Archive for the ‘character’ Category
What’s Your Duty When Your Boss is Out of Control?
Filed under: CEOs, character, employees, management, trust, Uncategorized, virtue, whistleblowing, workplace ethics, workplace safety |
Comments (5) What are an employee’s responsibilities when the boss is out of control — when he or she is self-destructive, doing damage to the organization, or both? It’s one of the hardest problems of workplace ethics.
A case in point is the staff at Toronto’s City Hall, who have and continue to labour under Mayor Rob Ford, a mayor whose strange and erratic behaviour must make continuing the city’s work all but impossible. And bad news continues to pile up for Ford. This past week Toronto Police revealed that they were in possession of a certain video, one that apparently shows the mayor smoking crack, a video the existence of which the mayor had previously denied. And then details surfaced regarding Ford’s behaviour on St Patrick’s day of last year, when he showed up ‘very intoxicated,’ both at City Hall and in public.
Ford has been, in effect, a train wreck. But not exactly merely a private train wreck. He’s been a train wreck in public, and at the office. This raises an interesting question for the people who have worked with him. What are your responsibilities when the boss is a mess? Should you cover up and enable? Should you confront? Should you keep your head down? Staff at City Hall may be facing a particularly public form of this question, but it’s a problem faced in many workplaces.
Junior employees typically have the most to lose, so let’s deal with them first. The first thing that needs to be said is that junior employees aren’t always obligated to speak up, especially when speaking up puts them in personal or professional peril. For all our talk about ‘speaking truth to power,’ there’s a limit to how much we can ask people to sacrifice. It can be OK to keep your head down. This is a question of ethics, but ethics isn’t about always doing the maximum; it’s about deciding the right course of action, based on a range of relevant considerations. And keeping your job is one of those.
The corollary to the permission to keep your head down, though, is an obligation to learn from the situation, to figure out how you might help to avoid such situations in the future, and to resolve never to put junior employees in such a bind when you yourself are at the top of the ladder.
Of course, if your boss’s antics are putting lives at risk, that’s an ethical consideration that should probably outweigh your own concern with staying employed. Valuing your own job above the public safety implies a level of egocentrism that is incompatible with our general social responsibilities.
But an employee’s level of responsibility for the boss varies with power and proximity. A senior advisor with a lot of influence has a responsibility to use it. When you’ve got the boss’s ear, you owe it to him or her to give good guidance, even what it’s advice he or she does not want to hear. But if the boss won’t listen, and if your position gives you the relevant authority, you should take action. Just what action to take will depend on what options are available to you, given your organization’s governance structure.
Most crucial of all is to remember that you owe your primary allegiance not to the boss, but to the organization. With very few exceptions, an employee’s duty is to the mission of the organization as a whole. In normal circumstances, it’s up to the boss to coordinate and motivate employees in pursuit of that mission. But when the boss strays far off mission, or wanders into utter ineffectualness, then there’s justification for deviating from the usual chain of command. Good leaders — ones who are aware of their own foibles and who are focused on the good of the organization — will make it clear to their employees in advance that that’s what they would want them to do, should the need ever arise.
University Frosh Rape Chant Poses Leadership Challenge
Filed under: accountability, CEOs, character, decision-making, economics, safety, values, virtue |
Comments (1) Last week, a scandal sprouted on Canada’s east coast, when it was discovered that part of Frosh Week activities at Saint Mary’s University (SMU), in Halifax, included the chanting of a song promoting the sexual assault of underage girls. The news broke shortly after a video of the chant was posted online. Condemnation was broad and swift. Some were angry at the students. Others were angry at university administrators. Others simply lamented the sad state of “youth today” and the perpetuation of the notion that it is OK to glorify rape.
As it happens, I taught for about a decade in SMU’s Philosophy Department; I still have friends who teach there. I know some of the administrators involved in this case, and have more than a little affection for the place, generally.
My own particular scholarly interest in this case, though, has to do with the ethics of leadership. I think the events described above provide a good case-study in the ethics of leadership. That’s not to say that it is an example of either excellent or terrible leadership. But rather, that it’s a case that illustrates the challenges of leadership, and an opportunity to reflect on the ethical demands that fall on leaders in particular, as a result of the special role they play.
Two key leaders were tasked with handling the SMU situation. One was Jared Perry, President of the Saint Mary’s University Student Association. Perry has now resigned. Reflecting on his error, Perry said “It’s definitely the biggest mistake I’ve made throughout my university career and throughout my life.” The other leader is SMU president Colin Dodds. For his part, Dodds has condemned the chant and the chanters, and has launched an internal investigation and a task force.
