Organizational Man: Refined or Repressed?

Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal is the courageous, ancient Greco-Roman nobility, including the unashamed conquerors replete with self-confident will to power rather than shame at having vanquished formidable resistance. Rather than actually advocating that we return to the raping and pillaging that took place back then, Nietzsche wanted to depict modern, emaciated man as a contrast in order to turn the weakening of man around in Europe. Similar to Sinclair Lewis, who wrote his satirical novel, Babbit (1922) to showcase the utter vacuity of the middle-class businessman in America, Nietzsche laments “the reduction of the beast of prey ‘man’ to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal . . .”[1] By that he meant us: modern, enervated, and cultured incarnations of human nature relative to the full, untamed, and resilient lives of the ancient Greco-Roman conquerors. Having no knowledge of the lives that they lived in terms of full, unashamed and unconstrained will to power as will to living life with gusto, we scarcely realize the extent to which our societal institutions and vocational organizations box up our nature to that which is inoffensive and even polite even to competitors.

How very much our very nature has been contorted so as to fit within the modern straitjackets that we moderns ourselves have constructed. We have cut off our limbs and yet even as we still hold the knives, news of our deeds has not reached us, like light from a distant star has already happened but has not yet reached our planet. Nietzsche uses this imagery in explaining the death, or, more accurately, discrediting of the Abrahamic conception of God—Gott ist tot. Anticipating Freud, Nietzsche liked to remind us that we don’t really know ourselves as well as we think we do. In grizzled suits sitting in an office—something utterly unknown to the Roman conquerors!—are we not purblind when facing a mirror at “the repellent sight of the ill-constituted, dwarfed, atrophied, and poisoned?”[2] Who is aware of being poisoned when each dose is small and the course of weakening is of long duration? In fact, “the ‘tame man,’ the hopelessly mediocre and insipid man, has already learned to feel to feel himself as the goal and zenith, as the meaning of history, as ‘higher man.’”[3] Like arrogance on stilts during a flood, modern man speaks of progress while ignoring the weakening impact of creature comforts in sedating our will to power as will to experiencing the fullness of life into something like a will to comfort.

At this point in Genealogy, Nietzsche writes as only he has—vintage Nietzsche. “At this point I cannot suppress a sigh and a last hope. What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!”[4] Elsewhere in his writing, Nietzsche refers to the bad odor of the weak, voluntarily impotent creatures whose inner bird-of-prey nature has been replaced by spite and resentment of the strong under the subterfuge of polite society.

Modern man knows passive aggression all too well; university faculties specialize in it under the cover of calmness. To be not calm, but to shout at the betrayal of a friend—this we have almost lost. Stuffing feelings can diminish direct communication that is unashamedly honest. Even though direct, unfiltered communication of especially strong feelings is generally considered indecent in public, such communication clears the air by flushing toxic residue away so genuine human connection can finally exist or the combatants can separate cleanly and forget each other. This advice applies of course to romantic relationships, but also to co-workers in the workplace. How shocking it would be to Babbit to hear two workers shouting at each other in a workplace that has been designed to remove all but a pallid version of human nature in its fullness! Of course, the need for monetary compensation to cover rent, utilities, and food makes employees reasonably fearful of bringing their full human nature to work. My point is that the ubiquity of passive aggression in the workplace means that too much of our innate nature is repressed in the business world; perhaps two angry employees could take their argument outside, escaping the overly disinfected office space for a bit.

In an emotionally-fearful society of banal convenience, a person can be unaware of how “much one is able to endure: distress, want, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude. Fundamentally one can cope with everything else, born as one is to a subterranean life of struggle; one emerges again and again into the light, one experiences again and again one’s golden hour of victory—and then one stands forth as one was born, unbreakable, tensed, ready for new, even harder, remoter things, like a bow that distress only serves to draw tauter.”[5] How different such an expression of human nature is than that which is permissible under the tight watch of security cameras. So much of our nature is proscribed by organizational policies—as if policies were laws and subcontracted security guard were police. In utter disgust at modern man having become “thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent,” Nietzsche yearns for even just a glimpse of a person “wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man!”[6] Nietzsche wanted to believe in our species but found a downward trajectory from strength to weakness—a “diminution and leveling.”[7] Nietzsche would likely claim that the hierarchies that exist in social/religious, business, and governmental organizations pale in comparison to natural hierarchies that enable a pathos of distance between the now-rare, strong breed that values and acts out ancient noble virtues such as courage and honesty and the now ubiquitous weak breed of timid, emotionally-vacuous organizational humanoids.

