It always hurts when organizations lie.

Lying hurts the organization, the employees, the organization’s partners, the organization’s prospects, and most importantly, lying hurts the organization’s constituents.

When an organization does something that sparks a”‘reputation crisis”, the absolute worst way to respond is to lie.

As the reputation crisis of the Susan J. Komen Foundation continues, everyone is watching how Komen’s corporate “explanation” is unfolding. Well, it’s actually not unfolding, it’s imploding and exploding at the same time. Each iteration of their explanation is more desperate and more tone deaf than the last, as they embellish their lies.

Some of their “explanations” are so far away from their original claims that you can feel sure that they are on-the-spot fabrications. But I digress.

It’s not the poor quality of the lying, but the fact that Komen continues to lie at all, that is hurting the organization and damaging its reputation.

In a reputation crisis, it never ever helps to lie. Here’s why:

10 Reasons Why The Komen Foundation Should Stop Lying

1. When your organization lies, the lies offend the intelligence of your constituents.

“Whaddya think, we’re stupid? ” they ask. Your audience can read the leaked memos in The Atlantic or the NYT, they can read the reports of people and organizations who’ve been lobbying you to go anti-choice for years, and they can read the public statements of your executives.

Your constituents and the larger audience can actually see the lies, right there in print. To assume they won’t see you contradict yourself treats them as stupid.

2. When your organization lies, it disrespects your constituents’ relationships with you.

By lying, you are telling your constituents that they are not important enough, that your relationship with them is not important enough, and their support is not important enough, to be respected with the truth.

3. When your organization lies, it’s proof positive that your organization is itself profoundly stupid.

What, you can’t find the real explanation for your own behavior? The real criteria for your own decisions? The real values that shape your priorities? If you can’t explain your behavior with a real understanding of their sources, you’re a stupid (as in, dumb) organization.

4. When your organization lies, it makes people wonder what else you’re lying about.

Organizations that lie don’t do it once and a while, just on special occasions. They do it over and over. It’s only a matter of time before your other lies are uncovered.

5.. When your organization lies, it reinforces all the emotional dynamics of denial.

You can’t avoid the anxiety, guilt, embarrassment or shame that are part and parcel of lies. Even if you think no one else sees the lies (see #1, above), you know you’re lying. That eats away at whatever’s left of your organization’s heart, and corrodes what’s left of your integrity.

6. When your organization lies, the activity devoted to lying distracts you from more effective damage control.

You’re too busy lying to acknowledge the pain you’re causing. Even if you are, for a time, unwilling to admit the breadth of your responsibility, the very least you can do is say you’re sorry to the people you’re hurting. But, while you’re busy lying to Andrea Mitchell, you’re wasting the very opportunity you could use to apologize to your constituents.

7. When your organization lies, it embarrasses your employees.

Your employees know the truth. Do you want them all to resign in protest, or even worse, to continue working for a company they can no longer respect? When employees can’t respect your organization, they won’t do anything more than they must. That’s a great way to push your organization to fail.

8. When your organization lies, you block your organization off from any opportunity to learn from the initial mistake.

You and your organization get wrapped up in ‘cognitive distortion’. You don’t hear the truth about others’ reactions to your betrayal, so you miss chances to hear helpful feedback. You don’t learn about your constituents and their concerns, you don’t learn how to handle a crisis, and you won’t learn about yourselves.

9. When your organization lies, your leaders look incompetent.

Because they are.

10. When your organization lies, it makes it hard for you ever to be forgiven, by anyone.

Only those with super-human spirituality can easily rise above a crushing blow of betrayal (see #2, above) to forgive you and give your organization another chance. The rest of your constituents will take a long time to come around, if ever. And in the meantime, they won’t be supporting you.

Finally, there’s a bonus reason why your organization should stop lying.

Bonus Reason #11. When your organization lies, it makes it hard for anyone to ever trust your organization again.

Even if your organization reverses the decision that caused exposed the problem in the first place,

Nothing gets fixed until you tell the truth, to your constituents and to yourselves.

images:
Waling into walls, on Flickr. Some rights reserved by marc dalio
Life’s a bitch, on Flickr. Some rights reserved by pfala

When it comes to discriminating against women, you’d think that only sexist organizations would be involved.   But did you ever imagine that meritocracies would encourage managers to discriminate against women?

Research conducted by Emilio Castilla and Stephen Benard, published last year in Administrative Science Quarterly, documents a disturbing dynamic that the authors call “The Paradox Of Meritocracy”. In their rigorous set of empirical studies, they found that

When an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. (p 543)

Although these meritocratic organizations aren’t explicitly encouraging managers to discriminate, they seem to be inadvertently freeing managers to demonstrate gender bias when they award raises and bonuses.

This discovery is distressing. The Paradox of Meritocracy casts doubt on a range of efforts that organizations are using to try to reduce gender discrimination.

Meritocracies and Why We Love Them

We love meritocracies. We love the idea that organizations will link members’ career success to their actual performance.  We love meritocracies because we think that merit is the fairest, most objective way to reward some people (meritorious ones) over others. After all, meritocracies explicitly reject the idea that a member’s gender, race, sexual orientation, age, or other social category should influence how that member is evaluated and rewarded.

Managers, leaders and HR experts especially love meritocracies. They enthusiastically advocate for merit-based systems because they believe that tying rewards to performance evaluation motivates people to work harder. Not only that, but linking merit and pay also increases employees’ satisfaction with their work-reward ratio and with the organization itself.

Linking Organizational Rewards to Individual Merit

As organizations have tried to increase fairness and decrease discrimination, they have emphasized practices that create a formal link between evidence-based performance evaluations and  promotions / pay increases.

One strategy has been to shift to ‘pay for performance’, where there is an explicit link between performance rating and pay increases. A second strategy has been to decouple the performance evaluation conversation from the salary decision, so that a manager is not unintentionally thinking about both of these when considering a candidate.

Unfortunately, merit-based rewards in organizations don’t seem to do what we’ve hoped.

Merit Pay Does Not Reduce Gender-based Pay Discrimination.

Despite the intent behind them, there is a consistent problem with merit-based practices: Women and minority men in the same organization, in the same job, and with the same supervisor, are found to receive lower salary increases than white men, even after same performance evaluation score (Castilla 2008).

Let me repeat that: It has been empirically demonstrated that:

Women and minority men in the same organization, in the same job, and with the same supervisor, received lower salary increases than white men, even after same scores on their performance evaluations (Castilla 2008).

Research on merit-based pay practices has consistently demonstrated that merit-based practices do not achieve gender- or race-neutral outcomes.

