Ethics, Counseling Roles, Leadership, and Moral Analyses
Scandals show the failure of many organizations to conduct their business affairs ethically. Public relations professionals have argued for years that ethical business practice is the foundation of maintaining relationships with stakeholders and key publics, yet public trust in business remains low. Dishonesty within the once-trusted news industry, fragmentation of news sources, and polarized social media lend to all-time low levels of trust on a global level. Trust in government is also at an all-time low—it is more mistrusted than any institution across various nations.1 Ethical considerations in the practice of public relations have been on the forefront of public relations education for years but have acquired new importance in the age of fake news. Ethical analyses are in critical demand.
This chapter introduces and examines ethics and its role in organizational leadership, public relations’ roles in ethics and moral decision making, and what constitutes an ethical analysis.
Ethics
From the ancient philosophy of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle to the Enlightenment of Hume, Kant, or Mill, to modern-day philosophy, we explore the questions of right versus wrong, good versus evil, light versus darkness. “Ethics is about how we ought to live”2 and public relations ethics is ultimately about how we ought to manage relationships with ethical awareness, credibility, and a desirable long-term reputation in mind.
Consider the CERT formula presented earlier in this book:
f outcome = Credibility ± Ethics ± Relationships ± Trust
Gain credibility to demonstrate ethics and build relationships that create a positive reputation and engender trust. Trusting relationships can be built over time using this formula, and those connections can form a resource for the organization.
Ethics and Trust
Communication is not the goal of public relations. Our goal is building enduring relationships through the use of ethical communication, listening, and strategic alliances, while integrating the values and ideas of others into organizational policy. We try to build an understanding to create dialogue with our publics. If the purpose of public relations is to build relationships with publics, trust is an essential part of any ongoing relationship. Whether those publics are inside the organization—such as employees, management, administrative workers—or outside the organization—such as suppliers, distributors, retailers, consumers, communities, and governments—ethics is the linchpin that holds the relationships together. Issues managers must resolve ethical dilemmas, identify potential problems, and conduct research, and both the problems as well as the potential solutions must be analyzed and organized into communication.
To visualize the importance of ethics, imagine the following scenario. You purchased a product advertised as the highest quality; yet output from the media reveals that the organization sold the product knowing that it was manufactured with defective components. Chances are, you would feel exploited and not continue a long-term, trusting relationship with that organization (you would not be a repeat purchaser). The ethics of an organization have a nebulous yet certain impact upon relationships with publics.
Ethical Culture
Ethics is the responsibility of public relations as the “corporate conscience,” but it is also involved at all levels of an organization. From the assembly line to executive management, ethics must play a role in routine decision making across an organization for it to be the most effective it can possibly be.
Much responsibility for ethics rests at the top of the organization. Without a vision, mission, and values instilled by leaders, ethical behavior tends to languish. Ethics must be in daily discussion, reward and incentive programs, training programs, issues management, and communications. Public relations should act as the ethical conscience of the organization by including the views of publics in strategic management, but everyone in the organization must value ethics.
This multipronged ethics function is what ethicists call “institutionalizing” a corporate conscience throughout the organizational culture.3 The following section will discuss how to institutionalize ethics and, subsequently, to perform the ethical conscience role by analyzing and resolving ethical dilemmas.
Systems Theory Rationale for Ethics
Many people new to public relations wonder how it intersects with philosophy and ethical decision making. Systems theory explains why a working knowledge of moral philosophy is an absolute must in public relations.
Systems theory, similar to biological systems, was applied to society by the philosopher Luhmann to explain society as being made up of interdependent but somewhat autonomous social systems comprising the larger whole.4 An organization is a system comprised of smaller subsystems or organizational functions (see Figure 11.1). At the core of management are the areas of issues management and public relations, along with the executive management functions; that core is surrounded by other functional parts of the system, such as production, sales, and research. Public relations communicates both among the subsystems of an organization and with the external environment, comprised of consumers and other publics.
Other subfunctions in a typical organization are occupied with their own areas of expertise, yet public relations, as a boundary spanner, must interact with them in collecting data, identifying potential issues or problems, onboarding employees, and building organizational culture. These activities require an enormous amount of communication, listening, collaborative problem solving, and management skill.
Boundary Spanning and Counseling on Ethics
Public relations professionals also span the boundary of an organization in maintaining relationships with publics in the external environment. This makes the issues management and public relations function best suited to advise on ethics because the relationships maintained with publics give insight into their values, priorities, and what they need from the organization. Management, including the communication and issues management functions, drives and coordinates all other activities.