The modern woman who is attracted to the insipid corporate type sufficiently high on the corporate ladder has lost her way, Nietzsche would no doubt say, and is denying her primal nature; not so the woman who is instinctually attracted to a passionate, dominate male who lifts weights and is not ashamed to be vocal in overcoming resistance from a rival and even from her, and who wrestles or maybe even street-fights from time to time when provoked rather than calls on police to intercede, thus subcontracting his basic instincts. So distant the corporate man is from raw human instinct, and yet modern society counts business executives as powerful and of high standing in society. It is as if we all have been fooled into taking weakness for strength. Business ethicists lash out at business managers with “Thou Shalt Not!” as if the managers should be ashamed of the power that they wield, but this assumes that corporate power evinces Nietzschean strength as self-confident pride rather than timidity in overcoming obstacles. So very pallid is corporate speak, and yet how very many nonsupervisory, uneducated workers on the margins, such as at call centers, use the tone and lingo as a club as if from a position of strength rather than weakness. The weak who seek to dominate the strong—think of a call-center employee on the phone with a legitimately aggrieved customer—are not strong enough to master their most intractable instinct, Nietzsche claims, which is to feel the pleasure of power even by dominating if necessary. The strong need not dominate, for their self-confident power overflows. Confidence is attractive, whereas dominance, which Nietzsche theorizes manifests from weakness, is ugly.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 478.

2. Ibid., p. 479.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 479-80.
5. Ibid., p. 480.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: Taylor Swift

Time magazine named the singer Taylor Swift as its person of the year for 2023. Such a force of nature were her stadium-filled concerts during that summer that they triggered economic booms in the respective host cities. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example, hotel rooms went for as much as $2,500 downtown on the night of the concert. In terms of American culture, the analogy of gravity waves may fit. During an interview for television at her home (or one of her homes), Swift’s savvy business acumen was very evident; her marketing prowess was extraordinary. She even re-released her own songs, resulting in a huge financial windfall for what are really the same songs merely re-sung. It is not as if she had grown a new voice. Swift personifies American culture, whose “movers and shakers” seem “happy go lucky” on stage yet, behind the scenes, they tend to be lazar-focused on the business end. In short, considerable distance may exist between the societal image and the private business practitioner, and the ethical element can get lost in the shuffle and excitement.

To be sure, economics was evident in the “Swiftie” phenomenon during the summer of 2023. According to Time, Swift “achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force.”[1] Her Eras concert tour "brought in a whopping $1.04 billion with 4.35 million tickets sold across 60 tour dates."[2] Not just any singer can make such a haul and even trigger municipal economic booms and saturate the media’s attention worldwide simply by going on tour. Also, the magazine is clear that such a gargantuan amount of money brought in is not “something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates,” for “giving too much credit to the stars ignores [Swift’s] skill and her power.”[3] In particular, her intense and sustained focus on every conceivable way, such as by re-recording existing songs and bundling them (admittedly with some songs from her vault) into albums in their own right, attending to merchandise and actively using the media for free publicity, to increase revenue leveraged, or made use of, her tremendous market power that was unrivaled; she dominated the airwaves during the summer of 2023. The “Taylor’s Version” albums provide us with an interesting case study wherein hype, money, and ethics are all in the mix.

According to Time, “Swift began releasing re-recordings of her back catalog in 2021 in an effort to reclaim her original music, after her initial label Big Machine Records sold her masters to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019. ‘Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,’ Swift wrote. . . . ‘Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.’”[4] I don’t doubt the authenticity of her emotive motivation here. In the vernacular, she was pissed.  Even so, if she had signed a contract with Big Machine Records giving it the unilateral right to sell the masters of her songs, and the purchaser has the legal right of use, then she had no legal or ethical claim to preempt the sale or be sold the masters outright. Of course, if labels write heavily unfair contracts essentially reflecting the commercial interests of the labels, taking advantage of the lack of bargaining power of new signers, ethical critique is fair game.

By its very nature, a contract is a coming together of (at least) two interests, with consideration (money) given by one party to the other. A residential lease, for instance, should reflect both interests. It should not restrict use of premises to be narrowed down to reflect only how the property owner would use the space or would like the space to be used. A property owner might prefer a “no guest” policy, but such as “policy”—the very word being presumptuous—violates reasonable use of premises. Furthermore, the property owner’s personal religious or moral lifestyle, for instance, should not bind the counterparty as long as the property itself is not damaged. “I don’t believe in eating meat, so you are not allowed to use the kitchen of your apartment to cook meat,” for instance, is presumptuous and dogmatic. More to the point, such a clause would violate or nullify the fact that in receiving rent, the property owner is selling the use of the space (as long as the property is not damaged). The mantra, “It’s my house,” taken as an absolute, is circumscribed when use is being sold for consideration (i.e., rent). Having it both ways is selfish and childish.

Whether or not Taylor Swift originally signed a one-sided contract is beyond my ability to investigate, given the information that I have. Her fans did not know either, and so, because of her emotional claim and her “star power,” her ethical cause resonated. Even so, it can be asked whether it is ethical to have hyped “Taylor’s Version” albums to the extent that buyers were willing to pay the full price of an album even if they had most of the songs already. To be sure, the “Taylor’s Versions” included “vault tracks”—songs not on the original albums. She also updated some lyrics. Even so, it can be asked whether the additional work justifies a full price of a new album. It can also be asked whether customers having receipts for the original albums, such as Fearless, should have been able to buy Taylor’s version at a discount. I submit that such a discount would be reasonable, given both the amount of additional work on Taylor’s part and the substance of the product (i.e., the extent to which it differs from the originals). A few songs from the vault and some new lyrics do not render the albums commensurate with albums filled with previously unreleased songs.

