Weblog of Vikram Karve - science

Ethical Fitness by Vikram Karve

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 17:15:00 +0530

ETHICAL FITNESS By VIKRAM KARVE Ethical Fitness – Part 1 When recruiting new people, or promoting/appointing persons to senior / sensitive positions, a number of attributes ( Hard Skills and Soft Skills) like Professional Competence, Managerial Proficiency, Domain-specific or Technical skills, and pertinent soft skills comprising leadership, communication, behavioural and emotional aspects, and even physical and medical fitness are assessed, evaluated and given due consideration. But does anyone evaluate a candidate’s Ethical Fitness before recruitment or appointment? No, I am not talking about the routine verification of antecedents or background integrity checks. I am talking of assessing Ethical Fitness. Ethical fitness refers to ensuring that people are in proper moral shape to recognize and address ethical dilemmas. Ensuring Ethical fitness in a proactive manner will result in preventive, rather than corrective, Ethical Management. Before launching any inquiry pertaining to the concept of Ethical Fitness, it is necessary to explore the moral dimension. Moral development is a prerequisite to ethical behaviour; in fact, a sine qua non for ethical fitness. Kohlberg offers a handy framework for delineating the stage each of us has reached with respect to personal moral development. Stage 1. Physical consequences determine moral behaviour. At this stage of personal moral development, the individual’s ethical behaviour is driven by the decision to avoid punishment or by deference to power. Punishment is an automatic response of physical retaliation. The immediate physical consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. Such moral behaviour is seen in boarding schools, military training academies etc. where physical punishment techniques are prevalent with a view to inculcate the attributes of obedience and deference to power. The individual behaves in a manner akin to the Pavlovian dog. Stage 2. Individual needs dictate moral behaviour. At this stage, a person’s needs are the person’s primary ethical concern. The right action consists of what instrumentally satisfies your own needs. People are valued in terms of their utility. Example: “I will help him because he may help me in return – you scratch my back, I will scratch yours.” Stage 3. Approval of others determines moral behaviour. This stage is characterized by decision where the approval of others determines the person’s behaviour. Good behaviour is that which pleases or helps others within the group. The good person satisfies family, friends and associates. “Everybody is doing it, so it must be okay.” One earns approval by being conventionally “respectable” and “nice.” Sin is a breach of the expectations of the social order – “log kya kahenge?” is the leitmotif, and conformance with prevailing ‘stereotypes’ the order of the day. Stage 4. Compliance with authority and upholding social order are a person’s primary ethical concerns. “Doing one’s duty” is the primary ethical concern. Consistency and precedence must be maintained. Example: “I comply with my superior’s instructions because it is wrong to disobey my senior”. Authority is seldom questioned. “Even if I feel that something may be unethical, I will unquestioningly obey all orders and comply with everything my boss says because I believe that the boss is always right.” Stage 5. Tolerance for rational dissent and acceptance of rule by the majority becomes the primary ethical concern. Example: “ Although I disagree with her views. I will uphold her right to have them.” The right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights, and in terms of standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. (eg) The Constitution. The freedom of the individual should be limited by society only when it infringes upon someone else’s freedom. Stage 6. What is right is viewed as a matter of individual conscience, free choice and personal responsibility for the consequences. Example: “There is no external threat that can force me to make a decision that I consider morally wrong.” An individual who reaches this stage acts out of universal ethical principles. Moral development is in no way correlated with intellectual development or your