Institutional Corruption Conference III: Cultures of Loyalty and Mutual Trust
At the Institutional Corruption Conference sponsored by Harvard's
Safra Center last Saturday, Bruce Cain, a professor at UC Berkeley,
pointed out that the permeable boundary between government and
business (and, I would add, business law) brings into government
many individuals who have a different concept of ethics. That is, in
the business world, loyalty to one's supervisors (or clients) and to
the company is the most important thing. In government, loyalty
should be to the public. Of course, this is not loyalty as we know
it, so loyalty should be suppressed as much as possible. But
political appointees brought in from the outside are unlikely to put
their loyalty aside, and those who hire them are unlikely to want
this to happen.<br>
<br>
Cain also added a third element to the usual bad apple-bad barrel
dualism. He added the water in which a barrel floats, that is, the
culture or ethics environment. He noted that the common adversarial
culture of business and law creates the sort of bonding that leads
to the loyalty problem.<br>
<br>
Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor best known for his book <i>Bowling
Alone</i>, suggested that we should focus less on trust and more on
trustworthiness, that is, warranted trust. What is truly bad is not
a lack of trust, but unfounded trust on the one hand and cynical
distrust on the other. The goal should be to enhance
trustworthiness.<br>
<br>
In a study he did of Italian regional governments, he found that the
public's level of trust was, on the whole, very realistic. But he
found that the level of mutual trust and the norm of reciprocity in
the region were the most important indicators of whether a regional
government would be trustworthy. The levels of corruption and of tax
evasion are closely tied to these indicators, as well. In other words,
a poor ethics environment in government usually reflects a poor
ethics environment in the community.<br>
<br>
Of course, citizens are just as inclined both to denial and to
justification of their misconduct as government officials are. So it is
not surprising that citizens would be no more likely to admit to a
poor ethics environment in their community than an official would be
regarding a poor ethics environment in his government.<br>
<br>
Despite what Putnam found in Italy, there are occasions where there
is low trust but high trustworthiness. Mahzarin Banaji (a Harvard psychology professor), on the
following panel, gave the example of Indian villages run by women,
which are more effective, and yet the women leaders are not trusted
because they are women.<br>
<br>
It is important to recognize that solutions differ where there is
low trust but high trustworthiness, where there is low trust and low
trustworthiness, and where there is high trust but low
trustworthiness.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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