If Swift’s motivation was indeed to gain control of her songs, she should have agreed to a discount. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) had the biggest debut for any album in 2021, with 722.7 million on-demand streams in the U.S. that year.[5] Surely at least some of those customers already possessed the original album. Of course, the irrational exuberance that would cause such a customer to buy the same songs again can also be criticized, but many of her customers were teenagers and thus easily taken in even by orchestrated hype of good feeling seemingly aloft from the earthly taint of business strategizing. My point is that it is no accident that Taylor Swift made a lot of money essentially recycling songs ready for re-singing. She was not merely trying to regain control over her work. I submit that she was acting as a business woman, and a darn good one at that.  Her true identity—her driving financial ambition—was practically hidden under the blinding glitter of the “nuclear fusion” that Time magazine describes. My point is that the resulting sonic boom was orchestrated to coordinate and max out both the hype and the revenue. Behind the moral cause, behind the curtains, Swift’s financial acumen could be said to be a subterranean force of nature.

Such a force tends to be obscured, obfuscated, or, more often, intentionally hidden in the American entertainment industry. Similarly, elected representatives in Congress or the White House keep both their fowl tongues and their raw desire for power far away from the reach of microphones and cameras. In short, the sheer difference between private personas, including agendas, motivations, and even personalities, and the public images on the societal stage is astounding. Especially in politics in a representative democracy, this differential is a real problem that goes beyond the financial harm to young “Swifties” who have been subtly manipulated into buying (mostly recycled) songs at full price.

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1. Jordan Valinsky, “Taylor Swift Named Time’s ‘Person of the Year,” CNN.com, December 6, 2023.
2. Maria Sherman, "Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Is the First Tour to Gross Over $1 Billion, Pollster Says," APNews.com, December 8, 2023.

3. Valinsky, “Taylor Swift Named Time’s ‘Person of the Year.”
4. Mariah Espada, “Taylor Swift Is Halfway Through Her Rerecording Project. It’s Paid Off Big Time,” Time, July 6, 2023.
5. Ibid.

Off-Shore Drilling off Virginia’s Coast: The Stakeholder Framework Applied

By the early 1990’s, the U.S. had banned drilling off the Atlantic coast. In the wake of BP’s deep-water-drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, President Obama cancelled his go-ahead of drilling leases off Virginia’s shore. A few years later, Doug Domenech, the Secretary of Natural Resources in Virginia, and that republic’s head of state, Bob McDonnell, teamed up with Virginia’s two delegates in the U.S. Senate to “put Virginia’s coast on the energy map through an act of Congress.” Domenech said, “I personally believe that the East Coast of the U.S. does have the ability to be the prolific economic basin.” The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimated based on two-dimensional seismic surveys that 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil exist under the Atlantic’s outer continental shelf and 31.1 trillion cubic feet, or 886.3 million cubic meters, of natural gas. However, the executive arm of the U.S. Government alone is more than that bureau. Moreover, lest this conflict over drilling be viewed as primarily between Virginia and the U.S. Government, it should be noted that the East Coast is not exclusive to Virginia.
Although the dispute would seem to be based on federalism, the opposing interests involved were really those of seven oil companies, including Global Geo Services in Texas, up against the U.S. Navy in Norfolk and some endangered whales fervently represented by some environmental groups. The oil companies may even have been behind Virginia’s role. “The energy industry, eager to find out how much oil and natural gas exists under the Atlantic sea floor,” was “pushing the [Obama] administration to allow seismic companies to survey the area.” Strangely omitting the matter of his company’s profit, a spokesperson for Exxon Mobil said, “With the right policies, development of those resources can provide substantial new energy supplies to power our economy while supporting millions of new jobs.” Even though Virginia was “a vocal supporter of drilling,” hoping it “could become the gateway for Atlantic production,” the oil companies were likely in the driver’s seat in pushing the Obama administration to allow seismic tests at the very least. In other words, the question of federal encroachment on Virginia’s vested or residual sovereignty is not particularly salient in the dispute. Rather than being centered on conflicting interests between a state and a federal union, the question of allowing drilling leases off the east coast of the United States pitted big business against the U.S. military and environmental groups—plus a federal president doubtlessly determined that something like the BP explosion in the Gulf not be repeated, at least under his watch.
Accordingly, the stakeholder framework used by business is a closer fit to this case study than is federalism. This does not necessarily open the flood-gate to “shared decision-making,” even as particular stakeholders are identified in the process. Pointing to one major stakeholder, the New York Times observed, “Virginia is home to Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, with 75 ships and 134 aircraft. A February 2010 Defense Department report said oil drilling in the area off Virginia that had been designated for leasing would interfere with military operations.” The U.S. military is thus a stakeholder. Also, “(a)dvocates for marine mammals” wrote “thousands of letters and testified at public hearings, arguing that seismic surveys of the outer continental shelf would hurt endangered whales.” A major oil gusher obviously would not do the animals any good either. Therefore, environmentalists constitute still another stakeholder.
To get at the societal relations between the stakeholders, the stakeholder framework from strategic management must be modified structurally to remove the focal firm at the hub to occupying instead one of the spokes. Concerning societal problems, a web-like framework wherein several entities, including corporations, governments, interest groups, the military, and even whales, is more fitting than the stakeholder model that has a firm in the center. Next, I discuss the stakeholder concept after which I relate the stakeholder framework used in societal leadership to the stakeholder framework in strategic management. Lastly, I apply the resulting model, which can be regarded as one of societal and strategic leadership, to the case study of off-shore drilling.
Stakeholder entities are those which can either materially affect, or would be affected by, the U.S. Government granting of drilling leases off the Atlantic coast. This definition is not perfect, as it could invite a seemingly endless list of groups that are indirectly affected or could have at least some impact on the leases. Adding “directly” to the definition would exclude groups that are affected greatly, albeit indirectly. Perhaps it is advisable to add to the definition that a stakeholder is an entity of significant importance to the decision as well as the decision-maker using the framework. Although most advocates of the stakeholder framework who come from the standpoint of corporate social responsibility assume (or prescribe) that consensus or a right of co-decision is implied in the framework or even the very notion of stakeholder as if having a stake in something includes a sort of power-sharing right, the model itself implies no such prescriptions and could therefore be used by a person or group that has exclusive decision-making authority on the problem.