A leader facing a crisis like this needs to balance multiple objectives.
On one hand, a leader needs to safeguard the integrity and reputation of the organization. Of course, just how to do that can be a vexing question. Do you do that by effecting a ‘zero tolerance’ policy, or by a more balanced approach? Do you focus on enforcement, or education?
A leader also needs to deal appropriately with the individuals involved. In this case, that means offering not just critique (or more neutrally, “feedback”) to the students involved, but also offering compassion and advice in the wake of what everyone agrees is a regrettable set of circumstances. In particular, a situation like this involves a “lead the leaders” dynamic. It is an opportunity for university leaders to teach something specifically about leadership to the student leaders involved. It is also, naturally, yet another opportunity for university leaders to learn something about leadership themselves; unfortunately, that lesson must take the form of learning-by-painfully-doing.
Finally, a leader needs to be responsive to reasonable social expectations. In this case, those expectations are complex. On one hand, society wants institutions entrusted with educating the young provides a suitably safe setting, and arguably one that fosters the right kinds of enculturation. On the other hand, society wants — or should want — universities to be places where freedom of speech is maximized and where problems are addressed through intellectual discourse. Indeed, my friend Mark Mercer (in SMU’s philosophy department) has argued that what the university ought to demonstrate, in such a situation, is its commitment to intellectual inquiry and to the idea that when someone uses words we disagree with, we should respond not with punishment but with open discussion and criticism.
Balancing those objectives is a complex leadership challenge. And there’s no algorithmic way to balance such competing objectives. But one useful way to frame the leadership challenge here is to consider the sense in which, in deciding how to tackle such a challenge, a leader is not just deciding what to do. He or she is also deciding what kind of leader to be, and what kind of institution he or she will lead. Each such choice, after all, makes an incremental difference in who you are. It is at moments like this that leaders build institutions, just as surely as if they were laying the bricks themselves.
The Value of Ethical Leadership
On the occasion of the launch of the Jim Pattison Ethical Leadership Program, a new effort for which I’m the director at the Ted Rogers School of Management, I want to take some time to talk a little bit about the program and ethical leadership.
At the program we’re aiming to go beyond the “mom and apple pie” aspects of ethical leadership, to look not just at the values and skills of ethical leaders, but also at the particular institutional mechanisms that ethical leaders use to shape institutional culture and to put their vision into practice throughout business organizations.
Leaders are by their very nature fascinating people. The news is replete with stories of the victories and foibles of leaders in the worlds of business and politics and entertainment. From an ethical point of view, the decisions they make and the values to which they subscribe are disproportionately important. Not only do they make crucial decisions, but they influence the decisions of others, both directly through the instructions they give and indirectly through the examples they set and the atmosphere they foster.
So ethical leadership is a compelling issue—even among those who don’t bother to think critically about the topic. It is all too tempting to think of ethical leadership as a question only for CEOs or for top-tier executives. And while I have high hopes and high expectations of my undergrad business students, not all of them will go on to leadership positions at that level. But what I’ve been teaching my students is this: leadership is an activity that goes on at all levels of a business organization. Whether you’re leading a publishing empire or a small sales team, you face the challenges implied by the term “ethical leadership.” You are faced with not just doing the right thing, but also with helping others to do the right thing and building organizational contexts that will foster people in doing the right thing.
The question, of course, is whether a program like ours can make a difference. And I think it can. And the reason has to do with how I understand the goal of ethics education itself.
I’ve long argued that an ethics course at a business school isn’t designed to make you into an ethical person, to teach you to be good. If making you ethical was the aim, then ethics education would be either redundant or hopeless: critics are probably right to think that a basic understanding of right and wrong is either there by the time kids enter university or it isn’t.
Ethics courses should assume a basic desire to do the right thing, and focus on giving students the ability to understand the special kinds of ethical issues that arise in business, along with the tools of teamwork and leadership that let them put their ethical understanding into action.
Students don’t come to business school to be educated on how to be employees. They come to learn how to be managers, and a manager with vision is what we call a leader.
Feeding the Hand that Bites You
Filed under: adversarial ethics, advertising, awards, capitalism, character, decision-making |
Comments (1) Two stories surfaced this week about companies faced with handing out prizes to businesses whose interests were contrary to their own.
