Ethics Newsline®

by Rushworth Kidder

For the ethics community, the message from last week’s midterm election in the United States was intriguing. To be sure, voters sent a flurry of mixed messages. But on one point they spoke with surprising force: their concern over “moral and ethical standards.”

That phrase was used by Voter News Services in exit polls, where voters were asked “Which one issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for the U.S. House?” As the table in today’s “Statbyte” indicates, “education” led the pack at 20 percent. Cheek by jowl, at 19 percent, came “moral and ethical standards”–a long gallop from “economy/jobs” (14 percent), “taxes” (12 percent), and “social security” (12 percent).

For those of us who think ethics matters, that’s a comfort. It’s also not unexpected. In late August, the reputable and bipartisan “Battleground ‘98″ poll by the Tarrance Group and Lake Associates asked voters to identify the “most important” issue for “representatives in Washington to deal with.” In first place, with 22 percent, came “restoring moral values”–ahead of “improving education” (19 percent) and “reducing taxes and federal spending” (13 percent).

Watching similar polls over the years, I’ve noticed ethics hovering in the second or third position for the past decade. This survey finally put it over the top. But that was just because the questions were asked between August 24 and 26, right? When Clinton’s August 17 speech on his relationship to Monica Lewinsky was still fresh in everyone’s mind, right?

That may have been true in August. But it wasn’t so in November. The exit polls found only 5 percent of voters listed the “Clinton/Lewinsky matter” as the determining factor in their vote.

Then where did this emphasis on ethics come from? Short answer: demographics. Of those who voted with “moral and ethical standards” strongly in mind, 85 percent voted Republican. Only 12 percent voted Democrat.

Reasons? Take your pick: This is a nearly perfect topic for endless speculation. For the ethics community, however, asking “Why is this so?” is less important than asking “What do we do about it?”

And therein lies the warning. The exit poll confirms that the language of ethics continues to be the natural default position of conservatives rather than liberals. That’s not to say that conservatives are ethical and liberals are not–far from it. It’s simply that liberals seem more at home talking in terms of the core values themselves–compassion, fairness, respect–while conservatives are comfortable with a language that embraces larger overarching terms like “morals” and “values.”

That sets for us a two-fold challenge. First, the ethics community needs to make a conscious effort to distance itself from an archconservative language of moral imposition and ethical hegemony. Second, we need to find ways to be increasingly effective in crafting a persuasive, compelling language that makes the ethics conversation as appealing to liberals as to conservatives.

This is not simply an idle comment designed to help the ethics community position itself for greatest bipartisan appeal. It’s an early warning concerning one of the greatest dangers facing the entire ethics movement. If the language of ethics is co-opted by conservatives, the national momentum toward ethics that has been building so solidly in the past decade could effectively be lost. It won’t be lost because conservatives were somehow “wrong” about ethics, but simply because the entire topic will have descended into a merely partisan discussion. It could then be seen to have been merely a fad, a ploy, or a specious bit of intellectual dishonesty. And that would toll the knell for the ethics community and its growing network of corporate ethics programs, character education in the schools, public policy initiatives, and research-based think tanks.

How will we know we’ve succeeded? Two markers. First, ethics will remain at or near the top of the nation’s concern. Second, the yawning gap between liberals and conservatives on this issue will dwindle into statistical insignificance. When the entire nation is united in its priorities, and is comfortable using a common language to discuss them, the strategies for success can’t be far behind.

Comments and questions? Email Rushworth Kidder: rkidder@globalethics.org.

Gauging the proper level of punishment is one of the more complex areas ofethics and law. How much is enough? Is compensation sufficient, or areretribution and deterrence mandated?

In the instance of punitive damages in sex-bias cases, the answers will beforthcoming from the U.S. Supreme Court, and as we detail in this week’sedition of Business Ethics Newsline, the outcome could have major implicationsfor business officers and managers.

Other U.S.-based news from the world of ethics deals with a High Court rulingthat maintains the current threshold for OSHA-related injury cases; asettlement in a major bribery case; and a proposed measure to keep apparelmanufacturers from exploiting sweatshop labor.