Is it the practices themselves, or something else that allows for bias? In their research, Castilla and Benard shifted focus to consider the role of organizational context. They aimed to compare what happens in organizations that strive to be meritocratic versus those that do not.

Most people would expect that organizations that strive to be meritocratic would do better at reducing gender-based pay gaps. But what Castilla and Benard discovered was exactly the opposite.

Highlighting the organization’s commitment to being meritocratic actually made gender-based pay discrimination worse.

The question is — why? Why do these merit oriented practices, meant to increase fairness, end up increasing discrimination?

The Role of The Organization in Supporting Biased Actions by Individuals

Castilla and Banard propose that there is something about the organization’s intent to focus on merit that leads organization members not to focus on merit.  Their interpretation is, essentially, that when people are primed or reminded to feel unbiased, fair or objective by the organization itself, they feel freed to express the bias that they personally hold.

“Managers embedded in meritocratic contexts may experience higher confidence that their decisions are impartial, leading them to feel less motivated or to invest less effort in avoiding the application of stereotypes.” (p. 568)

“Moral Credentialing”

Castilla and Benard propose that one mechanism that explains the paradox of meritocracy is “moral credentials”. When people have established their moral credential as an unbiased person, they are more prone to express biased attitudes. It’s as though they’ve already proven to themselves – and others- that they aren’t unbiased.  However, when these supposedly unbiased people act, they reveal real bias and discriminate against others. (Monin & Miller, 2001)

In addition to the straightforward credentialing mechanism that Castilla & Benard suggest, there are two other mechanisms that work in similar ways that also might be letting managers feel free to express bias in their decisions.

Moral Credentialing by Association  

The ‘My Best Friend is X’ Effect. We know that individuals often feel that they have achieved their ‘I’m not prejudiced‘ bona fides by claiming to have relationships with the (potential) target group of discrimination. Some individuals even claim that they are not discriminatory (e.g., not racist, not sexist) because they obviously have a close association with specific members of the target group.

I like to call this the “My Best Friend is X” effect, after the most common statement people make to claim Moral Credential by Association.

Vicarious Moral Credentialing

We give ourselves moral credentials for being unbiased not only through actual relationships with others, but also through vicarious relationships with others. A study just published by Maryam Kouchaki demonstrates that individuals license or credential themselves vicariously, through identification with others who have “established non-prejudiced credentials”. Both the mechanism of association and the mechanism of identification might give managers the cover of moral credentials.

Do Organizations Provide Managers with “Vicarious Moral Credentialing”?

The idea of moral credentials influencing behavior has previously only been discussed as an individual phenomenon– something that a person does for him- or herself.

What’s new with the Paradox of Meritocracy studies is the idea that the organization itself can provide a halo of moral credentials for its managers.

The managers don’t need to think of themselves as being unbiased — they just have to think of their organization as unbiased or meritocratic. Then, the organization creates a halo for managers through three slightly different but distinct psychological tricks, when managers can:

1. Think of their organization as being meritocratic and thus assume that bias has already been removed,
2. Think that they are meritocratic because they are part of an organization that is meritocratic, and
3. Think that they are like their organization, so that if it’s meritocratic, so are they.

In all three cases, managers no longer have any motivation to avoid applying biased stereotypes or to monitor their own expressions of bias. They are off the hook.

What can organizations do about the paradox of meritocracy?

Castilla and Benard suggest that organizations can try to counter the paradoxical dynamics of meritocracy by (1) increasing transparency around evaluations and salaries, (2) by increasing accountability, and (3) by reducing managerial discretion. While I’m not a fan of reducing discretion, it makes sense to have managers be more accountable for their decisions about other people’s merit and the appropriate award for that merit.

1. Organizations should report out historical patterns of evaluation and pay increase data, for each individual manager.

Managers need to become more accountable for knowing and monitoring their own personal patterns of behavior regarding evaluating and rewarding others. Organizations can help individuals to hold themselves accountable by providing each manager with an historical summary and analysis of pay and evaluation decisions, broken out by gender, race and other diversity criteria of the persons evaluated. This way, managers can see their decisions over time, and note whether their pattern of behavior is unbiased or not.

2. Organizations can examine pay and promotion practices for design issues that make decision patterns more transparent while evaluations and awards are being made.

I can’t put my fingers on an old and useful study contrasting two methods of evaluating performers and the different effects on decision making, but… The study examined the evaluations of male and female managers, and varied whether the evaluations were made one at a time (i.e., single processing) or in groups (i.e., batch processing).

When people were evaluated one at a time, gender bias was demonstrated more often in the evaluation and reward decision. In contrast, when people were evaluated in groups, discrimination was significantly reduced. The researchers explained that in the ‘batch process’ scenario, decision-makers could actually see their gender bias in action (e.g., they could see that in 6 decisions out of 7, they were favoring the male over the female). In contrast, when decisions were made one at a time, decision managers forgot how often they rewarded a man over a woman. Batch processing might create a useful kind of real-time transparency, letting people see, evaluate and interrupt their own trend of bias.

3. Organizations can teach managers to be more mindful when they evaluate merit and rewards.

By mindful, I mean in the strictest sense, where ‘mindful’ is understood to as being not only active but also analytical about the way that they are processing information– but as seeking out and making novel distinctions. “Mindfulness is expressed in active (versus automatic) information processing, characterized by cognitive differentiation.” (Langer, 1989) What this means is that managers need triggers that interrupt automatic thinking and that force them to consider their decision criteria critically.

4. Organizations should investigate the degree to which they are actually meritocratic.

Do organizations that are actually meritocratic have managers that consistently make decisions that damage women and minority men? No. So organizations need to be transparent and hold themselves responsible for the effectiveness of programs intended to create a meritocratic organization. Organizations need to display their ‘diversity data’ internally (i.e., be transparent) and monitor to correct any patterns of bias (e.g., hold themselves responsible) in organization-wide decisions. They need to teach managers what it means to be meritocratic, and how to make decision based on merit while excluding irrelevant data. Organizations need to monitor the degree to which their claims of meritocracy map onto the outcomes of supposedly merit-based decisions.

The Paradox of Meritocracy shows that the link between an organization claiming to be a meritocracy and actually being a meritocracy contradicts reality.

Meritocracies hurt women because claims that decisions are based on merit can hide decisions that are gender-biased.

These claims of being non-sexist, non-racist, and non-discriminatory are not only false, but they can also increase bias by letting managers think that vigilance is not longer necessary.

The opposite is true –

Any organization claiming to be a meritocracy has to sustain and validate that claim by holding itself and its members accountable for unbiased, merit-based decisions, or risk being hypocritical and inauthentic.