One company graciously gave credit where credit was due. The other declined to do so. Is it ethical to decline to feed the hand that bites you?
The company that declined to recognize another’s achievements was CBS, which forced subsidiary CNET to alter the results of the ‘Best of CES‘ award it gives out after the annual consumer electronics show. CNET’s editors had intended to give top honours to the Dish Network’s “Hopper”, a set-top box that allows viewers to skip commercials. As reported here, CBS has been in a legal battle with the Dish Network over the Hopper, which CBS sees as threatening its stream of ad revenue. The CBS v. Dish lawsuit was cited by CBS as the reason for withdrawing the Hopper from consideration for the CNET award.
And on the other hand: the company that went ahead and gave an award to a competitor was USA Today. The newspaper, you see, had run a contest to reward excellence in print advertising. And the winner, ironically, was Google — the search giant that is cited as one of the key reasons why print advertising is on the decline.
Because both US Today and CNET are media outlets, the most obvious question here has to do with editorial independence. Media companies are in a special situation, ethically. Most of them need to earn a living, but most of them also proclaim a public-service mission, and along with that mission goes a commitment to journalistic independence. Of course, giving out awards is closer to a news outlet’s editorial function, and editorial content has never been as cleanly divorced from commercial concerns as pure news is supposed to be. But if awards handed out by media outlets are to mean anything, they need to remain pretty independent, and meddling by a parent company is bound to cast doubt on editorial independence pretty generally. CBS’s meddling in the CNET’s award has already led one reporter, Greg Sandoval, to resign.
Setting aside the media ethics angle, we might appeal to basic principles of fairness. If you hold a contest, then all eligible contestants deserve a fair shake. If you don’t want to allow your enemies to compete, it’s probably fair if you state that transparently up front. But, other things being equal, everyone deserves an equitable opportunity to compete and win. That’s basic ethics.
Then again, it’s worth reminding ourselves that business is fundamentally adversarial, and the rules that apply in adversarial domains just aren’t going to be the same as those that apply in cozier sorts of interaction. So, in the present case, we might say that the need to observe basic fairness in the treatment of contestants is legitimately overridden by the right not to harm your own interests by advertising a competitor’s product.
But the right to protect your company’s interests needs to be balanced against the kind of signal you send when you take a stand or announce a policy in this regard. What has CBS told us about itself as a company? What kind of outfit has USA Today shown itself to be? This isn’t just a matter of PR; it’s a matter of who CBS and USA Today are as companies. In many respects, you are what you are perceived to be, and what you are perceived to be reflects the actions you take in public.
Lance Armstrong: How the Mighty (Book) Has Fallen
Filed under: books, character, competition, corruption, pharma, scandal, sports, values |
Comments (2) 
Lance Armstrong: It’s Not About the Bike.
The picture above is one I took, of a box of free books a neighbour of mine left outside on the sidewalk. When I ran by one recent Saturday afternoon, only one book remained: Armstrong’s book. Funny but sad, I thought. When I passed again roughly 24 hours later, the box looked exactly the same: just one book, unwanted even for free. I snapped a picture.
(Another perspective on the book’s value: Amazon is still selling the book, for about $11, though you can also buy a used copy via Amazon for just a penny — in other words, for the cost of shipping it.)
The book, as you can surmise from reading any of a number of reviews, tells the story of Armstrong’s rise to prominence in cycling, his battle with and ultimately triumph over cancer, through to his victory at the 1999 Tour de France. It is, in short, the story that made him a hero to so many.
We are now all but certain that Armstrong’s meteoric rise to the pinnacle of the cycling world was aided by pharmaceuticals, a sophisticated and rigorous doping program that he not only stuck to but bullied his teammates into adopting. Should he still be regarded as a hero in any sense? And is his book still worth reading? We all know now that the book left out crucial details, but as far as I’ve heard there’s no reason to doubt the basics: he had cancer, he had surgery, he “beat” the cancer, he trained hard, he won the Tour de France. So the basics of the hero story remain as valid today as they were when the book came out over ten years ago. So why is the book now effectively — literally! — consigned to the trash-heap?
For some, the explanation might be simple personal disillusionment. When a hero falls, he falls really hard. So some who previously lionized Armstrong may not want even to think back upon what they now see as their own naiveté. Others may not want to be ‘inspired’ by someone they see as a liar: perhaps they just don’t want to listen to life lessons and inspiring stories, no matter how useful, told by someone who cheated and then lied about it.