We have several stories from the international desk: a conflict involvingprivately negotiated airline agreements that a European Commission officialclaims violate the spirit and letter of European Union rules; massive antismoking measures set to take effect in South Africa; and a dispute overweapons sales from Britain to Sierra Leone.

And we conclude the wrap of the week’s ethics headlines with a story about analleged computer-aided gasoline station fraud in California–where motoristsapparently discovered a gallon of gas doesn’t go as far as it used to–and astory about an ad in the Chicago Tribune that had a little too muchvisibility.

London-based correspondent E.B. Mills provides three analyses of evolvingethical issues in Britain: an ongoing sex scandal, a book on “corporateChrist,” and a claim by a British editor that people have become such liars it’s difficult to report the truth.

Finally, we offer our Ethics in the News feature, where we point you to an APstory about a former private eye who specializes in firing people when employersdon’t have the nerve or the stomach for the job.

WASHINGTON
Just hours after his old friend and ally Representative Bob Livingston (R-LA) announced he would seek the top job in Congress, Newt Gingrich announced Friday that he would likely step down, both from his post as Speaker of the House as well as his office as a U.S. representative. On Saturday, Gingrich made it official, saying he would defintely not return as Speaker when the House reconvenes, and would also not be likely to serve out his full congressional term.

Gingrich’s move comes amid growing dissatisfaction among many Republicans with the leadership’s campaign strategy in 1998.

In addition to Livingston, California representative Christopher Cox and Missouri representative James Talent are in the running for House Speaker. The GOP caucus will vote on its new leaders November 18.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week agreed to consider the case of awoman who was barred from receiving punitive damages despite winning her sexdiscrimination case against the American Dental Association (ADA), promising averdict in a case closely watched by businesses and workers’ rights advocates–both of whom contend that current legislation governing punitive damages istoo confusing.

A federal jury ruled that Carole Kolstad, an ADA executive, illegally wasdenied a 1992 promotion in favor of a male colleague who was “preselected”for the position, violating her constitutional right to freedom from sexualdiscrimination. The judge in that case allowed compensatory damages, butdenied punitive damages–a ruling upheld by a U.S. Appeals Court that saidthe ADA’s discrimination was too mild too warrant punitive damages, theAssociated Press reported.

Punitive damages are meant to punish and deter, and are generally awarded onlyin cases in which conduct is deemed egregious or malicious. If the award of suchdamages is extended to sex discrimination cases, the financial stakes in suchdisputes could be raised considerably.

The High Court is expected to hear arguments in the case early next year andissue a ruling by summer.

BALTIMORE
A federal judge gave final approval to a nearly $330 millionsettlement between American Honda Motor Co. and 1,800 of its dealers, whocharged the automaker with requiring extortionate bribes of goods and money tokeep sales lots stocked from the mid-1970s through the 1980s, lawyers for thedealers announced last week.

More than 50 civil suits against Honda were combined to form a single class-action lawsuit, charging Honda executives in Japan and the United States with lookingthe other way while managers demanded bribes–including college tuitionpayments for their children, free car servicing, and cash “gifts” approaching$1 million–from inventory starved dealers, the AP reported.

WASHINGTON
The White House’s Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP), a paneltasked with fighting sweatshops and improving the working conditions ofapparel workers in the United States and abroad, last week proposed the formulation ofa voluntary code of conduct for apparel makers and an independent monitoringgroup designed to enforce the code.

While nearly half the panel’s 17 members have signed onto the code, somecontend the code doesn’t go far enough and others say the transparencyrequired by the code–exposing companies’ manufacturing processes to theindependent scrutiny of the proposed Fair Labor Association (FLA)–may betoo much for some firms to accept, the Reuters news agency reports.

BRUSSELS
The European Commission last week announced legal actionagainst eight European Union (E.U.) nations that have negotiated aviationagreements with the United States, saying that the bilateral agreements–arranging toshare airports and flight paths with the United States–violate E.U. rules.