See also:

Want More Women on Tech & TED Panels? Reject Meritocracy and Embrace Curation

References

Castilla, Emilio J., and Benard, Stephen. (2010). “The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55: 543-576.

Monin, B. & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43.

Bradley-Geist, J.C., King, E.B., Skorinko, J., Hebl, M.R., & McKenna, C. (2010). Moral credentialing by association: The importance of choice and relationship closeness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1564-1575.

Kouchaki M, (2011). Vicarious moral licensing: the influence of others’ past moral actions on moral behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4): 702-15.

Also, this discussion focuses on gender-based discrimination because that’s what was directly tested in the study’s experiments. However, the logic holds for other forms of social prejudice, such as prejudices against people of a given race, sexual orientation, gender performance, physical ability, and so on, that have no actual effect on an individual’s performance.

Images:
–  Figure 4, The Paradox of Meritocracy, with updated non-meritocratic condition vs. meritocratic condition, p. 566.
– Stephen Colbert, with his “Best Black friend” Alan, claims moral credentialing by association.
– Nerd Merit Badges from– you guessed it– Nerd Merit Badges

What would you think about an organization that intentionally mislead its potential clients?

– That advertised itself as providing a range of products or services, when in fact it only offered one?

– That presented itself as being here to “help you”, when in reality its sole purpose is to fulfill its own mission, regardless of what you wanted for yourself?

There are many ways that organizations end up being very different from what you’d expect. Sometimes the gap between how they present themselves and what they do is a result of overreaching (e.g., Comcast), or the result of not caring (e.g., United). Sometimes these organizations trumpet their so called values and fail to live up to them (e.g., BP), and sometimes these organizations make basic mistakes (e.g., Target). These gaps are regrettable, and the organizations that make these mistakes usually want to close these gaps.

But what about when organizations want to maintain the gap between how they present themselves and who they really are?

These organizations are built to deceive.

When an organization is Built to Deceive

Marketing and Physical Appearance: Fake expectations

Organizations that are build to deceive craft themselves to look — from the outside — like a certain kind of organization.

They use marketing materials (advertisements, ‘yellow page’ listings, websites) to project an image of themselves that leads potential customers to expect a certain set of services & products. They use their physical locations to mimic how an authentic business of the same type might look (e.g., debt consolidation companies locate their offices near actual banks). Their employees dress to look the part (e. g., ‘debt consolidation services’ workers wear jackets & name badges like bank tellers).

These organizations even choose names that intentionally misrepresent who owns them, who started them, and whose interests they serve (e.g., First National Credit Services).

All of these strategies help to create a set of expectations that will never be fulfilled by the organization.

Customer Interaction: Where deceit is revealed

It’s in the actual service or product they provide, and the tactics that they use to get the customer to buy once they are in the store, that reveals the true intentions of an organization that is built to deceive. These organizations have their employees follow misleading scripts, perform fake tests and evaluations (had you personality tested recently?), offer financial terms that misrepresent costs, and even offer customers factually incorrect information.

Worse, they use pressure tactics to prey on the customers’ emotions, hopes and insecurities.

An organization that is built to deceive is like a Trojan Horse. On the outside, the organization looks like it’s offering you a gift, a rescue, a solution. On the inside, it’s filled with warriors ready to press you into submission.

Why Build to Deceive?

Organizations build to deceive:

• When they believe that their true mission is unappealing.
• When they recognize that their missions are not in the best interests of their clients.
• When they are embarrassed by the techniques they need to use to get customers to buy.
• When they think they can only get customers if they pretend to be what they are not.

Organizations that are build to deceive are not proud of their missions. They are unwilling or unable to sell their mission on it merits– they resort to deceit because they don’t believe they can appeal to truth.

Members & Employees of Organizations that are Built to Deceive

An organization that is Built to Deceive:

• Has employees who are willing to accept a lie as the premise of their organization’s identity
• Has employees who accept that their work for the company will hurt some customers
• Has employees who don’t believe that customers should be treated with respect
• Has employees that cannot be completely proud of their work
• Has employees that are willing to act unethically in order to sell their product

An Organizational Type that is Built to Deceive

You might be wondering, what kinds of organizations (or industries) are built to deceive?   Organizations that are built to deceive include payday ‘loan’ centers, ‘rent to own’ furniture stores, debt consolidation ‘services’, and any business that preys on the ignorance and desperation of potential customers.

The very worst of these are organizations known as “Crisis Pregnancy Centers”.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are one of the most common forms of intentionally inauthentic organizations. They are built to deceive the women and the communities they supposedly serve.  (Here is a list of these tactics, prepared by Public Eye.org, drawn from a commonly used CPC manual.)

CPCs advertise themselves using languages of care, hope and empowerment. They have names that suggest a full range of care options, offered in a consultative environment where the client has the opportunity to decide for herself. CPCs locate themselves next to, in the same building as, and across the street from authentic reproductive health care centers as often as they can. They attempt to look feminine, and pleasantly clinical, without any design elements that might suggest that they are not medical clinics, but are instead religious ministries.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers present themselves as being there to help the girl or woman who is in crisis. “‘Pregnant and Scared? You have options.‘” Only thing is, we won’t share them all with you, Instead, we’ll do our best to pressure you into the ‘decision’ we believe in.”

“Health Care Clinics” or “Ministries”?

CPCs claim to assist women faced with unplanned pregnancies, but they are not legitimate health clinics staffed by licensed healthcare professionals.

Unlike comprehensive health care clinics, they give women medically inaccurate information and pressure them to carry unintended pregnancies to term. These fake clinics often pose as women’s health clinics, but they do not provide abortion services or referrals, and they do not provide balanced information on family planning options like condoms or emergency contraception. For example, a Congressional report prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) in 2006 found that 87% of Crisis Pregnancy Centers provided false or misleading information, in particular making false claims about a relationship between abortion and breast cancer, infertility, or mental illness.

Instead, CPC are a deceitful type of storefront access point for religious organizations that most often have an anti-abortion, anti-sex, and anti-women emphasis. For example, in California, umbrella religious organizations, including Care Net, Heartbeat International, and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, operate 90 percent of CPCs.

With this Trojan Horse approach, clients are promised “pregnancy counseling” writ large but instead are given information about a much narrower (and often religiously saturated) options, using deceptive ‘sales’ practices and emotional manipulation.

In a few better cases, these crisis pregnancy clinics offer prenatal medical care, adoption agency referrals, scholarship resources, and other forms of support for women who want to continue their pregnancies. While they intentionally fail to provide information about preventing pregnancy, preventing sexually-transmitted diseases, (contraception), or terminating pregnancy, they decline to pressure women.