Respecting the integrity (i.e., valid claims) of both frameworks requires integrity, or self-discipline.  (Source: Skip Worden) 


The web-like adaption of the stakeholder framework comes from shifting the “unit of analysis” (i.e., scale) from that of a firm to the societal level. Whereas an oil company would use the “hub and spokes” structure, a government official, being oriented to a societal level (e.g., Virginia, or the U.S.), would want to view the players arranged as they are in society (i.e., without a focal organization at the “hub”) to get a sense of the political forces and interests involved and how they interact as well as how they would interact under alternative decisions. At the same time, the government official would want to keep an eye of his own interests, as well as that of the government of which he is a part. For this purpose, the “hub and spoke” structure works well, with the government at the “hub.”
Strategic leadership attends to the interests of the decision maker’s organization (or organizations where decision-making is shared) while also providing a view of the societal interplay of the contending interests without the distortions of one’s own position being “front and center.” In other words, both frameworks should be used where strategic leadership has a societal component. This can apply not only to governments. A CEO, for instance, may find that taking a societal rather than firm-centric perspective—bracketing it off from, while relating it to, the firm’s strategic “hub” interests—can result in a balancing of societal credibility, a long-term intangible asset, with more immediately-pressing strategic interests. While not relevant to every decision, this “dualistic” approach, depicted structurally in my diagram below, is most valuable where a decision involves a problem that is salient at the societal level. 
In the off-shore oil-lease decision, the White House or a member of Congress could use the “societal leadership” framework to identify more stakeholders and assess how they relate to each other politically (the government being included among them, but merely as one, rather than being focal). Ideally, a vision of the society itself, improved in a way touching on the dispute, can come out of this “non-distorted” perspective. Abstractly speaking, a structural framework is merely the basic contours of a perspective. A perspective that reflects society in its own terms is consistent with, and perhaps can even trigger, a societal vision of the sort that is in visionary leadership. 
A government official oriented exclusively to a societal vision that is “undistorted” by his or her own political interests and those of the government risks not being around long enough to “preach the vision.” Strategic interests must also be considered. Hence, the official(s) would want to use the traditional “hub and spokes” stakeholder framework.  In assessing how each stakeholder can affect or be affected by the government (and the official) politically, the self-protective and aggrandizing instincts of the decision-maker kick in even at the expense of a societal vision. In this regard, stakeholder management in government is actually a way of systematizing a political calculation akin to a position paper that lists the pros and cons on a particular piece of legislation, associating particular stakeholders to the various arguments for and against the legislation. Although the political relationships between the stakeholders can be considered, the primary emphasis here is on the bilateral relationships of power where the official or government is on one end—hence “the hub.”
After taking both perspectives—societal and strategic—the decision-maker optimizes the approach by weighing the importance of the societal vision (as well as the undistorted political relationships) against strategic imperatives of the official and/or the government. The vision is not merely societal implications of a government’s or corporation’s strategic interests. Rather, societal leadership is based in society’s own terms, and is thus not merely an implication or aspect of a firm- or government-centric perspective. Which level is given more weight by the government official or corporate executive can be expected to differ from decision to decision. Problems have different degrees of importance at the societal level. Additionally, a government’s or firm’s need for reputational capital or societal credibility relative to satisfying strategic interests can change both temporally and in terms of the matter under consideration. In short, the two frameworks can be managed such that both societal and strategic leadership are given their due—without viewing the former as a mere implication or aspect of the latter. Serving as a societal leader and tending after one’s own strategic interests are both legitimate; moreover, they can be managed such that an overall optimality can be achieved with respect to reputational capital and power or profit.
In the case of the off-shore drilling leases in the Atlantic off the U.S. east coast, including but not limited to Virginia, the White House could use the stakeholder frameworks as a basis to craft a policy that both improves society (even beyond “the sum of the parts”) and protects and perhaps even enhances the White House’s political power.
For instance, the U.S. Navy indicated it would allow drilling on a case-by-case basis. The White House could use this position as leverage to gain political power with the oil companies by accommodating them (and Virginia’s government officials) without compromising influence with the military chiefs, the cooperation of whom the White House would need to implement military policy. The case-by-case basis would take some of the wind out of the oil industry’s lobby and Virginia’s delegation pushing on Capitol Hill for legislation to allow unfettered drilling. Societally speaking, such drilling would introduce too much risk of catastrophe, including to the whales, and could make the U.S. less inclined to shift to cleaner sources of energy. At the other extreme, forbidding drilling altogether would work against the U.S. achieving less reliance on foreign oil-producing governments. A societal vision that represents an improvement for the society as a whole would thus be more in keeping with a case-by-case method to be decided by the military or a regulatory agency depending on the area at sea at issue.
Lest it be observed that I gave the environmental groups relatively little consideration, the political calculation of a second-term Democrat in the White House might play for more influence outside of his base instead of placating groups already in the fold. Here we can see a leaning on the strategic framework perhaps at the expense of that of societal leadership. Such a weighing has been implicit, however, throughout this example of the analysis. The resulting decision, while not shared, is apt to be hybrid of sorts that reflects at least some influence from each framework—that is, of societal and strategic leadership.