The best answer, I think, lies in the loss of trust. Armstrong’s message was one of hope and courage, and it can only really bring hope and courage to the reader if the reader trusts Armstrong’s words. Armstrong’s message was like that of the kind, experienced physician in whom the cancer patient puts his or her faith. “We’re going to take good care of you,” says the physician. Armstrong’s message: You too can triumph over adversity. Neither messenger can guarantee results: surviving cancer is much more a matter of luck, and good medical care, than it is of gutsy determination. But the other half of the message — the reassurance, the comfort, the message of hope — requires that the patient put their faith in the messenger. And that is the part of his own message that Armstrong so effectively killed.
Ethics Lessons from Toronto Mayor’s Ouster from Office
Filed under: accountability, character, codes of ethics, conflict of interest, corruption, governance, government, leadership, pollution, taxpayers, values |
Comments (1) Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been found guilty of violating the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, and will be removed from office. The much-anticipated court decision was handed down this morning.
Regrettably, this is unlikely the end of the story. Ford had announced, prior to the decision, his intention to run again should the judge remove him from office. The judge had the option to include, as part of Ford’s sentence, a prohibition on running again, but opted not to do so.
Ford has plenty of detractors. Some don’t like his politics. Some question his aptitude for the job of mayor of Canada’s largest city. Others worry about his being implicated not just in one but in a string of conflict of interest violations. But he also has plenty of defenders — after all, there are an awful lot of people out there who voted for him, and many of them are sticking to their guns on that choice. So the debate will rage. Plenty of ink is sure to be spilled in by both camps in the wake of this decision. I’ll limit myself here to just two quick points. One is about leadership, and the other is about governance.
First, leadership. Whatever your views of Ford, and whatever your views about the severity of his breach of the Conflict of Interest Act, you pretty much have to agree that Ford demonstrated a disappointing lack of leadership ethics, here. Yes (as his lawyer pointed out) people do make mistakes, and even a mayor can be forgiven for an incidental breach of a rule now and then. But what’s particularly worrisome here is that Ford, who by all rights ought to be the guy who leads Council in understanding its ethical obligations, seems to be utterly clueless about them. And he doesn’t seem terribly worried about that, either. According to a report of the court proceedings, Ford “testified he never read the Conflict of Interest Act or the councillor orientation handbook. Nor did he attend councillor training sessions that covered conflicts of interest.”
My second point has to do with governance. As Marcus Gee pointed out in the Globe and Mail recently, bumping Ford from office might be a case of ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire.’ Turmoil is likely to ensue. Council is now faced with the choice of having someone else — someone not elected to be mayor — serve out the rest of Ford’s term, or spending several million dollars of taxpayer money to hold another election. The result of turfing Ford seems especially troubling when we compare Ford’s ethical cluelessness with the out-and-out corruption that has brought down mayors in other major cities.
But what was the alternative? A judge has no choice but to call ’em like he sees ’em. Ford violated important rules, and those rules say he should be removed from office. Note that the judge in this case would have had the same range of sentencing options if the dollar amount at the heart of this case had been $3.15 rather than $3,150. A more sane system would perhaps allow for a broader range of penalties. Examples could be found in other systems and at other levels of government. A fine? Censure? Limitation of future mayoral discretion? Mandatory ethics training? I don’t know the answer. But a governance system that allows a political leader to blunder this way and then throws a city into turmoil is not a good system. Principles matter, but so does the way we implement them.
Petraeus, Moralizing, & Leadership Obligations
This past Friday, David Petraeus, a retired 4-star general in the US Army resigned from his position as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He resigned because evidence had surfaced that he had had an extramarital affair.
On the surface, of course, this is just another example of a powerful man succumbing, as all too many seem to do, to the all too common temptation to betray his marital commitments. And, again on the surface, it raises questions about whether private foibles are sufficient reason to think a man unfit for public office. Petraeus himself, in his letter of resignation to President Obama, said he had shown “extremely poor judgment.” The question that always arises — remember Clinton/Lewinski? — is whether poor judgment in personal matters necessarily implied poor judgment in public matters, or whether instead the scandal really just amounts to a puerile bit of titillation.
But the fact is that Petraeus is not just another man, and not even just another man in a leadership position. He was, until November 9th, Director of the CIA, the most important intelligence organization on the planet. He was, in other words, one of the world’s most desirable candidates for blackmail. And so any transgression that could serve as fodder for blackmail is immediately amplified in magnitude. Clearly, marital infidelity is pretty high on that list. Someone in a position like the one Petraeus had has to stay squeaky clean, not for moralistic reasons, but for national security reasons.
