Archive for the ‘scandal’ Category
Surfing Porn at Work
Filed under: employees, internet, privacy, productivity, scandal, sex |
Comments (4) As someone once said, ‘let he among you who has a free hand cast the first stone.’
Canadian Business recently reported that the head of Houston’s public transit agency has been suspended (for a week) for using the agency’s internet connection to look at porn.
This sort of conflict is likely to become increasingly common, since the only thing more ubiquitous in office settings than boredom are high-quality internet connections. And I suspect that under-prepared employers are likely to continue overreact, for no particularly good reason.
It seems to me that the point here should not be about porn; the point should be whether personal web-surfing at the office is allowed at all. There’s all kinds of deviant, transgressive, and socially controversial stuff on the web. Porn, per se, is far from the worst. So surfing the web for non-business purposes should either be allowed, or not. Either could well be a reasonable policy. A company can reasonably forbid use of company internet for personal purposes, just as most forbid use of corporate stationary or corporate premises by employees who are moonlighting. On the other hand, a company might reasonably allow a certain amount of personal usage as akin to making the occasional personal call on a company phone. But if employees are not allowed to use company internet for personal (including entertainment) purposes, that should be a clearly-stated policy.
There are of course a couple of circumstances in which an employer would have a legitimate interest in limiting the kind of stuff employees access online. One is size. If the employee is downloading large porn files (say, entire movies), that kind of thing could have an impact on the firm’s bandwidth usage, something that could cost money or just slow down internet access for employees engaged in legitimate work. Of course, the same would go for employees downloading the latest episode of Breaking Bad on iTunes. The second circumstance would be if there is a chance that the download would be visible and reflect badly on the company. If for some reason the fact that you’re surfing porn at work is liable to come to the attention of people outside the company, then, reactions to porn being as variable as they are, you should avoid drawing potentially unwanted attention to your company that way.
But in general, at least, the fact that it’s porn you’re looking at on your break, behind a closed office door, shouldn’t much matter to your employer.
None of this is to say, of course, that surfing porn at work is a good idea. It’s generally pretty dumb, especially if there’s any chance at all that co-workers are going to see and be offended. After all, we’re talking about the office, not your own living room. And so while employers have reason to allow their employees a certain amount of latitude, employees have reason to exercise a certain amount of discretion.
Should a Catholic Charity Take Money from Hooters?
Filed under: brands, charity, marketing, philanthropy, protest, scandal |
Comments (5) This is twice in two weeks that I’ve blogged about Hooters. I swear it’s a coincidence.
From MSNBC: Catholic charity says ‘no’ to Hooters fundraiser
St. Patrick Center, a Catholic charity that provides assistance to homeless people, has canceled a Thursday fundraising “Dine and Donate” event with a downtown Hooters restaurant after drawing complaints that such a collaboration wasn’t in keeping with the Christian faith….
This is not exactly an isolated incident. Charities of all kinds have to decide, on a pretty much constant basis, who they’ll accept money from and who they want to associate with. In some cases, the struggle is an internal one; in other cases, it’s the result of external criticism. (Just look at the criticism UNICEF faced for making a deal with Cadbury.)
It’s worth pointing out that a charity faces two different issues, here. One is simply the source of money. A charity might consider money from certain sources as ill-gotten gains. In such cases, the money from certain sources is going to be unwelcome, even if donated very discretely. In other cases, the issue is publicity. Some charities might be willing to take money from anyone, in principle, but worry about the impact of having their name associated with — well, with Hooters for example. These two issues (dirty money and a dirty reputation) are separable, at least in principle. But secrets are pretty hard to keep secret, especially in an era in which transparency is valued and in which corporate donors are relatively eager to publicize their good deeds to spit-shine their image. So really, the key concern is liable to be reputation.
And in terms of reputation, the anything-goes strategy seemingly suggested by some idealists is likely to be fatal to just about any charity. Those who think it’s “obvious” that St. Patrick Center, for example, should be happy and eager to take Hooters’ money should ask themselves: if Hooters is OK, how about the local strip club? How about a hardcore porn magazine? I’m not at all saying those various enterprises are all alike, in all morally-relevant ways. I’m just pointing out that most people will see some place where they would like a line drawn. And ethics bleeds into prudence here. Most charities have reputation and goodwill as their only real capital. A company that makes cars can recover from scandal by, well, making good cars. You don’t have to love the company to love the cars. But an organization whose only real asset is its reputation — well, sully the reputation and you’re pretty much sunk.
But then, neither can your typical cash-strapped charity afford to be too prissy about sources of cash. Look too closely at any donor and you’re very likely to find skeletons in the closet.
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Thanks to Tara Ceranic for showing me this story.
Should Rioters be Fired?
Filed under: crime, employees, law, privacy, risk, scandal, trust |
Comments (5) The post-Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver last week have generated a minor landslide of commentary. Much of it has focused on just who the malefactors were. In an age of social media, this has amounted to more than mere speculation: the identities of quite a few of the trouble-makers have come to light. Those who participated in the riots have thus brought very public shame upon themselves and their city. But what about the shame brought upon their employers?
Over at the “Double Hearsay” law blog, the question is asked from a legal point of view: Can employers fire Vancouver rioters? The short version of the legal analysis there is this. Any employer can fire an employee “without cause” as long as they give proper notice. In order to fire without giving a couple weeks’ notice, an employer has to have “cause:”
Generally speaking, an employee can be fired for his private conduct if that conduct is “wholly incompatible” with the proper discharge of his employment duties, or if it would tend to prejudice the employer….