Sources:

Alison Fitzgerald, “Virginia Tries to Circumvent Obama to Allow Energy Drilling,” The New York Times, November 14, 2012.

Tennille Tracy, “Oil Industry Renews Push For Drilling in the Atlantic,” The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2012.

Skip Worden, “The Role of Integrity as a Mediator in Strategic Leadership: A Recipe for Reputational Capital,” Journal of Business Ethics, 46, no.1 (2003): 31-44.

Decoupling Responsibility from Power: The Case of Transocean in the BP Disaster

With much power comes implicit responsibility. Hence, on February 21, 2011, the world recoiled when Gaddafi violently turned on his own people--using his power sans responsibility in a selfish attempt to stay in power. So too, the world had been shocked in April, 2010 when BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and that the Gulf itself was at risk. That a company could ruin something as big as the Gulf of Mexico came as a surprise to many. That a company, or three in this case, could have minimized such a risk by, for example, sending the U.S. Government contingency plans on Gulf clean up that included rescuing sea animals that actually live in the Arctic, shocked the public just as much. How could people holding such power treat its use with such carelessness concerning any downside?  The defense of having followed company policy or having excuted business procedures pales in comparison with the societal demand that power, whether public or private, be handled responsibly.  In other words, people take it for granted that power is given to adults rather than to children.  I think we would be surprised how often this has not been the case.  The case of Transocean demonstrates this thesis.

Transocean, which owned the Deep Water Horizon oil rig that exploded in April of 2010,  was the subject of a criminal investigation into possible tax fraud in Norway. The company indicated in S.E.C. filings that Norwegian officials could assess it about $840 million in taxes and penalties. The filings also contended that a final ruling against Transocean could have a “material impact” on the company. The company was also the target of tax inquiries in the United States and Brazil. Furthermore, drilling equipment from Transocean was shipped by a forwarder through Iran and until 2009 the company had held a stake in a company that did business in Syria. The State Department claimed at the time that Syria and Iran sponsor terrorism.

In reaction to these charges,  a Transocean statement simply claimed that the managers at the company had always acted appropriately and that they would prevail in any investigations. This is interesting, for “always” is quite an accomplishment.  Once I took a self-inventory and one question was “I always tell the truth.”  Of course, no one always tells the truth, so the question was geared to assessing how truthful one is in taking the test.  Had I answered yes, I would have been lying. The transocean statement, taken by itself, indicates a proclivity to lie, for no human being always acts appropriately. Transocean's statement evinces a certain arrogance, as if to say, "We are above reproach."  Such an attitude is dangerous where there is sufficient power at one's disposal that one's actions can do real damage to the planet.

Transocean, which drilled in some 30 countries and employed more than 18,000 people, owned nearly half of the 50 or so deepwater platforms in the world in 2010. “These people are capable and considered the gold standard of deepwater drilling,” said Peter Vig, managing director at RoundRock Capital Management, an energy hedge fund in Dallas.  I contend that expertise in drilling does not sufficiently counter the kind of charges that were brought against the company. To focus only on expertise in operating machinery or in managing a company as though they were all that matters in business is to hold an extremely narrow perspective on what counts. Furthermore, to let blantantly false asseverations stand (such as of always acting appropriately) is to enable a pattern that can literally destroy a major marine ecosystem.

Source:

Barry Meier, "Owner of Exploded Rig Is Known for Testing Rules," The New York Times, July 7, 2010.

Related material is in Cases of Unethical Business, which is available at Amazon.

Management: Helping vs. Controlling

I submit that subordinates typically view managers as having control issues—by which I mean that managers tend to be obsessed with maintaining control. The pathology because really bad when the manager would rather have a project fail than give up control. Lest it be thought that management as control is intrinsic to managerial capitalism, an alternative approach proffers a way out.