And the seedier details that have been emerging seem to bear this worry out, at least to some extent. The woman with whom Petraeus is said to have had the affair, Paula Broadwell, is now said to have sent threatening letters to another woman who she saw as a rival for the general’s affections. That’s not to say that anything like blackmail was in the offing. But it suggests that the Petraeus/Broadwell affair had dark edges to it beyond your standard tale of marital infidelity.
There will surely be, in the coming weeks and months of analysis of this matter, plenty of talk about the demands of leadership and the character and integrity it requires. But what leadership at the highest level really requires is not just character, but an acute awareness of your own weaknesses — including weaknesses you share with the rest of the human population — and the ability to foresee and forestall the risks the flow from those.
Ethics on Wall Street: Hate the Player, Not the Game!
Filed under: accountability, adversarial ethics, capitalism, CEOs, character, compliance, corporations, corruption, employees, ethics, insider trading, white collar crime |
Comments (8) A recent survey of Wall Street executives paints a bleak picture of the moral tone of a central part of our economic system.
According to the survey (conducted for Labaton Sucharow LLP), 24 percent of respondents believe that financial professionals need to engage in unethical behaviour in order to get ahead. 26 percent report having observed some form of wrongdoing, and 16 percent suggested that they would engage in insider trading if they thought they could get away with it.
Two points are worth making, here.
First, some perspective. Far from alarming, I think the number produced by this survey are relatively encouraging. Indeed, the numbers are so encouraging that I can’t help but suspect unethical attitudes and behaviours were seriously underreported by respondents. Only 26 percent had seen something unethical? Seriously? That seems unlikely. And the fact that only 16 percent said they would engage in insider trading is also relatively benign. There are, after all, people who believe that insider trading isn’t unethical at all, and shouldn’t be illegal. They argue that insider trading just helps make public information that shouldn’t be private in the first place. I don’t think that point of view hold water, but the fact that it’s put forward with a straight face makes it pretty unsurprising that a small handful of Wall Street types are going to cling to the notion.
Second, a survey like this highlights the difference between our ethical evaluation of capitalists, on one hand, and our ethical evaluation of capitalism, on the other. One of the major virtues of the capitalist system is that it is supposed to be able to produce good outcomes even if participants aren’t always squeaky clean. In no way does it assume that all the players will be of the highest virtue. Adam Smith himself took a pretty dim view of businessmen. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.”
And yet despite his dim view of capitalists, Smith remained a great fan of capitalism — or rather (since the term “capitalism” hadn’t been coined yet) a fan of what he referred to as “a system of natural liberty.” The lesson here is that evidence (such as it is) of low moral standards on Wall Street shouldn’t make us panic. Perhaps it should make us shrug, and say, “Such is human nature.” The challenge is to devise systems that take the crooked timber of humanity and mould it in constructive ways. Governments need to take corporate motives as they are and devise regulations that encourage appropriate behaviour. And executives need to take the motives of their employees as they are and devise corporate structures — hierarchies, teams, incentive plans — that motivate those employees in constructive ways. In both cases, while the players should of course look inward at what motivates them, the rest of us should focus not on the players, but on the game.
Sandusky’s Lawyer & Business Ethics
Filed under: adversarial ethics, character, crime, economics, professionalism |
Comments (18) Just like a defence lawyer in a criminal trial, a CEO has a specific goal to achieve. The CEO’s goal is to turn a profit, and it’s a goal rooted as much a duty to society as it is a duty to shareholders. And, importantly, when it comes to both defence lawyers and CEOs, you don’t have to agree with their goals in order to value the role they play in the larger system.
The trial of former football coach Jerry Sandusky illustrates what I’m talking about.
Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer has an unenviable job. His job is to defend—vigorously and wholeheartedly—a man that pretty much everyone else has already assumed is guilty.
Joseph Amendola, lead defence lawyer for Sandusky, has taken on the task of defending the former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach against 52 charges of child sexual abuse. In the minds of many, this makes Amendola only slightly less worthy of scorn than his client. After all, how can anyone seriously defend a man against whom there is so much compelling evidence?
The catch here is that we cannot evaluate the ethics of a defence lawyer without looking at the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is the adversarial system within which the defence lawyer operates. Amendola isn’t just some guy defending a child molester; he’s a defence attorney playing his part in a system that places very specific ethical obligations on defence attorneys.
