Ethics from above

When I mused about employer-employee obligations in my last column (see "What, if anything, do we owe our employers?" http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/09/13/020913opethics.xml) , I was concerned that I didn't have any clear intuitions on the matter. I didn't expect readers to come up with a coherent argument for whether there were obligations and what they might be, but I expected some insight.

Free IT resource Hear how top CIOs turn change into a competitive advantage. Sponsored by HP Free IT resource TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running. Sponsored by Microsoft

Some of the early offerings seemed to be less than encouraging. A few readers tried to reduce it to contractual language, pretty much of a legalistic approach. Another group brought up the Golden Rule. As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of using the Golden Rule for anything more than a rough rule of thumb. In this situation it seems to work less satisfactorily than it does elsewhere.

If you've ever worked for a boss who was a "workaholic," you'll know what I mean. This person enjoys working 15 hours a day, seven days a week -- and does so. Some workaholics realize that not everyone shares their enjoyment of this grind, but others see no reason not to push employees to work longer and harder. "After all," they say, "I don't ask any more of them than I do of myself." This is sort of a perverse formulation of the Golden Rule, and the situation soon becomes intolerable.

Some people tried to say that there were no obligations at all involved on either side, but although that could be true, I'm not buying it entirely at the moment. I think it's worth pursuing other avenues first.

Most people who believe in ethical obligations sometimes divide them into general and special obligations. General obligations are those that we have to everyone at large. For example, if I see a person in urgent dire straits, many people think I have an obligation to provide aid, even if it is nothing more than calling the police. This obligation is something I would owe to anyone, regardless of who they are.

Special obligations, on the other hand, are those we have to specific people because of a relationship we have with them. So we have obligations to our children that we don't have to other children, or at least the obligations to our own children are stronger than our obligations to other children. The same with spouses to each other, doctor to patient, and so on.

So why wouldn't people have a strong feeling about having some sort of obligations to employers? If I had asked this question even 25 years ago, I most likely would have gotten a different response. Many people would have had those strong feelings and probably would have been able to express them.

Quite a few people who wrote suggested that it would be more productive to focus on the obligations that employers have to employees and work from there. I thought that was a dodge, until one person expanded on it and suggested that the reason for this approach is that the employer is the person with the power and the primary ethical obligation lies with that person. Everything else flows from that. And with that, the light bulb went on.

My suspicion -- and I have no research with which to support this -- is that there is a tremendous upheaval in the employee-employer relationship that has been going on for a while. In previous times, employers and employees had a more familial relationship. The newspaper at which I began my career had many employees who worked there their entire lives. The publisher used to boast that during the Great Depression they had to cut salaries three times to stay solvent, but never laid anyone off.

Today, things are different. In many organizations, especially the large corporate conglomerates, labor -- but more importantly, employees -- have been reduced to commodities. For many, the personal relationship is gone. When the numbers start to sag, the layoffs begin. And it often doesn't matter how faithful or productive you've been.

Even more unfair are the situations in which the layoffs won't improve productivity or the P&L statement, but are designed merely to "send a message to Wall Street." This pernicious practice is a direct result of corporations focusing more on stock price than any other metric such as quality, customer service, or loyalty to employees.

Many companies say in the policies that they "value each and every employee, because employees are their most important asset," but actions speak louder than words. When management signals that employees are merely commodities, it's saying it feels no obligations to them. That makes it extremely difficult for employees to feel any obligations in return.

That doesn't mean that most employees don't work hard. They do. Some do it because they hope -- often vainly -- that their extra effort will be rewarded. Others do it because of a personal ethic in which they feel good about giving a job their best effort. But I also heard from people who started their careers with just that attitude and after a long string of abuses and disappointments at various companies are just doing what they have to in order to get by.

On one hand, I wish I had a quick and easy answer. On the other hand, I am highly suspicious of quick and easy answers. In either case, I don't think this is something easily solved, but I do think that the solution has to come from the top. Companies can't expect employees to feel dedicated to the company if management isn't dedicated to the employees. Or it could be that management just doesn't care.

Write to Carlton Vogt at ethics_matters@infoworld.com. To discuss any of these issues, you can go to the Ethics Matters forum at www.infoworld.com/forums/ethics