The full essay has been incorporated into, On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

A Nietzschean Critique of the Modern Manager

The functional managerial role in modern business is weak by Nietzsche’s standard. That is to say, a manager is of the vulgar rather than of noble strength. After highlighting Nietzsche's project more generally, I discuss his notions of strength and weakness. I then delineate Nietzsche’s attitudes toward wealth, trade and modern industrial culture—the immediate context for his concept of the modern business manager. I argue that Nietzsche views this context as decadent. Within this framework, Nietzsche’s rendering of the primordial commercial relationship can be taken as his genealogy of the modern business manager. Finally, I describe the modern business manager as akin to the ascetic priest in being a herd animal desperately seeking to dominate the herd and, presumptuously, even the strong.   

The full essay is at "A Nietzschean Critique of the Modern Manager."

Rousseau: Natural and Artificial Inequalities

In his Discourse on Inequalities, Rousseau distinguishes two types of inequality among people: natural and moral.[1] Natural inequalities, which exist in the state of nature as well as society, result in difference outcomes owing to innate differences in “genius, beauty, strength or address, merit or talents.” Such differences—both in sources and outcomes—pale in comparison with those from “moral” inequalities, such as exist between rich and poor, professionals and the unskilled, and the powerful and the subjugated.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

“Now, if we compare the prodigious variety in the education and manner of living of the different orders of men in a civil state, with the simplicity and uniformity that prevails in the animal and savage life, where all the individuals make use of the same aliments, live in the same manner, and do exactly the same things, we shall easily conceive how much the difference between man and man in the state of nature must be less than in the state of society, and how much every inequality of institution must increase the natural inequalities of the human species.”

Wealth is a case in point—the extremes in the American societies, for example, dwarfing the subsistence differences in the state of nature.

“Riches, before the invention of signs to represent them, could scarce consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real goods which men can possess. But when estates increased so much in number and in extent as to take in whole countries and touch each other, it became impossible for one man to aggrandise himself but at the expense of some other; and the supernumerary inhabitants, who were too weak or too indolent to make such acquisitions in their turn, impoverished without losing anything, because while everything about them changed they alone remained the same, were obliged to receive or force their subsistence from the hands of the rich.”

Moral inequalities are marketed by the “haves” as moral and thus legitimate and even generally beneficial to society, when in truth the inequalities involve much undeserved harm.

“In fine, an insatiable ambition, the rage of raising their relative fortunes, not so much through real necessity, as to over-top others, inspire all men with a wicked inclination to injure each other, and with a secret jealousy so much the more dangerous, as to carry its point with the greater security, it often puts on the face of benevolence.”

The sordid “moral” inequalities are possible only in a civil state, which in turn exists in a society, as such inequalities stem from institutions in business, higher education, and government (among others). For example, corporations may be designed so that executives and board members benefit disproportionately relative to middle managers and “below.” Governments, even if democratic, may fit into a societal system more broadly in exchanging campaign contributions for legislation that would modify the system in favor of increasing economic inequality. 

Moreover, according to Rousseau, society is not simply biased toward increasing inequality; society gives rise to the inequalities. “(A)s there is scarce any inequality among men in a state of nature, all that which we now behold owes its force and its growth to the development of our faculties and the improvement of our understanding, and at last becomes permanent and lawful by the establishment of property and of laws.” To protect these from usurpers, warfare and aggression come to dwarf the pre-existing natural human compassion or empathy for those who are suffering. “(I)t is merely the spirit of society, and the inequality which society engenders, that thus change and transform all our natural inclinations.” Indeed, being in society may transform human nature itself.

Society engenders the “universal desire of reputation, of honours, of preference, with which we are all devoured, exercises and compares our talents and our forces.” Society thus “excites and multiplies our passions; and, by creating an universal competition, rivalship, or rather enmity among men, how many disappointments, successes, and catastrophes of every kind . . .  it is to this itch of being spoken of, to this fury of distinguishing ourselves which seldom or never gives us a moment's respite, that we owe both the best and the worst things among us, our virtues and our vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers; that is to say, a great many bad things to a very few good ones.

Most significantly, “the origin of society and of the laws . . . increased the fetters of the weak, and the strength of the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, fixed [forever] the laws of property and inequality; changed an artful usurpation into an irrevocable title; and for the benefit of a few ambitious individuals subjected the rest of mankind to perpetual labour, servitude, and misery.”  The artificial variety of inequalities can be expected to increase, silently aided by institutional designs, until the people bled dry finally have had enough and revolt. This involves a different sort of state of nature than that out of which society originally arises.

“The progress of inequality: “the establishment of laws and of the right of property was the first term of it; the institution of magistrates the second; and the third and last the changing of legal into arbitrary power; so that the different states of rich and poor were authorized by the first epoch; those of powerful and weak by the second; and by the third those of master and slave, which formed the last degree of inequality, and the term in which all the rest at last end, till new revolutions entirely dissolve the government, or bring it back nearer to its legal constitution. . . . Tis here that everything returns to the sole law of the strongest, and of course to a new state of nature different from that with which we began, in as much as the first was the state of nature in its purity, and the last the consequence of excessive corruption.”