These honest clinics are not only few and far between. Even worse, these honest pregnancy centers are also indistinguishable from fake medical centers with an intentionally deceitful agenda.

Truth In Advertising

Some municipalities have adopted or have introduced legislation designed to require CPCs to disclose the true nature of their organizations. For example, The City of Baltimore adopted legislation to require pregnancy counseling clinics that do not provide abortion counseling or services to post signs indicating that policy.  In New York City, proposed legislation would require the centers to disclose to clients that they do not provide abortion services or contraceptive devices, or make referrals to organizations that do. Centers that don’t have licensed medical providers on-site would also have to disclose this information. The legislation also would require the centers to keep clients’ personal information confidential.  (Wall Street Journal)

While some would claim that CPC’s self-promotion efforts are “free speech”, the Supreme Court has ruled that advertising is not “free speech”. These regulations focus on requiring a minimal level of accuracy in advertising. This legislation does not require that faith-based CPCs provide abortion or birth control info over their religious objections. (Change.org)

Why can’t organizations tell the truth about who they are?

There are plenty of women who, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, would welcome some spiritual, social and medical support to continue these pregnancies, to offer their babies for adoption or to become single mothers with childcare, eduction and employment opportunities.

As one commenter noted (on a NARAL site who’s address I can’t find):

You would think that most of these clinics would proudly trumpet the fact that they are not abortion providers. The fact that they are so resistant to this disclosure speaks volumes about their willingness to deceive their patients for their own ideological purposes.

If these organizations truly believed in their missions, and believed in the righteousness of their missions, they would not need to hide their missions from their potential customers. Instead, they would advertise their missions and their values to draw customers to them honestly.

Claiming their true and honest identity might inspire these organizations to serve women and communities in new and more transparent ways that would make their missions more powerful.

To my mind, an organization can’t claim to be promoting a high moral purpose when it has to use deceit to do it. I’d like to rename the entire organizational type. Instead of calling them “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” we could call them “Maternal Ministries“.

If Maternal Ministries lived up to this more aspirational, more accurate name for who they are or could be, they might be inspired to share their religious missions in an honest, confident, compelling way. Women would feel invited to consider their own moral and/or spiritual beliefs when confronted with reproductive health care concerns. And, women could be in charge of their lives using accurate information, professional health care services, and supportive personal guidance.

Organizations that are Build to Deceive are hiding a fundamental truth about themselves. Their commitment to sustaining these lies keeps them from exploring how they can more fully and more authentically serve what they claim are their missions. In the end, who they really deceive are themselves.

See also:
Faking an Identity: How Inauthentic Organizations Dress Up
Use Real Authenticity to Establish Fake Authenticity: Sarah Palin shows organizations how
Trojan Horse image from PlayingMantis.com

Isn’t Corporate Work-Life policy great? Here we have a progressive set of programs and strategies that:

• Acknowledge that every employee is more than a worker,
• Recognize that she or he is also a ‘whole person’ with a life that extends outside the workplace, and
• Demonstrate that employees’ full lives should be respected and maybe even facilitated by the organization.

Organizations that promote work-life policies get lots of reputational good will. For potential employees, work-life policies make some organizations ‘better places to work”. Organizations find work-life policies and programs are often correlated with higher employee performance, higher voluntary effort, and stronger financial returns.

Organizational work-life policies seem like a win-win. Organizations demonstrate respect for their employees’ full lives, and employees in turn respond positively towards the organization that is allowing them to manage the full breadth of their life’s activities.

But what if this view of Work-Life policy is more spin than reality? What if corporate work-life policies also work against employees and against employees’ best interests?

Organizations and employees/members are not equal partners in the work-life conversation.

In reality, organizations wield virtually all the power in the relationship. Organizations set the priorities and parameters that control work-life policy. Organizations offer (and take away) programs that are designed more to benefit the organization than to benefit any individual.

Even the way that we talk about work-life policies and initiatives is controlled by work organizations. Work-Life advocates appeal to corporate leaders’ and their profit motives to sell corporations on the idea of work-life policies. Seldom do corporations seek out leaders who are advocating for the importance of whole and meaningful lives, of which work is only a part.

In the conversation about Work-Life, there are three unchallenged assumptions:

1. “Work” always comes first.

Think it’s a coincidence that the phrase is Work-Life? That “work” is something separate from “life”, and that “Life” comes as the afterthought and not the focus?

With corporate work-life policies, the priority is always making sure that work happens.

Here’s a case in point: The recent article on HBR’s blog: Why Companies Should Insist Employees Take Naps.

If encouraging employees to take a half hour nap means they can be two or three times as productive over the subsequent three hours late in the day — and far more emotionally resilient — the value is crystal clear. It’s a win-win and a great investment.

Why are employees so tired that they need naps? What happens with the extra energy recovered by a nap? Better work. At work. For the business. And the health, sanity and life balance of the employee who napped? A nice afterthought.

2. Work-Life problems are the employees’ fault, and it’s the employees’ responsibility to fix them.

When an employee needs a day off to attend to a sick child, or can’t make a last minute weekend work session because she’s signed up for a triathlon, whose fault is it that these ‘life’ issues conflict with work demands?

Not only are these conflicts the individual’s fault, but they are also the individual’s problem to deal with. The individual (not the organization) has to find a way to “manage” these competing demands.

But if you think about it, it’s the organizations that created these issues in the first place. It’s organizations that design their work systems, workplaces, and work expectations that make it next-to-impossible for most new mothers to breast-feed their infants. It’s organizations that set their demands so high that people work 12 hour days without time for some physical exercise.

3. Work-life programs are controlled by the organization.

When it comes to managing the relationship between the demands of the organization and the demands of engaged full human lives, the organization holds all the power. Sure, you can ask for a reduced schedule while your partner goes through chemo, or to schedule your dinner break immediately after sundown during Ramadan, but if you lose you managers good opinion of your job commitment as a result, tough. And, if you lose your job over it, too bad.

Even the most forward thinking companies, work-life pioneers like SAS, can be fairly described as designing work-life policies with the ultimate goal of making work, and not “life” easier.

Let’s Take Charge of the Work-Life Policy Conversation

Once we recognize these three dangerous assumptions built into work-life policy, how can we change the conversation?

Work-Life advocates inside corporations, in academia, and in consulting, need to recognize these three assumptions and resist letting them influence the conversation.

Obviously, I’m not going to recommend that we do away with work-life policy. We need to continue to pressure and persuade organizations to expand their work-life policies and build-in more work-life flexibility. We also want to continue to press for the understanding that work-life flexibility approaches are part of an organization’s overall competitive strategy.