The latter possibility is the relevant one here. If an employee participates in a riot and is widely known a) to have participated in shameful behaviour and b) to be your employee, then the employee has effectively done something “prejudicial” (i.e., likely to negatively effect your business).
OK, so that’s the legal side. Labour law draws a reasonably clear line around what you as an employer can do, and what the court will support your having done. But that still leaves open the question, should you even attempt to fire an employee who you know to have participated in a riot, say like the recent one in Vancouver or last year’s at the G20 in Toronto?
Here are a few quick considerations:
1) The legal issue of an employee behaving in a way that is “prejudicial” to the employer is also of course a very reasonable ethical consideration. A riot like the one in Vancouver is accompanied by significant public outrage, and guilt by association is a very real problem. In many industries, a business lives or dies by its reputation. As Warren Buffett has said, “Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.”
2) By participating — even somewhat passively, let’s say — in a riot, an employee reveals quite a lot about his own character and judgment. Do you really want someone with that little judgment working for you? Your company, no matter how laid back its corporate culture, has some sort of authority structure. It’s fair to ask just how suitable an employee is to work within any authority structure when they’ve publicly egged on another human being in burning cop cars or assaulting firefighters.
3) Even from an ethical point of view, the legal notion of “due process” is relevant. So if you’re considering firing someone for taking part in a riot, you can’t in all fairness do so based on mere hearsay, or without giving him a chance to defend himself. The right process is at least as important as the right outcome.
4) Finally, it is worth considering whether there are alternatives to firing. Maybe being laid off for a few weeks is sufficient. Or perhaps the employee can demonstrate his contrition by doing volunteer work. But it should be remembered that the solution has to fit the reason for firing in the first place. If your worry is that participation in a riot demonstrates a fundamental lack of judgment, then volunteer work isn’t going to erase that worry.
As a lawyer friend of mine put it, “rioting seems to strike at the core of social order.” And social order is at the core of business. It’s not unreasonable to think that participation in a riot is a disqualification for employment — but such a conclusion still has to be implemented prudently and fairly.
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Thanks to Dan Michaluk for tweeting this story and bringing it to my attention.
Want to Avoid Scandal at the Top? Hire a Woman!
Filed under: boards, CEOs, character, discrimination, scandal, sex |
Comments (1) There’s an antiquated quip / greeting-card slogan / bumper sticker that says, “Sometimes the best man for the job is a woman.” I say “antiquated” because in 2011, we all know that very often — let’s say half the time — the best person for the job is a woman. That’s far beyond “sometimes.” But there’s one job-related talent that seems to make women especially qualified for positions of senior leadership, and that is their apparent ability to avoid bringing themselves, and their organizations, into disrepute by involving themselves scandals.
See this story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, for the NY Times: When it Comes to Scandal, Girls Won’t Be Boys
Female politicians rarely get caught up in sex scandals. Women in elective office have not, for instance, blubbered about Argentine soul mates (see: Sanford, Mark); been captured on federal wiretaps arranging to meet high-priced call girls (Spitzer, Eliot); resigned in disgrace after their parents paid $96,000 to a paramour’s spouse (Ensign, John) or, as in the case of Mr. Weiner, blasted lewd self-portraits into cyberspace….
Now, Stolberg’s piece is about male vs female political leadership. But the same point can be made in the corporate world. What do the names Skilling, Madoff, Boesky, and Hurd all have in common? Well in addition to referring to persons implicated in major scandals, they all have the title “Mr” in front of them. Indeed, it’s relatively hard to name a female CEO or other senior executive who was culpable in a headline-making scandal. Martha Stewart’s name comes to mind, but her insider trading had nothing to do with her executive position. (And sure, Oprah Winfrey, CEO of Harpo Productions, gave Jenny McCarthy her own TV show, but that’s a different kind of scandal.)
Of course, we have to be careful with letting anecdotes stand in for stats, here. The first and most obvious reason why my male CEOs are involved in more scandals is because there are more CEOs. According to the Globe and Mail, “Only 17 per cent of corporate officers and 13 per cent of directors at Canada’s top 500 private and public sector companies are female.” According to Catalyst (a nonprofit aimed at expanding business opportunities for women), only 30 of The Financial Post 500 companies are headed by women. In the US, the numbers seem even lower: as of 2009, there were just 13 female CEOs in the Fortune 500.
Still, it does seem that males are liable to be involved in scandals out of proportion to their statistical dominance in the C-suite. Male CEOs seem more likely to behave badly than female ones. Does this have anything to do with the documented correlation between testosterone and financial risk-taking? Hard to say. But it wouldn’t be that surprising if a tendency toward risky behaviour in one domain were correlated with a tendency toward risky behaviour in another.
So should boards of directors actually discriminate against men, given the male tendency to become embroiled in scandals? No. For one thing, the fact that “more” male CEOs than female CEOs seem to get into hot water has to be put into context: very few CEOs of either sex get themselves into the kind of trouble that makes headlines. So to say that men are more likely to get into trouble is like saying that the risk of getting hit by lightning is higher than the risk of shark attack: both risks are in fact tiny. And besides, we probably don’t want to advocate discrimination against individuals based on their membership in a group that merely has a statistical tendency towards a particular weakness. But then again, such a statistically-driven hiring bias might well be better than the entirely baseless bias that results in their being so few female CEOs in the first place.
The Business Ethics Blog 