The point here isn’t really about the legal system. The point is that the people who play a role in a system don’t necessarily have to pursue the goals of the system directly. In fact, in some cases that would be downright counter-productive. Let’s assume, for example, that the goal of the criminal justice system is precisely what the name implies: justice. The fact that justice is the goal of the system absolutely doesn’t imply that every participant in the system has to pursue justice. Compare: a football team’s objective is to get the football into the opponent’s end-zone. But that doesn’t mean that every member of the team is trying to get the ball across that line. An Offensive Guard who focused on moving the ball would be failing at his job: his job is, pure and simple, to protect the quarterback.
What’s important in any complex institution—football team, system of justice, or a market — is that every ‘player’ do his part. Then if the institution is designed reasonably well, the sum total of the actions of various ‘players’ will result in the system that performs well as a whole. If all the players on a football team do their jobs well, the ball moves forward toward the end zone. If all the lawyers in a system of criminal justice do their jobs well, then more often than not the guilty will be punished and the innocent will go free.
So, Amendola is duty-bound to make Sandusky’s interests his first priority. But the reason is not that Sandusky deserves it. The reason is that the system as a whole requires it. The adversarial legal system can only have any hope of rendering justice if the parts of the system diligently play their roles.
The exact same principle applies to the profit-seeking behaviour of CEOs. As Joseph Heath points out in his scholarly work on this topic, the profit-seeking behaviour of companies is an essential element of the pricing function of the Market. When companies pursue profits in a competitive environment, it helps drive prices toward market-clearing levels. This helps ensure that supply of and demand for a given product settle at the socially-optimal level. So it is important, not just to shareholders but to society as a whole, that companies pursue profits. That is how companies and their CEOs play their role in producing the social benefits that flow from the market.
Of course, in the case of both defence lawyers and corporate executives, the obligation to pursue partisan goals is not unlimited. There are certain things you cannot do as a defence lawyer—suborning perjury, for example, or tampering with evidence. Such behaviour would reliably subvert the goals of the system. Similarly, there are things that an executive must not do in pursuit of profits. Figuring out which things those are—what the limits are on competitive behaviour in an adversarial market—is the very heart of business ethics.
Did Apple’s CEO Forego $75 million as a Matter of Principle?
There’s tone at the top, and then there’s tone at the top of the top. And when it comes to defining “top,” it’s hard to beat being the highest-paid CEO in the world, leading the most valuable company in the world. The man who occupies that post, of course, is Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook.
And recently, Cook made a pretty big move that might well do something to set the tone among high-end CEO’s. According to SEC filings, Cook reportedly has opted to take a pass on dividends he could have collected on over a million unvested shares. In total, that amounts to passing up about $75 million. Not that this is exactly going to leave Cook in the poorhouse — he’s paid a mind-boggling amount of money for the task of trying to fill Steve Jobs’s shoes. But still, it’s not trivial either. What should we make of it?
There are a couple of ways to think about this.
One has to do with shareholder confidence. Some have suggested that the decision is designed to show that Apple’s recent decision to pay a dividend wasn’t intended to benefit Cook himself. It is good for the investing public to know that the company is making decisions about things like dividends with the the best interest of shareholders in mind, rather than the best interests of the CEO. But then, Apple isn’t exactly suffering a crisis of shareholder confidence. If boosting the image of the company’s leadership is what you’re looking for, this might just be overkill.
But there’s another way to think of this, and that has to do with the good old-fashioned notion of honour. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I like to think that Cook’s decision might have something to do, as an unnamed source told the Telegraph, with setting an example for his fellow CEOs. Executive compensation has been in the spotlight almost continually for the last couple of years, and has even been the focal point of shareholder revolts. Maybe this is Cook’s way of saying, look, a high-end CEO doesn’t always have to squeeze every penny he can out of the company. And it’s entirely plausible, I think, that someone like Cook might make that decision — and send that signal — as a matter of principle.
“Honour” is the right moral category, here, because foregoing the cash is not something Cook is ethically obligated to do. He is fully within his rights, both legally and ethically, to take the dividend like other shareholders. But there’s arguably something good, something admirable, about attempting to shift the tone among high-end CEOs this way. It’s one thing to say that CEOs are overpaid. It’s quite another to set an example.
Will Cook’s move have any impact? Who knows. But it does seem like one more interesting attempt by the folks in Cupertino to get someone to “Think Different.”
The Business Ethics Blog 