Let’s make sure we don’t fall over backwards thanking organizations for fixing problems that they actually caused. Let’s not be overly grateful when they take small steps forward. Let’s not thank them for being altruistic when so many organizations are really just being instrumental. If their goal really is to make sure that more and better work gets done, fine. Let’s just be clear about that.

And, let’s not treat corporations that introduce work-life policy as though they are ‘the good guys’ for being socially progressive, when they are also the bad guys who have really just begun making appropriate amends.

We need to keep corporate work-life initiatives in perspective– too many are intended and executed to make things “better” and not to make the relationship between employees and organizations profoundly different.

Organizations may control work-life programs & policies, but we all should take charge of the work life/life work conversation.

Our goal should not be to “alleviate” work-life conflict for employees and members so that “everybody can be more productive”. Our goals should go beyond creating the flexibility that allows an employee to take time out to pray or to attend a child’s school play. Our goal should be to redesign organizations that respect and accommodate employees full loves. Only when employees can flourish both inside and outside of work can organizations finally flourish.

Image:
The Humans Must Be Controlled, Some rights reserved by jarl Lyng on Flicr

See Also:
Tyson Foods lacks faith in its own identity.
Work-Life Fit is an Enterprise 2.0 Solution
Work-Life Initiatives Are the Foundation of Authentic Organizations

Working The Good Life: SAS Provides Employees With Generous Work Incentives: CBSnews

I’m a supporter of LGBTQx rights and of organizational diversity.

As an individual, I’m not likely to do much to boycott Target in response to Target’s $150,00 contribution to an anti-gay, pro-bigotry gubernatorial candidate.

But, if I were Target’s business customer, business supplier, stakeholder, or other important large stakeholder, I would make a bit deal out of withdrawing my support for Target to protest Target’s anti-gay action.

How do I make sense of these competing beliefs?

These two types of boycotting action have dramatically different effects on the ‘target’s’ bottom line and overall reputation. Damaging an organization’s reputation is more effective at provoking change than trying to hurt their bottom line.

Why Consumer Boycotting is Less Effective

As an individual consumer, my $200 in back to school spending isn’t much… and if I took it from Target, I’d only end up spending it at somewhere perhaps even less socially responsible (no way, Wal-Mart). So, on an individual level, my boycotting doesn’t have much of an impact on Target.

And, gathering up enough consumer to boycott target to make a difference is quite difficult.

Even with Facebook organizing and online petitions, it’s hard to aggregate individual consumers all across the nation and argue that the boycott and not the economy is what’s hurting Target’s same-store revenues.

First, for a ‘call to boycott’ to be effective at mobilizing individual consumers, the situation that prompts the boycott has to be visible, severe and egregious.

Despite the way that Target’s political donations have offended me and my P-Flag/LGBTQx community, many in Target’s consumer base are not all that aware of Target’s anti-gay action. And, of those who are aware, not all think that a $150,000 donation to a pro-bigotry candidate is severe enough to provoke a boycott. After all, Target has a long track record of supporting their LGBTQx employees … many consumers might see this action as a one time mistake.

And, even when you get individual customers to support the boycott in principle, once they get to the store they often fail to follow through in practice.

It’s hard to organize a consumer boycott that has an impact on a corporation’s actions. However, the situation is much different for institutional stakeholders.

Why Institutional Boycotting is More Effective

Most people assume that boycott actions taken by institutions, like other businesses, associations, and universities, have more of an impact because they aggregate (and thus maximize) the financial pain inflicted by a boycott.

And, they assume that institutional actions by stakeholders influence organization’s actions by influence the organization’s leadership. For example, shareholder action can pressure the business’s leadership to change policies and procedures.

However, the big reason that Institutional actions are more effective is because these actions are more likely to damage the ‘target’ organization’s public reputation.

As sociologist Brayden King explains,

“Boycotts don’t tend to work in the way people think, by hurting the bottom line”. … The big driver tends to be “the threat to a company’s reputation.” “Boycotts are essentially impression management tools. Actions by large organizations and institutions get more media attention.

For example, Washington University publicly withdrew from the “Target After Hours Shopping Event,” a nationwide program to draw college freshmen firstyears into Target Stores. This action was not only publicized in the Wash U student newspaper and on many blogs, but also the story has (to date) been retweeted over 1,000 times.

And, media outlets took note when three socially responsible investment firms issued a press release about introducing corporate governance resolutions directing Target to re-examine its political contributions and spending processes. While these resolutions will likely influence Target’s long-term behavior, the press release immediately influenced Target’s reputation– for the worse.

Because protests like boycotts matter because they make issues part of the public agenda and consciousness, public actions by institutions that influence damage on the target organization’s reputation are what make a difference.

The fact that institutional action is more effective than individual action doesn’t mean that individual action is useless– it means, instead, that individual consumers should consider activities other than/ in addition to withholding their own purchases.

What Individuals Can Do to Make a Difference

Consider that many Target customers don’t know anything about Target’s support of an anti-gay candidate… Anything you can do to raise public awareness can have an impact on these consumers and their sense of Target’s reputation.

Public actions to raise awareness that you might consider:

• Create an in-store protest. (see this great video of a protest inside a Target, at Queerty.com.) Remember, you have no right to free speech on private property– and inside the store is private property– as long as you respect their property and leave when asked, you can still create a bit of a ruckus.
• Create an outside-of-store protest.
• Picket in front of a Target store.
• Put fliers on cars parked in Target’s lot.
• Place signs on the road up to the Target entrance.
• Picket at Target-sponsored events.
• Send letters and photos to your town newspaper.
• Write about Target on your blog.
• Wear a pro-marriage equality T Shirt as you shop in Wal-Mart or Staples

If your organization has an opportunity to work with Target, use that opportunity for your own activism.

This may mean ending the relationship (like Washington U. did). Or, it could mean using this relationship to influence your Target contacts. (Just be sure to post on your corporate blog: “We’re partnering with Target to help educate Target about LGBT issues and Human Rights”.)

Go ahead and boycott - just don’t imagine that it makes that much of a difference to Target right now. Although individual boycotting may make you feel better, don’t stop there.

Instead, take different kinds of actions, actions that keep the issue in the public’s consciousness and work to damage the “Target” organization’s reputation.

See Also:

Target Misses the Mark on Diversity: Corporate Donation equals Corporate Homophobia
ColorLines: How To Make a Boycott MatterSFWeekly: Target Targeted By Angry S.F. Supervisor Candidates
NYC Protest 8/19/10 – Target Event @ The Standard Hotel (image
The 10 Day Boycott: A S.M.A.R.T. response to Whole Foods’ CEO Mackey

How do you know whether an organization is racist, or sexist, or homophobic?