In short, the sort of inequalities that society and its various species of institutions create and perpetuate clashes with natural right. The exceptional inequality of incomes between CEOs and workers in the U.S. is simply not natural, given the human nature that happily exists in the state of nature. Put another way, the tremendous inequality of wealth both results from and encourages a transformation of natural inclinations that could alter even human nature itself into something much uglier than what it was in the state of nature. The “kind of inequality which obtains in all civilised nations . . . is evidently against the law of nature that . . . a handful of men should be ready to choke with superfluities, while the famished multitude want the commonest necessaries of life.” This is bound not to end well for the human race, whether through society’s impact on the planet (e.g., global warming) or something within the human race, such as nuclear war or a plague.

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1. All quotes in this essay from Rousseau are taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1910).

New Birds of Prey in Modern Retail

In a dysfunctional organization, the shared pathology fortifies its defense mechanisms with an obstinacy that appears rock-solid. Lines such as, “Unfortunately, the product cannot be returned” can be seen as part of an egg shell that seems to be durable until it is cracked open. By analogy, cracking the egg entails parsing such lines as are typically dished out to outsiders. Let’s take a look.

First, the word cannot is incorrectly used in the sentence, for a store’s return policy is not a law; whereas a business is subject to a law, no such requirement pertains to a company’s own policies. To treat the latter as tantamount to laws is essentially to vaunt the self-importance of the company, store, and even the employee enunciating the policy-law. “Your policies are not laws; of course you can make an exception, even if your supervisor is the person who can do it.” The word cannot serves the organizational dysfunction by giving the impression externally that the company is more than it is (i.e., a state of sorts with its own laws). At the employee level, the devise is essentially a power-grab—a distended or exaggerated urge to control others being a typical symptom of insecurity borne of underlying weakness.

Substituting may not for cannot gives the customer at least an implied opening that from the standpoint of the organizational pathology could prompt him or her to push through the defense mechanisms and trounce the core weakness. Were an “upper” manager to even consider such a linguistic change, an underling would likely contend that every customer would be returning items. The fallacy in this reasoning goes by the wayside in the mechanizations of the organizational dysfunction. Indeed, ignoring or dismissing logical fallacies is itself one of the defense mechanisms!  This is arguing with such an employee or manager is apt to be an exercise in futility.

Notice the "exchanges accepted" instead of "accept exchanges." The passive voice extends to "are revised" and "are shipped," suggesting an underlying mentality of weakness. Also, the forcefulness of the "must" (as one might expect pertains to a law) is belied by the inherent subjectivity in "mint condition." Finally, the blood-red color, as well as the black background color, suggests a certain passive-aggressiveness in line with the use of "must" for what is actually a policy (rather than a law). (Image Source: omgmiamiswimsuits.com)

Second, the use of the passive mood also hints at the underlying weakness in the dysfunctional organization because the action is sidestepped. “We do not accept returned items” highlights the action (i.e., the refusing) of the company’s employees/managers whereas “cannot be returned” omits the actor entirely! The latter phraseology matches the insecurity that naturally manifests out of weakness. Besides implying that the power of the actor to act is in some way compromised or enervated, the passive voice hides the actor and thus protects him or her from being confronted. The actor’s underlying fear here is that a head-to-head clash would not end well for the actor, given his or her own and shared (i.e., organizational) pathology.

Third, just as the choice of the word cannot and the use of the passive voice both involve a manipulatory fabrication (i.e., lying with a hidden agenda), so too does the addition of the unnecessary adverb, unfortunately. For the stealth actor (i.e., the non-supervisory or managerial employee), the policy is hardly unfortunate; otherwise, the policy would not be “on the books.” Lest the adverb is intended to refer to the customer [rather, lest the policy’s formulator or the employee mouthing it is referring to the customers]—as though the fact that the customers would have to keep ill-suited products were unfortunate—the policy itself indicates just how much its formulator and implementers really sympathize, especially since the formulator can change the policy. In other words, the use of the word is a lie designed to give the customer the false impression that “the store” really cares and that unfortunately the policy cannot be changed (and by whom?).

Even the tactic itself in such a line is a lie in that the pathogens are utterly unwilling to tolerate the very same tactic directed back at them. A customer wanting more than a glimpse of the sickness need only reply, “Unfortunately any refusal to accept back the deformed item will have to be turned over to small claims court.” Even though the particular employee would have no involvement in such legal proceedings, and thus no rational reason to bristle at the customer’s stated policy/law, he or she would be too accustomed to dictating terms to customers to let that privilege lapse without at least a spike in anger and attempt to regain the upper hand. “You are free to do so,” an employee might retort, as though he or she were granting or allowing the freedom. In fact, the implication is rather arrogant, again as if the company were akin to a state rather than being a mere counter-party in a commercial exchange. 

