ethical systems are divided into two broad groups: rules based (deontological) and outcome based (teleological.) I know of no one who doesn’t use a mix of the two. To be totally consistent here would be tragic.

Educated, more intellectual types, tend to favor outcome based ethics, because they believe they can understand the role of various factors in leading to this or that result, which they may judge as desirable (or not.) The Achilles heel of this ethical approach is that it requires foreseeing what the outcome will be, and the reality is that we are all reasonably poor prophets. That is, we are not nearly as good at assessing potential outcomes as our egos might think.

Rules based ethical systems are a lot more efficient for everyday rule making. No need to think through all the consequences, simply apply the rule and move on. The problem here is, where does the rule come from? Is it based on infinite wisdom and knowledge of potential outcomes, simply an agreement amongst a social group (large or small) or something you have resolved for yourself?

One of the most brilliant minds in western thought, Immanuel Kant, formulated a “categorical imperative” as a response to the ethical question. That is, I should behave in such a manner that I would desire that all other people would behave in the same manner, in the same circumstances. You can think of it as a rule about outcomes, blending the two systems.

As a pragmatist, I favor always bearing in mind that if people can’t rely on me now, they won’t rely on me in the future.

Mark Lilien
Mark Lilien
18 years ago

Corporate culture is set by behavioral examples (not words) from those at the top. If the leadership makes ethical standards clear, acts consistently with those standards, and measures everyone using those standards, they’ll get the desired behavior. Many retailers don’t make their standards clear or simply have no reasonable method of measuring everyone using those standards. Some retailers make it clear that ethics dealing with customers or the government have one standard, but ethics dealing with the company or the boss have another.