Governing values have a strong impact on the actual decisions people make inside corporations. Frequently, we find a disconnect between values that businesses claim to have and the decisions they actually make. So, for example, we sometimes read that a company is committed to the value of a sustainable environment; yet when making actual decisions, managers of that company give sway to other values such as short-term income or marginal profit. There is a gulf between the values we profess and aspire to and the values we actually live by.
The most recent widely publicized example of this is coming to light in the wake of BP’s oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. As more information becomes available, we are learning that some representatives of BP made expedient decisions with respect to safety procedures and devices that put the environment at risk. One has to wonder what policies and procedures BP put in place to assure that such short-sighted thinking would not take hold in these kinds of circumstances.
Those who made the decisions to use the cheaper, faster casing bear part of the responsibility for the resulting calamity. But singling them out by themselves is a scapegoat tactic we should strongly resist. The responsibility for this disaster lies with those who neglected BP’s ethical culture over the years, those who pushed for bottom-line performance at all times, those who wore blinders of short-termism, and those who rebuffed efforts to bring BP’s practices in line with fundamental values of respect, decency, and moral responsibility. Dianne Vaughan, who wrote the definitive book on the Challenger Disaster of 1986, is surely thinking, “I’ve seen this movie before.” She called the systemic problems in Morton Thiokol that lead to the Challenger Launch Decision a “culture of deviance.”
Many companies have corrupt cultures dominated by short-term, bottom-line thinking. For those that have not yet experienced their own Gulf Oil Spill there is still time to get their acts in order. But it will take top-level leaders armed with the determination to repent and reform. And it will take time. Are they up to the challenge?
Mike Palmer
Ethics By Design
Mike Palmer