You can use my 6 Degrees test, or you can use an even simpler method:

You can watch where they put their money.

Target has put its money behind the campaign of a homophobe who’s against same-sex marriage.

This single action casts doubt on all the other positive things that Target has done in support of the LGBTQ community and the supporters of the LGBTQ community.

Target is not “homophobic” like Marriott

Last year in the conversation around California’s anti-gay Proposition 8, The Marriott Corporation was accused of being anti-gay.

Like Target, Marriott has had a long history of demonstrated, structural support for employees and guests in the LGBTQ community.

But, while Marriott shareholders donated money to fight gay rights and support discrimination, Marriott as a corporation did not support discrimination against gays and lesbians. Thus, Marriott cannot be fairly called “anti-gay”. Instead, all of Marriott’s other pro-diversity efforts stand un- contradicted, as demonstration of Marriott’s support.

Target’s Action Directly Supports Homophobia

It’s not Target shareholders, or Target employees, who are donating to the campaign of a homophobe. It is the corporation itself.

This distinction between individuals’ money and corporate money is an important one.

The corporation can’t control or be held responsible for what people do with the money they earn from that corporation– these decisions are up to the individuals. Corporations also can’t force employees to donate their money to one cause or another; nor can they punish an employee for where he or she contributes. These are our individual rights as citizens.

However, any time a corporation puts corporate money-- funds that the organization has earned but has not paid out to individual shareholders, funds that belong to the corporation as an entity – towards the support of a candidate, that organization is directly supporting the views of that candidate.

If your organization gives $100,000 of corporate cash to a candidate who stands against equal rights, guess what?

Target, by using corporate money to support the campaign of a candidate who fights equal rights for all, you have  just supported homophobia.

It really is that simple.

Really.

What about Target’s other, supportive actions?

Sure, folks are going to say “But what about all Target’s other support of the gay community? Shouldn’t that count?”

Certainly, that track record of real support matters. But, if the executives of Target don’t demonstrate their corporation’s claimed values in each and every action — from health insurance to marriage rights — their claims to hold those values aren’t authentic.

A corporation that truly supported it’s LGBTQ employees and customers? A corporation truly dedicated to diversity and inclusion? That corporation would decline to contribute to a homophobic candidate.

If they could not find a pro-diversity candidate with economic policies they also liked, they would sit it out.

It really is that simple.

Really.

See Also:
The Case Against A Marriott Boycott (part 2): Marriott is not Anti-Gay
What Do Sarah Palin, Bill Marriott and John Templeton, Jr. Have In Common?

Is The Daily Show Sexist? Use the 6 Degrees of Sexism Test to judge for yourself

We should all maintain a hearty skepticism about employee engagement.

While it is true that engaged employees contribute more and more willingly to an organization, the contributions of the employee are rarely if ever matched by compensation from the organization.

Last week I had a long talk with a mid-level executive about the rollout of a new employee engagement program in his organization.

(You know it’s gonna be bad when the words “rollout” and “program” appear together. “Rollout” alone is a dead giveaway.)

He told me that he was reluctant to throw his own enthusiasm behind the program, because he wasn’t sure if it was fair to ask the people who work with him to give any more than they were already giving. He just couldn’t get engaged in the engagement program.

This executive isn’t lazy, or lacking in ambition, or afraid of the challenge of employee engagement. He believes that, more often than not, employee engagement is usually a scam.

And he’s right. Employee engagement is a scam.

Defining Employee Engagement

Consider what employee engagement is — Employee engagement is the willingness and ability of employees to contribute to company success, through discretionary effort at work, in the form of extra time, brainpower and energy (Towers Perrin).  “Discretionary effort” is work you’re not obligated to do, because you aren’t paid for doing it.  Engagement is about doing more work than is required, with more enthusiasm, so that the organization achieves its goals.

Employee engagement sounds appealing, when you look at engagement from the organization’s perspective.

If you step away from management’s perspective, though, and look at what’s being asked of employees in many programs, you can see these three reasons why employee engagement is a scam:

1. Employee Engagement Focuses on the “Employee”, not the Person.

Employee engagement programs are designed to make you a more engaged “employee”. They are all about linking your energy, your sense of purpose, and your effort to your role within the organization.

Employee engagement programs are seldom initiated or designed to help you be a better person. What gets developed and directed are the talents, interests and energies that can contribute to the organization, not necessarily the ones that can contribute to your life as a partner, parent, community member, soccer player, or plain ‘ole person.

2. Employee Engagement is about “More Take, Less Give” by the organization.

Organizations want engaged employees for one simple reason: Engaged employees contribute more towards the company’s goals than do less engaged employees.

However, these additional contributions to the organization aren’t matched by commensurate contributions from the organization. Have you heard about the companion program to Employee Engagement, called Organizational Investment?

No? Why not? Oh, right, these programs don’t exist.

Sure, employees can get an ephemeral boost from the flow experience of being engaged at work, they can experience the camaraderie of working with others to surmount challenges, and they can have a sense of pride as they reflect on their role in the organization’s accomplishment. But are those benefits big enough, or substantial enough, to make all the extra discretionary effort worth it for the employee?

3. With Employee Engagement, what you give you can’t take with you.

You know all those contributions you’ve made as an engaged employee? Where do they get you, the employee?

Some employee engagement advocates will argue that employees who are more engaged will move more quickly up the management hierarchy– which is fine if your goal is to move up in that organization. But what if you don’t want a higher level position?

More important, what if you want to leave the organization? What part of all that discretionary effort that you put in has created something you can take with you?

The concern that ‘you can’t take it with you’ is all the more important when you recognize how many different organizations the average person will work for over their lifetime. Consider that, at the younger end of baby boomers, the average person has already worked for over 11 employers– and they’re still 25 yrs from retirement!

Does it really make sense to put that much uncompensated, discretionary effort towards your employer’s success, when you’ll likely change employers many times over your career? Is this still true when you recognize that few of the benefits of that engagement accrue to you and are transportable?

Engagement, in the forms of enthusiasm, faith, commitment, creativity and emotional energy, is an investment in the organization and its work that the individual can never quite recoup.   In the end it’s all about them, the organization, and not about you, the person. You are a means to an end, and increasing your engagement is just another way to maximize profit at the employees’ expense.

If that’s not a scam, what is?

See Also:

Wally Bock’s post, Why Engagement May be the Best Management Voodoo Ever, at Three Star Leadership

[Apologies in advance to my esteemed colleague David Zinger of the Employee Engagement Network, where he and his colleagues work to even things out for employees. ]

Image: one way from vistavision
Cartoon by by Mick Stevens. Published in The New Yorker 5/3/2010.  “I’ve decided to leave the company. Could I have my soul back?” Available at TheNewYorkerStore.