The hidden agenda becomes apparent by realizing that the statement is duplicitous or redundant, as the customer obviously already knows that he or she has the liberty to sue. The employee knows this of course, either consciously or unconsciously, and is not really informing the customer that he or she can go to small-claims court. “I don’t need you to tell me I can do what I’ve already told you I know I am free to do,” an astute customer might retort in turn. 

The exchange of words is really a control battle stemming from an organizational pathology’s attempts to defend itself against potentially interlarding intruders. The threat is of course over-stated—hence the exaggerated intent to “nail down the hatches” to weather the perceived storm. Yet the “new birds of prey”—Nietzsche’s label for those among the weak who can’t resist their urge do dominate (even the strong)—are not content to merely defend, for they must have the upper hand in order to feel sufficiently protected. 

Holding the Unfit Accountable vs. Murdoch’s Entitlement to Power

“A damning report [in late April 2012] on the hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers concluding that Mr. Murdoch is “not a fit person” to run a huge international company has convulsed Britain’s political and media worlds and threatened a core asset of Mr. Murdoch’s American-based News Corporation.”[1] The report also “found that three senior Murdoch executives misled Parliament in testimony” and “alleges that the company sought to cover up widespread phone hacking.”[2]

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya, “Panel in Hacking Case Finds Murdoch Unfit as News Titan,” The New York Times, May 1, 2012

2. Ibid.

Cardiologists as Ethicists: On Cheney’s Heart Transplant

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had a heart transplant on March 24, 2012, "after five heart attacks over the past 25 years and countless medical procedures to keep him going. Cheney, 71, waited nearly two years for his new heart, the gift of an unknown donor.”[1] At the time, more than 3,100 Americans were on the states’ waiting list for a heart. Of the roughly 2,300 heart transplants performed in 2011, 332 were over sixty-five. On average, heart failure was killing 57,000 Americans a year at the time, so just a fraction of those who could use a heart get one. One might question, therefore, whether the 332 recipients who were over 65, and Cheney, who was 71, should have been allowed to avail themselves of the relatively short supply of available hearts.

 Dick Cheney was noticeably thinner after his 2010 heart attack. 

“The ethicists will get into this case.” Eric Topol, a cardiologist in California, wrote this line in reference to the question of age.[2] Specifically, should someone who could be expected to have ten years left take a heart that could otherwise allow someone else to live twenty or thirty more years?  Over 70% of heart-transplant recipients live at least five years. It could be argued that Cheney had been able to live 71 years so it is not fair for someone who is 50 or 60 to not be able to do likewise for lack of a transplant because someone Cheney’s age has it. On the other hand, Cheney could argue that because people were living into their 80s and even 90s, he could expect to do so as well. In other words, he could look at someone who is 81 and say, “it is not too much to ask to try to live that long.”

To be sure, my primary applications of ethical theory are in business, government, society, and religion. I do not have the background in biology and medicine to be an expert in medical ethics. So this essay can only be cursory. It is odd to me, therefore, when someone who has not even studied ethical theory wades in as a pseudo-ethicist. An undergraduate degree from a medical school (e.g., the M.D.) does not qualify a cardiologist as an ethicist.

Yet William Zoghbi, the incoming president of the American College of Cardiology at the time of Cheney’s transplant, said on that very day concerning Cheney’s age, “It is not too old. Age is really not a factor.” To be sure, he was referring to the medical condition of the patients. However, he went on to overreach, opining “I don’t see any ethical issues here,” given how weak Cheney’s heart had been.[3] Just because a non-ethicist does not think there are any ethical matters involved does not mean that this is so.

From my standpoint as a business ethicist, I believe an ethical issue is indeed involved in hospitals, as businesses, giving hearts to older applicants, especially if they are powerful or wealthy people who can “skip” in line by having a dedicated donor. More generally, using the utilitarian ethical theory of Bentham, it could be argued that giving hearts to older applicants violates the greatest good (in terms of pleasure) for the greatest number. Older recipients tend not to live quite as many years on a new heart, and they have already lived to be a ripe old age while someone with heart disease at 50 has not. Enabling as many people as possible to reach 71 would go a long way in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number.

Admittedly, I must qualify my conclusion due to my lack of medical knowledge. For instance, I do not know how the older recipients fare medically relative to younger ones. Ideally, a doctor of ethics who has an undergraduate degree from a medical school should be decisive here. For a cardiologist without any formal education in ethical theory to venture an ethical conclusion suggests a certain educational immaturity, if not arrogance. I doubt that William Zoghbi had even heard of Bentham’s utilitarian theory and yet the cardiologist presumes that no ethical issues are involved in Cheney’s case.

In a society in which the profession of medicine is valued a lot, people might enable medical practitioners to get away with such an over-reach with impunity. No doubt Dick Cheney really wanted to keep living. This natural urge—the life instinct—can easily succumb to a medical practitioner’s artificial desire to over-reach in terms of what is entitled by the undergraduate degree granted by medical schools.

1. Kasie Hunt, “Dick Cheney Heart Transplant: Former VicePresident Recovering After Undergoing Surgery,” The Huffington Post, March 24, 2012.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.