Link: http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/05309

Good interview with Daniel Yankelovich in this month's strategy+business magazine (the commercial Booz Allen Hamilton publication). Here are some of the highlights from the first part of the interview (you need to register to read the whole article, but it is available online):

Our firm does an annual study of public attitudes in the US. We asked "can you trust businesspeople to do the right thing most all of the time?". In 2002, 36 percent of those polled said Yes. In 2005 it's 31 percent. The last time we saw lows like that was in the 1970's.

When people can rationalize their work as positive and ethical, they can do the most unscrupulous things while feeling honorable about them. I'm always appalled at how unethical university officials can be. They believe that "we are good people, therefore by definition, everything we do is good". And then they do things that would make "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap blush with shame. Similarly, when "shareholder value" became a quasi-ethical rationale for self-enrichment and cheating in the 1990's, that gave businesspeople who took part in this a feeling of self-justification.

In general, loyalty to customers and employees is now perceived as a one-way street. Companies are perceived as demanding loyalty, but they then outsource jobs, leave towns, and lay people off even when the company is doing well. Citizens and consumers have come to see these practices as meaning that the company doesn't give a damn about either customers or employees.

Only 20 per cent of the employees we survey say that they are giving the very best that they can to their jobs. And the longer people have stayed at their employer, the lower their committment tends to be.

In times of high suspicion, leaders are presumed guilty and all sorts of rotten motives are attributed to any ambiguous action. Business leaders no longer get the benefit of the doubt that they ordinarily enjoy from the public. This can carry all the way to the destruction of the firm. Think of Arthur Andersen.

Most American corporate leaders do not equate stewardship with their company's growth. And I think I understand why. Consumers learn that General Electric has done some wonderful things for Zambia. The reaction is "that's nice". But they still reach for the Westinghouse light bulb that costs 5 cents less. Business is familiar with that reality.

In 1999, I conducted a 50th anniversary survey of the Hardvard Business School class of 1949. They were mostly in their 70's. The guiding principles that they used when making business decisions were articulated using phrases like "work hard" "live by the rules", "distinguish right from wrong", and "practice self-discipline and self-sacrifice". That's enlightened self-interest.
These attitudes were replaced in the 1960's and 1970's by unenlightened self-interest: win at any cost. Strip away regulations and constraints. Anything that isn't illegal is OK. Conflict of interest is not a real issue, except for a few straightlaced dummies. Everybody bends the rules.
Someody caught in an ethically questionable situation would then say "well I didn't do anything wrong - I didn't break the law". For somebody of my generation, ethics doesn't have anything to do with breaking the law. Essentially, there was a dumbing-down of morality that happened in the 1960's and 1970's.