E.U. transport commissioner Neil Kinnock, apparently frustrated after four yearsof ineffectual “open skies” negotiations with Washington, denounced theindependent agreements signed by Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland,Germany, Luxembourg, and Sweden.

By signing private agreements that fail to ensure the access of all E.U.airlines to the U.S. market, “these member states create seriousdiscrimination and distortions of competition, thereby rendering E.U. rulesineffective,” Kinnock said in a statement.

E.U. airlines, impatient with the commission’s inability to negotiate an E.U.-wideagreement, insist that private deals are necessary to turn a profit and expandtheir businesses into the United States, where such pacts are often a prerequisite forgovernment approval of airline alliances, the Reuters news agency reported.

CAPE TOWN
South Africa’s Parliament appeared poised last weekto clamp down on the tobacco industry, fine-tuning sweeping legislation thatwould outlaw smoking in public places without separate smoking areas, endtobacco sponsorship of sporting events, and ban images of people smoking fromall advertising.

Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma, who led the push for anti-tobacco legislation,urged Parliament to pass the new laws, declaring that “the social cost ofcontinued indulgence in the destructive habit of smoking is prohibitivelyhigh,” the Associated Press reported.

Some critics of the anti-tobacco legislation–sharply outnumbered inParliament–decried the crackdown as “fundamental fanaticism.” Opponents ofthe ban are expected to challenge the constitutionality of the new laws on thegrounds of individual and free-trade rights.

LONDON
The head of a British mercenary company last week insisted that hisefforts to supply guns to Sierra Leone’s struggling ruler, in apparentviolation of United Nations sanctions and U.K. law, were ethical.

Tim Spicer, head of the mercenary firm Sandline International, said his SierraLeone gun sales–intended to help restore democratically elected PresidentAhmed Kabbah’s government after a violent coup–followed the spirit, if notthe letter, of the U.K.’s official “ethical foreign policy,” announced byForeign Secretary Robin Cook earlier this year.

Spicer told BBC radio that “actions by private military companies that act onthe side of good–such as restoring a democratically elected president–can only fit in to what I would understand as an ethical foreign policy.”

Spicer’s arms sales–which he insists were conducted with the full knowledgeof the U.K.’s high commissioner to Sierra Leone–sparked intense scrutiny ofU.K. foreign policy and led to a government inquiry underway this week inLondon

LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles prosecutors last week announced criminal chargesagainst Mepco Oil Co., in what is alleged to be the first case of computer-aided gasoline fraud in the United States–and the latest in a growing number ofsmall-scale, large-profit technology scams costing consumers millions ofdollars.

Mepco has already agreed to a $640,000 settlement of civil charges forallegedly programming some Mepco gas station pumps to dispense less gasolinethan their readouts reported, according to a report in the Christian ScienceMonitor.

Such scams are becoming more widespread, the Monitor reports, as swindlersuse the latest technology to alter high-tech gadgets ranging from taxicabmeters to ambulance odometers to checkout scanners. The majority of suchscams bank on the premise that consumers either won’t notice being slightlyshortchanged, or won’t complain about small overcharges.

CHICAGO
The Chicago Tribune editorial board announced a change in itsadvertising policies last week after a political ad appeared on the papers’exterior delivery bag, surprising readers and worrying editors protective ofthe paper’s political neutrality.

Editors and readers were caught by surprise last Tuesday, Election Day, whenroughly 60,000 papers were delivered to Chicago-area homes bearing the message”Vote Republican” above the delivery bags’ Tribune logo. The ad, paid for by alocal county’s Republican party, “touched a real raw nerve,” Tribune editorHoward Tyner told the Associated Press.

Dennis Grant, the Tribune’s vice president of advertising–aware of thepolitical ad, but not of its placement–said its eye-catching effectivenessprompted the paper to change its advertising policy.

“It was so dramatic,” Grant told the AP, “that it immediately caughteverybody’s eye and we changed our policy on the spot.”