position in the hierarchy or factors like rank/seniority/status/success. In the words of Alexander Orlov, on ex-KGB Chief, “Honesty and Loyalty may be often more deeply ingrained in the make-up of simple and humble people than in men of high position. A man who was taking bribes when he was a constable does not turn honest when he becomes the Chief of Police. The only thing that changes in the size of the bribe. Weakness of character and inability to withstand temptation remains with the man no matter how high he climbs.” Ethical traits accompany a man to the highest rungs of his career. In a nutshell the governing factors pertaining to six stages of moral development which determine Ethical fitness may be summarized as: FEAR – Stage 1 NEEDS – Stage 2 CONFORMANCE – Stage 3 COMPLIANCE – Stage4 CONSENSUS – Stage 5 CONSCIENCE & FREE WILL – Stage6 Before we try to delve into exploring how to evaluate Ethical Fitness, let us briefly ponder on the concepts of Ethical Susceptibility and Ethical Vulnerability. Ethical Susceptibility is your inability to avoid ethical dilemmas. Ethical Susceptibility is environment dependent (on external factors) like, for example, your job, your boss, colleagues and subordinates, or the persons around you, or even the ‘prevalent organizational culture’. Ethical Vulnerability is your inability to withstand succumbing in the given ethical dilemmas /situations. It is dependent on your internal stage of moral development in the given ethical situation. Whereas being in an ethical dilemma is not in your control, to act in an ethical manner in the prevailing situation is certainly in your control. Ethical vulnerability is a measure of the ease with which a man be ethically compromised, especially in an ethically poor climate. In situations where the ethical susceptibility is high, morally strong people (ethically non-vulnerable) should be appointed and conversely, only in jobs/situations where ethical susceptibility is low should ethically vulnerable persons be permitted. If the environment is not conducive, a person can intellectually reach stage 6 but deliberately remain morally at stage 4 as he may find that he has to sacrifice too much to reach stage 6. This can be particularly seen in most hierarchical organizations where most smart employees make an outward preference of being at stage 3 or 4 (Conformance and Compliance) in order to avoid jeopardizing their careers, even if internally they have achieved higher ethical states. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenic moral approach is at the heart of many ethical dilemmas people encounter in their professional lives and may result in internal stress due to ethical confusion. Whenever two individuals at different stages of moral development interact with each other, both of them try to force or maneuver the other into their own appreciation of the ethical situation, thus leading to conflict. In a formal hierarchical setup, the players in the chain may not be at similar stages of moral development thereby leading to dissonance in the system. Where the ethical susceptibility is high, morally strong people (less vulnerable) should be appointed and conversely, in only such jobs where ethical susceptibility is low should ethically weak persons be permitted. What is your stage of personal moral development? Be honest with yourself and recall the decisions you made in recent ethical situations. The six stages are valuable landmarks as they tell you approximately where you are and what changes you will have to make in yourself to move to a higher level of moral development. The ultimate goal is to engage in ethical decision making at stage 6. However, the level that you do reach will depend on your ethical commitment, your ethical consciousness and your ethical competence. Food for Thought What do you do if your boss is at a lower stage of moral development than you? Do you masquerade and make a pretence of being at the “appropriate” stage of what moral development and practice situational ethics to reap maximum benefits. This Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenic ‘situational ethics’ approach may cause your outer masquerade to turn into inner reality. Do you want that to happen? Think about it! To be continued…………. End of Part 1 of ETHICAL FITNESS By VIKRAM KARVE vikramkarve@sify.com