By acting as boundary spanners, maintaining relationships with publics outside the organization and collecting information through environmental scanning, the public relations function is perfectly situated to advise on ethical matters.
Understanding the values of publics with whom the organization has relationships is enormously valuable because their ethical values can be represented in strategic management. Public relations is already familiar with the strategic publics in the environment of the organization; their values, desires, priorities, and issues with the organization.
The relationships public relations managers seek to build and maintain are a source of valuable input and information during ethical decision making because those publics can be consulted on issues that are important to them. No other organizational function is better suited to understand the needs and values of external publics than the communication function. The legal department, no doubt, is well versed in understanding government and regulatory publics, but will have little knowledge of the values of publics extending beyond the legislative arena. Likewise, the marketing function will be knowledgeable about the values of consumers, but will have little knowledge beyond consumers, such as the values of the communities surrounding manufacturing sites. Only public relations fills this knowledge gap in terms of systems theory.
By understanding and incorporating the values of publics, more ethically inclusive, integrative, diverse, pluralistic decisions can be made. These decisions result in a greater harmony between the organization and publics over time, fewer lawsuits, fewer disgruntled publics, fewer boycotts, and can prevent an expensive loss of reputation.
Public Relations: Values Managers and Ethical Counselors
Should public relations advise on ethics? The public relations professionals in a worldwide study reported the highest levels of agreement to these statements: “Ethical considerations are a vital part of executive decision-making” (mean 4.61 of 5.0) and “public relations practitioners should advise management on ethical matters” (mean 4.12 of 5.0).5
Two distinct ethical roles were first identified by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Business of Truth study.6 The first role is that of the values manager—institutionalizing ethics in organizational culture, including conducting ethics training. The second role is that of the ethical counselor, analyzing decisions for top management, while incorporating the knowledge of publics gained through boundary spanning.
Ethics Role 1: Values Manager
As previously reviewed, organizational culture endorses a mission and values, and upholds certain concepts above others.7 Looking at an organization, values can be assessed by examining mission statements,8 policy documents, codes of conduct, ethics statements,9 examining the statements of leaders10 and their views toward communities;11 and the use of the organization’s website as a dialogue building tool or simply as public information.12
Ethicists generally hold that an organizational culture valuing ethics is more important than individual ethical standards.13 Organizations supportive of ethical decision making institutionalize it by incorporating ethical debate; discussion and deliberation as a highly valued activity in their organizational culture.14
Building an organizational culture in which ethical debate is encouraged is ideal.15 It takes delineating the organization’s values, then discussing those values consistently so that all employees know them, encouraging the application of those values in daily operations. Requiring ethics training is also necessary, as is leaders “walk the talk” to acting ethically and modeling ethical behavior.16 Ethics training is normally conducted by the public relations function or an internal relations specialist from the public relations department. Much more detail is offered in Men and Bowen’s Excellence in Internal Communication Management.17
Ethics Role 2: Ethical Counselor to CEO and Management
A second approach to ethics that public relations managers can take, in an organization, is to counsel executive management on ethical decisions. The public relations counselor has the relationships to know the values of her publics and can help to anticipate reactions and incorporate those views into strategic planning. Most of those who perform this role are CCOs. The CCO can discuss these issues with the CEO to advise on how ethical decisions would impact the reputation of the organization and relationships with publics and stakeholders. For this reason, scholars have argued that public relations should be the “corporate conscience.”18 A corporate conscience role goes far beyond professionalism and simple codes of ethics to deeper philosophical analyses.
Ethics is essential for solving complex problems rather than in answering simple questions. Ethical paradigms are useful when there are two or more conflicting arguments of merit. If there are two or more “right” points of view, then it is time to use an ethical analysis. Which option is most congruent with the values of the organization?
Training in moral philosophy is essential for ethical analysis; that training can be academic or professional. The analysis of competing values and valid arguments is a difficult, exceedingly complex pursuit. Having a CCO devoted to conducting these analyses is sometimes the only way in which a CEO can hear a counterpoint of view, because chief executives are often surrounded by “yes people:” those who offer groupthink and provide no critical analysis. The CCO must be as objective as possible in the analyses of ethical issues. Providing an objective ethical analysis to the CEO is a vital way that public relations adds value to the organization.