Special to Newsline from London Correspondent E.B. Mills

Britons have been distracted from the long-running Clinton-Lewinsky soap operaby a homegrown sex scandal that called into question the ethical standards ofthe government and the media.

To recap the story, which appeared here last week, the scandal broke with thedramatic resignation of the Welsh secretary, Ron Davies. He told police hehad been mugged and robbed by a man whom he met in a park near his home. Manynewspaper stories virtually concluded, without hard evidence, that Davies hadgone off with the man for a sexual encounter and had resigned out of fear ofblackmail.

In the days following the incident, Davies refused to answer questions abouthis sexuality and railed in the House of Commons against media “bullying.”

Meanwhile, Labour’s trade and industry secretary, Peter Mandelson was “outed” as gay on a BBC program, Newsnight. That prompted the head of the BBC toissue a memo banning any on-air reference to Mandelson’s private life. Theprivate lives of others, including Ron Davies, were apparently still fairgame. The BBC memo drew sharp protest from many quarters.

Adding fuel to the fires, Lord Tebbit, the former Tory party chairman, wrote aletter to the Telegraph saying homosexuals should be barred from sensitivecabinet posts. His remarks immediately came under attack by leaders of hisown party, gay rights campaigners, and Labour Party officials.

Further references to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair became hard to find in theBritish press, pushed into the background by the Davies/Mandelson/Tebbit/BBCevents.

Special to Newsline from London Correspondent E.B. Mills

One man’s blasphemy is another man’s sales pitch, apparently.

Religiousbooksellers and Christian churches in Britain are shunning a new publicationcalled Corporate Christ, by marketing professional Andrew Finan. The bookdepicts Jesus as a “marketing genius,” and praises the Crucifixion and theResurrection as the masterstrokes of Christ’s “world-changing” campaign.

Finan’s book credits Christ with achieving his “corporate goals” in just threeyears and without the aid of modern communication.

Special to Newsline from London Correspondent E.B. Mills

The new president of Britain’s Guild of Editors, Geoff Elliott, told theannual conference of the Guild that lying has become so commonplace thatjournalists and editors no longer can believe what they are told. Elliottpointed to Buckingham Palace and the Clinton White House as chronic tellers ofuntruths, but said the pattern holds through all levels of public life, downto local councils.

Elliott, the editor of the News, of Portsmouth, accusedpublic authorities and private companies alike of lying whenever it servedtheir own interests to do so.

He renewed the Guild’s call for the Labourgovernment to pass the Freedom of Information Act, which has been put on aback burner by the Blair government despite Labour’s long-standing promise toenact it.

WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court last week refused to review a case involvingthe liability of employers for on-the-job safety violations committed byemployees.

The Court left intact a Florida ruling that requires federal regulators toprove that employers could foresee and prevent violations of the OccupationalSafety and Health Act (OSHA) before holding them liable, the Associated Pressreported.

The case stems from a 1994 incident in which an OSHA inspector fined aconstruction company $56,000 after seeing two workers 80 feet above the groundwithout required protection from falls. That fine was reduced to $7,000 by onecourt, and overturned entirely upon the company’s appeal.

The Clinton administration had pressed for revision of the rule, claiming thatemployers too readily use the excuse that they could not foresee an incidentto lay blame for accidents on employee misconduct.

CHICAGO
The Associated Press profiles George Scharm, a formerpolice officer and private detective, who is part of a growing number of”firing consultants”–people who step in when an unsuitable employee isbeing asked to step down. Employers–increasingly worried about workplaceviolence, retaliation, and personal politics–are turning to consultants tohelp with the often-unpleasant task of firing employees.

Scharm says thenovelty of his job is far outweighed by its difficulty. “It’s not like, ‘Ohman, I get to fire someone today,’ ” Scharm tells the AP. “It’s the hardestthing because you’re actually changing someone’s life.”

by Brad Rourke

The theme of Tuesday evening’s elections is that there wasn’t one. No single issue–most especially the "Monica Cloud"–dominated the returns and most races seemed to be won or lost based on local factors.