In the past several weeks I’ve been working with two different groups of businesswomen, developing social-media based movements to advance social change in and around the workplace.

Conversations with these women have been intellectually challenging, inspiring and empowering. And they have also been oddly confessional, about a problem that — in my opinion — it’s time to bring out into the open.

A Personal Authenticity Problem

These women can’t be authentic, and can’t be their most powerful, because they are hiding something. These powerful, dynamic, visionary women are hiding their concerns about equality between women and men. These businesswomen are hiding their own feminist identities.

Here’s how the confession the conversation breaks down:

First, we get the fears:

• I don’t want to bring up women’s concerns when talking to potential clients about this business issue.   If I raise it as a women’s issue, or — worse– a mom’s issue, it’s treated as a special interest instead of a business concern.

• I don’t want people to think I’m “only” talking about women’s issues, that I’m a one-trick expert.

• I don’t want clients to think that I’m bringing up women’s situation because as a woman I’m self-interested and/or because I have an axe to grind.

Then, we get the reflections on experience:

• Any time I bring this up as a woman’s issue, it gets marginalized and put in a corner because women are a “special case”.

• Any time I bring this up as a women’s concern, people disregard it and tell me that this isn’t a business issue.

• Anytime I bring it up how this program might work differently (like, not as well) for women, people treat me like I’m whining.

Then, we get The Authenticity Problem:

• I don’t want my silence to be perceived as me not being feminist.

• I don’t want my silence about women’s concerns to be perceived as me not being smart enough to see the gendered dynamics, differences and issues that will prevent this business program from being successful.

• I don’t want my silence to be perceived as collusion.

But silent we are.

After a few (female and male) colleagues have said to me “I didn’t know you were a feminist,” I realized that I’d maybe dialed back my own authenticity a little too much.

And, I’ve wondered: What am I doing that is chronically inauthentic, if this is how some people see me? (Alternative analysis: they don’t know what a feminist looks like.)

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve hedged, myself, on this very blog. Many times. Over and over. Afraid people will dismiss AuthenticOrganizations if/when I drop the f-bomb.

Why is this Inauthenticity a problem?

By not speaking as feminist business people, about women’s issues, gender dynamics, and other intersectional concerns about diversity and inclusion that are important to the business initiatives they lead, none of these women gets to participate in an authentic way.

And, the very initiatives they are advocating are feminist issues — issues where a feminist analysis and the feminist agenda would make a big difference in what goals are set and what kind of social change is achieved. Said one of these businesswomen:

Sexism itself prevents us from covering these topics, even though we know we can’t put this initiative onto already “sexist “organizational cultures, and hope that we will still achieve the change we seek.

Not thinking as feminists, not reminding ourselves to use a feminist lens, actually impedes our effectiveness as business people, as strategists, as consultants, and as leaders.

So, what should we do?

In the decade since its release, the movie Office Space has dramatized the corporate best of work-life dystopia.

In Office Space, we’ve got the Lumberg, the red stapler, the TPS Reports, a bad case of the Mondays, a little flair, and of course, “the Bobs”. Oh, the Bobs, those clueless, bumbling, omniscient consultants from corporate who come in to do a little downsizing.

Such innocent times, when we thought Office Space was a cynical view of the corporate world, and we laughed.

Now, we have another cinematic view of corporate reality: Up In The Air.

Up In The Air is not actually cynical- it’s realistic. Up In The Air shows us something very real about employer-employee relationships. And it’s a reality that’s neither funny nor easy to watch.

Up In The Air: Corporatized Layoffs

If you’ve seen Up In The Air, you’ve seen the latest version of corporatized layoffs. Corporatized layoffs take the humanity out of human resource management.

A lot has changed in the ten years since the Bobs demonstrated state-of-the-art termination practices. Back in Office Space, the Bobs came over form HR to analyze work flow and to hold the managers’ hands while they executed the lay offs of their employees and colleagues.

Now, in Up In The Air, the layoff process has been outsourced to the specialist-for-hire, Ryan Bingham, a “termination engineer”.

New Realities of Corporatized Layoffs, as seen in Up In The Air.

Up In The Air dramatizes for us 6 new realities of the layoff process.

1. Layoffs are so common that they have spawned their own growth industry, complete with skilled, well-paid termination experts.

Bingham doesn’t just lay people off. Rather, he’s a “termination engineer“. A specialist. In a well-cut suit and a silk tie from the “Shoppes at Terminal C”. Unlike the belt-and-suspenders dorkiness of the Bobs, Bingham is real business class talent — smooth and skilled as he wields the hatchet.

Who knew we’d gotten so good at this, at the act of telling employees we don’t want them anymore?

2. Organizations and their managers have deftly insulated themselves from the unpleasant experience of laying people off. This insulation allows these organizations to be genuinely fake, to say one thing and do another without any ambivalence or embarrassment.

By outsourcing their termination practice to a consultancy, the organization removes any manager or corporate representative from the process. There is no one from the company who has to explain the decision to the ex-employee, and no one from the company to take responsibility for the layoff decisions.

Structurally, Bingham, is insulated from any responsibility for these axed employees. He didn’t create the problems that lead to the layoffs or make the choices about whom to lay off. Emotionally, Bingham is also insulated. He shares no common culture, no corporate history, no personal relationship with the people losing their jobs. He has no reason at all (apart from some basic humanity) to feel guilty or conflicted about what he is there to do.

This structural and psychic distance make it possible for Bingham to be genuinely fake. For all those the platitudes, Bingham really means what he says. And he also doesn’t mean what he says, because no part of the experience actually touches him.

Similarly, the structural set up prevents the organization and its managers even from seeing the damage that their behavior is causing. The organization and its managers are free to claim that they care about employees while laying them off.

3. In corporatized layoffs, no one can hear you scream.

No one is there to listen, no one is there to learn, and no one is there to care. Just like at the organization’s outsourced customer service center,  hired hands run the script and pretend to listen, while valid questions and complaints slide off them, never  to be heard by anyone who actually matters.

The outsourcing of layoff responsibility makes it easy for everyone — or almost everyone– to be dispassionate about cutting the relationship between the organization and its employees. It’s almost as though the “emotional labor“ of dumping a loyal employee just evaporates into the space between the organization, the contractor, and the soon-to-be-ex employee.

The emotional burden of the organization’s decision remains for the employee to bear alone.

4. There is no room for truth in the corporatized layoff process.

Without a real manager to talk with, or to answer questions, or to show remorse, the real meaning of the layoff to the employee and to the organization is squeezed out.