LPO

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:05:00 +0530

LPO - LIFE PROCESS OUTSOURCING

( a fiction short story )

VIKRAM KARVE

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, while I am loafing on

Main Street

, in Pune, I meet an old friend of mine.

“Hi!” I say. “Hi,” he says, “where to?” “Aimless loitering,” I say, “And you?” “I’m going to work.” “Work? This early? I thought your shift starts in the evening, or late at night. You work at a call center don’t you?” “Not now. I quit. I’m on my own now.” “On your own? What do you do?” “LPO.” “LPO? What’s that?” “Life Process Outsourcing.” “Life Process Outsourcing? Never heard of it!” “You’ve heard of Business Process Outsourcing haven’t you?” “BPO? Outsourcing non-core business activities and functions?” “Precisely. LPO is similar to BPO. There it’s Business Processes that are outsourced, here it’s Life Processes.” “Life Processes? Outsourced?” “Why don’t you come along with me? I’ll show you.” Soon we are in his office. It looks like a mini call center. A young attractive girl welcomes us. “Meet Rita, my Manager,” my friend says, and introduces us. Rita looks distraught, and says to my friend, “I’m not feeling well. Must be viral fever.” “No problem. My friend here will stand in.” “What? I don’t have a clue about all this LPO thing!” I protest. “There’s nothing like learning on the job! Rita will show you.” “It’s simple,” Rita says, in a hurry. “See the console. You just press the appropriate switch and route the call to the appropriate person or agency.” And with these words she disappears. It’s the shortest training I have ever had in my life. And so I plunge into the world of Life Process Outsourcing; or LPO as they call it. It’s all very simple. Working people don’t seem to have time these days, but they have lots of money; especially those double income couples, IT nerds, MBA hot shots, finance wizards; just about everybody in the modern rat race. ‘Non-core Life Activities’, for which they neither have the inclination or the time – outsource them; so you can maximize your work-time to rake in the money and make a fast climb up the ladder of success. “My daughter’s puked in her school. They want someone to pick her up and take her home. I’m busy in a shoot and just can’t leave,” a creative ad agency type says. “Why don’t you tell your husband?” I say. “Are you crazy or something? I’m a single mother.” “Sorry ma’am. I didn’t know. My sympathies and condolences.” “Condolences? Who’s this? Is this LPO?” “Yes ma’am,” I say, press the button marked ‘children’ and transfer the call, hoping I have made the right choice. Maybe I should have pressed ‘doctor’. Nothing happens for the next few moments. I breathe a sigh of relief. A yuppie wants his grandmother to be taken to a movie. I press the ‘movies’ button. ‘Movies’ transfers the call back, “Hey, this is for movie tickets; try ‘escort services’. He wants the old hag escorted to the movies.” ‘Escort Services’ are in high demand. These guys and girls, slogging in their offices minting money, want escort services for their kith and kin for various non-core family processes like shopping, movies, eating out, sight seeing, marriages, funerals, all types of functions; even going to art galleries, book fairs, exhibitions, zoos, museums or even a walk in the nearby garden. A father wants someone to read bedtime stories to his small son while he works late. A busy couple wants proxy stand-in ‘parents’ at the school PTA meeting. An investment banker rings up from Singapore; he wants his mother to be taken to pray in a temple at a certain time on a specific day. Someone wants his kids to be taken for a swim, brunch, a play and browsing books and music. An IT project manager wants someone to motivate and pep-talk her husband, who’s been recently sacked, and is cribbing away at home demoralized. He desperately needs someone to talk to, unburden himself, but the wife is busy – she neither has the time nor the inclination to take a few days off to boost the morale of her depressed husband when there are deadlines to be met at work and so much is at stake. The things they want outsourced range from the mundane to the bizarre; life processes that one earlier enjoyed and took pride in doing or did as one’s sacred duty are considered ‘non-core life activities’ now-a-days by these highfalutin people. At the end of the day I feel illuminated on this novel concept of Life Process Outsourcing, and I am about to leave, when suddenly a call comes in. “LPO?” a man asks softly. “Yes, this is LPO. May I help you?” I say. “I’m speaking from Frankfurt Airport. I really don’t know if I can ask this?” he says nervously. “Please go ahead and feel free to ask anything you desire, Sir. We do everything.” “Everything?” “Yes, Sir. Anything and everything!” I say. “I don’t know how to say this. This is the first time I’m asking. You see, I am working 24/7 on an important project for the last few months. I’m globetrotting abroad and can’t make it there. Can you please arrange for someone suitable to take my wife out to the New Year’s Eve Dance?” I am taken aback but quickly recover, “Yes, Sir.” “Please send someone really good, an excellent dancer, and make sure she enjoys and has a good time. She loves dancing and I just haven’t had the time.” “Of course, Sir.” “And I told you – I’ve been away abroad for quite some time now and I’ve got to stay out here till I complete the project.” “I know. Work takes top priority.” “My wife. She’s been lonely. She desperately needs some love. Do you have someone with a loving and caring nature who can give her some love? I just don’t have the time. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?” I let the words sink in. This is one call I am not going to transfer. “Please give me the details, Sir,” I say softly into the mike. As I walk towards my destination with a spring in my step, I feel truly enlightened. Till this moment, I never knew that ‘love’ was a non-core life process worthy of outsourcing. Long Live Life Process Outsourcing! Life Process Outsourcing (LPO) (a fiction short story) by VIKRAM KARVE vikramkarve@sify.com