However, it was a very good night for Democrats.

Certainly, it will be tempting for the Democrats to say that the voting showed the "backlash" they’ve been looking for: Early returns had them "jubilant" (CNN) at some of their key wins–Schumer in New York, Vilsack in Iowa (first Democratic governor in 30 years). Indeed, at midnight, CNN was projecting that Democrats would pick up three seats in the House, NBC said four, and AP said five. The final pickup was five seats. This is an unprecedented midterm gain that has only happened once since the Civil War, and a "six-year-itch" gain that hasn’t happened since World War II. Plenty of pundits are agreeing:

Of course, the bigger question remains: Did voters send a signal to the Republicans in Congress that they want the Monica Lewinsky scandal off the agenda? It is hard to argue that they didn’t (Chris Todd, executive editor of the Hotline).

A message indeed was sent. However, it was sent more through exit polling than through actual voting, it seems to me. The way the Lewinsky issue played out is through turnout: There was indeed a backlash there. It didn’t change swing voters’ minds, but it did serve to motivate the choir. Todd again:

It appears President Clinton’s use of the impeachment inquiry to court black voters worked to swing at least five close races in the South as well as the Maryland governor contest. And in House races where Democratic candidates raised the issue of impeachment against their GOP counterparts, most of those Democrats won.

The Monica cloud effectively turned into a spur, getting Democrats (notorious nonvoters) to the polls. It was the turnout boost that turned the trick for many races.

Exit polling sheds some light:

More people saw this as a referendum on Congress than they did on Bill Clinton. Furthermore, these message senders effectively canceled each other out, leaving "neither" as the reason of choice for House voting behavior–another piece of evidence that this was a "micropolitical" outcome, not a tidal force.

Still, effects of "Flytrap" can indeed be seen. Again, from the exit poll (see Statbyte, above), Clinton/Lewinsky rates a 5 percent as "mattered most" (dead last) while "moral and ethical standards" was second after education, with 19 percent of the respondents saying it was most important in their decisions. And morals and ethics clearly translate into a Republican issue (85 percent versus 12 percent Democrats).

The "morals and ethics" line item surprises the Fox News pollsters:

The emphasis on ethics came as a surprise to Fox News exit poll analyst Margaret Ann Campbell, who noted that if this trend is a result of Sexgate, it is indirect. “It’s more of a general attitude,” she said. “It’s not specifically Clinton/Lewinsky.” (Fox News)

Instead of seeing a "backlash against the impeachment," we may instead be seeing a "lack of results from capitalizing on an issue that doesn’t lend itself to it." That is, voters seem to believe that not only is Flytrap something that pertains to Clinton specifically (i.e., it does not mean that every Democrat is a philanderer), but that the handling of the proceedings is being botched. Stacked up against that, a Republican strategy to focus on Bill Clinton’s values just can’t carry the weight it needs to. Result: misdirected resources.

David Broder weighs in on the issue in last Wednesday’s Washington Post:

The result [of yesterday's Democratic gains] was an election far more comforting to the president and his party than seemed possible a few months ago, when Clinton was forced to admit that he had concealed his White House affair with former intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Two conservative senators laid the blame on their party leadership. “We didn’t have any message,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). “The Monica Lewinsky thing didn’t affect people’s lives enough to make our people want to vote.” Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-MO), calling the election “a substantial missed opportunity,” said, “It was the absence of an agenda that has caused an absence of enthusiasm on the Republican side.”

In national exit polls yesterday, 65 percent of the voters said Clinton should not be impeached and almost as many said Congress should drop the matter rather than hold hearings, as the House is scheduled to do starting next week (The Washington Post.)

Finally, turnout was pegged at about 38 percent, slightly heavier than was expected.

Click here for latest results and full Voter News Service exit poll.

“Political controls in the sense that we think of bureaus or departments of government can never operate to produce collaboration between groups in the inner wheels of our industrial organization. It must come from the inner compulsions and desires.”

–William O. Douglas (1898-1980)