As the hired henchman, Bingham also helps to crowd the truth out of of the situation. He encourages the terminated employees to rebuild their lives, with platitudes such as:

“Anyone who has ever accomplished great things has done so because they once sat in the same chair you are sitting in now”.

Right. That encouragement and a few months of unemployment checks will get me my own Subway franchise, and I’ll soon be an entrepreneur.

The organization sustains the fantasy that they have done the right thing– after all, they hired the best termination engineers. They put together a nice termination package. They have handled it all professionally. (All of it except maybe for the bad business decisions that got the organization in trouble in the first place, recession aside.)

5. Oddly, too, the organizations and their managers are oblivious to the larger pattern that they are participating in.

While Bingham sees himself as a cog in the machine, he doesn’t seem to realize that the machine is coming to get him too. If Bingham’s own firm shifts to online hatchet delivery, he might soon find himself in a downsized job, one with less autonomy and reduced pay. And, the efficiencies of new technology could leave Bingham as the person whose position is “no longer available”.

On the organizations’ part, being able to turn a blind eye to their own culpability and to avoid experiencing the emotional burden of laying off one employee after another just makes it easier for them to decide to lay more employees off the next time.

Fundamental Reality: One element of layoffs that hasn’t changed

In any layoff situation, one reality is always laid bare: The relationship between the employer and the employee is profoundly one-sided.

We saw this asymmetry in Office Space, but the new realities of layoffs make this harder for us to avoid. And, in Up In The Air, we see this asymmetry and the pain it causes in an artful new way — through the disappointing dynamics of the relationship between the characters themselves.  You’ve got the flaky commitment from Bingham’s supposed-to-be-brother-in-law, and the breakup note emailed to Bingham’s young colleague. 

See how the dynamics of the employee — employer relationship are reflected in this exchange between Ryan (playing the employee) and his suddenly-put-upon gal-pal, Alex Goran (playing the employer) as she prepares to dump him:

Ryan Bingham: I thought I was a part of your life.
Alex Goran: I thought we signed up for the same thing… I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. … You’re a parenthesis.
Ryan Bingham: I’m a parenthesis?

Regardless of the promises implied to the employee and the commitment enticed from the employee, nothing that employee has done can protect him from being dumped, at will, by the employer. All of the power is on the employer’s side, no matter how charming, how professional, how skilled the employee is, or how much he has invested in the relationship.

Not even George Clooney can smooth over this reality.

Fiction and or Reality

Now, I’m sure someone’s going to jump in to remind us all that Up In The Air is fiction.

Of course it is. There are organizations that avoid layoffs and take responsibility. There are organizations that lay employees off with not only remorse but also regret. Corporations don’t really lay people off so harshly. And hatchet men like Bingham don’t actually exist.

Yet, like all good fiction, Up In The Air tells us an important truth:

The relationship between the employer and the employee is profoundly one-sided.
In this relationship, the employee always has more to lose.

We can’t dismiss this truth as cinematic cynicism, and we can’t laugh at it either.

See also:
Bringing ‘Up in the Air’ down to earth by Kathleen Pender
“Up in the Air,” Work+Life Fit Allegory for the Era by Cali Yost at Fast Company

What does it take to rein in the outrageous compensation of CEOs? The absurd bonuses of Investment Bankers? The “bail us out so we can award ourselves bonuses”-behavior characterizing Wall Street this year?

Do we need more transparency? More shareholder oversight? More whistle-blowing? More government regulation?

How about just a little bit more public mockery?

Reflecting on soon-to-be-published research by Lammers, Stapel & Galinsky, it seems that maybe all we need to regulate Wall Street is a bit more public derision.

Yes, public derision. Your mom might not approve, but it makes good sense. Read on.

In their study of how Power Increases Hypocrisy, these scholars demonstrate in a lab setting* that “powerful” actors condemn other people’s cheating and are more strict in judging others’ moral transgressions, all while cheating more themselves, and judging themselves more leniently.

These scholars also found that what causes this effect is not ‘having power’ but rather believing that one’s powerful position is legitimate. As long as people think that their their power is legitimate, they engage in self-serving, hypocritical behavior.

Deep in their last paragraph, these scholars suggest that the way to break this link may simply be to undermine the reputations of these so-called powerful actors:

Our last experiment, however, found that the spiral of inequality can be broken, if the illegitimacy of the power-distribution is revealed. One way to undermine the legitimacy of authority is open revolt, but a more subtle way in which the powerless might curb self-enrichment by the powerful is by tainting their reputation, for example by gossiping (Keltner, Van Kleef, Chen, & Kraus, 2008). If the powerful sense that their unrestrained self- enrichment leads to gossiping, derision, and the undermining of their reputation as conscientious leaders, then they may be inspired to bring their behavior back to their espoused standards. If they fail to do so, they may quickly lose their authority, reputation, and— eventually—their power.

This regulation strategy is a nice market-based solution …. it doesn’t require any government intervention, or labor union activity, or extra taxation. All we need are a few more Keith Olbermans, a Rachel Maddow or two, and a reincarnation of Molly Ivans.

And, a little more truth-telling by business journalists, a little less “objective” instruction by business school professors, and a few more of us willing to find that sweet spot between being dismissibly strident and submissively polite.

Regulation by Public Mockery: Mockulation®

Regulation by Public Mockery might also work to curb unethical and just plain unseemly behavior by organizations. If this tendency of individuals to be more hypocritical if they also feel legitimately powerful also applies at the organizational level, and if organizations that believe their market/social/political power is legitimate will also engaging in self-serving, hypocritical behavior, maybe mocking whole industries might also be an effective regulation strategy.

Who needs Freakonomics ® when we can have Mockulation®?

Let’s regulate Wall Street and all manner of corporate gluttony with some plain old human psychology.

You might also be interested in these posts, about attitudes & responsibility by Wall Street and Leaders:

6 Reasons Why Taking Responsibility is Good for Your Organization
Homophobia and (In)Authenticity at Omnicom: What can a leader do?
An Authentic Response from Glamour Magazine

Notes:

It’s a special delight to see, in research conducted by economists and business school professors, citations to Gramsci. Woot!

Lammers, J., Stapel, D. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (in press). Power increases hypocrisy: Moralizing in reasoning, immorality in behavior. Psychological Science.

Keltner, D., Van Kleef, G.A., Chen, S., & Kraus, M.W. (2008) A reciprocal influence model of social power: Emerging principles and lines of inquiry. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 151-192.

* Results from lab experiments are always subject to concerns about ‘the real world’. YMMV.