The Kingdom of Individuals II: Expediency vs. Ethics

The principal problem with getting one's ethics from one's organization is that, according to Bailey, “Organizations seem to have a poorly developed sense of right and wrong. Expediency all too often comes out ahead of morality. Organizations and institutions are supposed to be the guardians of trust and fair dealing, but often there is no one to guard the guardians and — self interest being a prime mover — they look after their own good rather than the public good. ... The lack of moral sensibility lies in the leaders and owners, who put their advantage ahead of the common good ... behind a screen of respectability, of professed concern for the public good. Everywhere there is a major presentational effort either to deny self-interested behavior or to redefine it as altruism."<br>
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What you can see from reading this anthropologist, who studies all sorts of organizations in countries around the world, is that what occurs in local governments in the U.S. is no different. The principal thing that is different is that local government officials owe their fiduciary duties not to owners, or to numerous, dispersed stockholders who change frequently, but to the members of the community they live in.<br>
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Organizations tend to lack anyone to guard them, at least in terms of trust and internal fair dealing, other than an auditor. Although there are individual leaders who put the public interest ahead of their personal interests, and really mean what they say, no local government can depend on them being in power at any particular time. That is, a local government cannot depend on elected officials — who have the greatest incentive and sometimes the greatest opportunity to help themselves, their families, and business associates — to have anything to do with a local government's guardian of trust, that is, its ethics commission.<br>
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It would be refreshing to hear an elected official say not only that she is trustworthy, but that governments, like any organization, are not. That in day-to-day government life, expediency is a more powerful force than ethics. That in government, as in any organization, there are many temptations, and that politicians tend to be especially able to justify (to themselves and others) their giving in to temptation. And that, because of this, elected officials should, for their own good as well as the good of the community, set up an ethics program that will provide the greatest transparency, the best and most neutral training and advice, and the most fair and trusted enforcement. And then let go of it.<br>
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Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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