Autonomy
As an objective decision maker, the public relations professional must have a high degree of autonomy or independent decision-making authority.19 Objective autonomy requires that all the merits of each argument, from various perspectives, be considered equally, without bias. Although we know that no analysis can be purely objective, the goal of moral philosophy is to eliminate bias and strive to be as thorough as possible.
Public relations professionals can further build autonomy by being proficient boundary spanners, representing themselves as an autonomous voice in strategy meetings (rather than as an advocate of the organization’s position), and seeking to use information collected from the environment to enrich strategy and organizational policy. Oftentimes, CCOs report that they spent years in developing an autonomous relationship with their CEOs, and that autonomy was granted gradually or only after consistently proving the credibility and accuracy of their analyses.20
Conducting Moral Analyses
The merits of each perspective, from stakeholders, publics, and in the view of the organization, are considered according to moral paradigms that help to judge the best or most ethical course of action. The best action is the normative (ideal) solution that should create ethical resolution and the least resulting problems for an organization.
There are essentially two major perspectives that are helpful in the analyses of ethical dilemmas, including the types of dilemmas common in public relations: utilitarianism (consequences) and deontology (principles, duties, and rights).
Utilitarianism: Consequences
Utilitarianism advocates a standard of what is ethical, based on how much it serves the public interest of a majority. It is based on the projected consequences of making a particular decision. The ethical is that which serves “the greater good for the greatest number” of people.21
Determining how to define “the good” can be difficult, because of the differing perspectives on what is good or what furthers “the good” for the majority. Knowledge, industriousness, kindness, liberty, and so on can be considered but utilitarians usually refer simply to “the good” in general—or creating more good outcomes than bad outcomes.
Utilitarianism was created by Jeremy Bentham and refined by John Stuart Mill as a philosophy that analyzes the impact of decisions on groups of people, making it useful in public relations. However, care must be taken in implementing utilitarianism because it is easy to serve the interests of the majority and to forget the valid points of the minority, creating a disequilibrium in the system that would require a revision of the decision at a later date, costing efficiency.
Utilitarians diverge over whether the specific decision (the act) or the general situation and past acts (the rule) should be put to the utilitarian test. The most common form of utilitarianism in public relations management is specific to the act under consideration, considering it in all its detail, including the potential consequences arising from many decision alternatives. The option to resolving an ethical dilemma that creates the most positive consequences and the least negative outcomes is considered to be the ethical option. Mill’s theory holds that the ethical decision should not result in grievous harm, such as human sacrifice, but that negative outcomes are acceptable.22
Creating decisions with the most positive outcomes or conducting a cost-benefit analysis comes naturally to most managers. Seeking to create the most good with decisions is a worthy goal. However, utilitarianism has a number of pitfalls that must be guarded against. The pitfall that is most concerning to ethicists is: Utilitarianism judges outcomes based on numbers rather than on moral principles. If numbers of people change, the utilitarian calculus would change the ultimate decision based upon the majority, rather than on changing moral values. Complexity also poses problems for utilitarianism. Christians argued that, “Practitioners usually find themselves confronting more than one moral claim at the same time, and asking only what produces ‘the most good’ is too limiting.”23 How does one decide the best course of action, if there are equal amounts of good produced?24
Utilitarianism requires the manager to be able to predict the future consequences of each possible alternative course of action. In reality, few decisions can be made in which the consequences are predicted with certainty. The dynamic interactions of publics, government regulators, communities, activist groups, stakeholders, investors, community publics, and the media make predicting the consequences of decisions complicated, if not unlikely. Carefully listening to views of various publics, small groups, and minorities, can help guard against this pitfall by minimizing the unexpected. Finally, utilitarianism holds that the majority always benefits. What if a small minority has a valid point of concern? In utilitarianism, those views are dismissed in favor of the majority or maintaining the status quo, which can create a dangerous stagnation within the organization. If guarding against these pitfalls, utilitarianism has certain benefits and can be useful for ethical analyses.
The benefits of utilitarianism are that it can be used to arrive at a speedy conclusion, understand consequences, serve a majority, and can be helpful in quickly evolving crisis situations. Utilitarianism helps effectively weigh potential consequences of various hypothetical decision options to resolve a dilemma (see Table 11.1 for an example of this speedy analysis).
Utilitarianism is most useful when the consequences for the majority need to be examined; it is instrumental in philanthropy and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Normally, utilitarianism as a method for analyzing ethical dilemmas serves public relations best when it is combined with another means of ethical analysis. Keeping the caveats in mind when using a utilitarian analysis can also help to be mindful of the potential oversights. A principle-based framework, discussed next, can be added to strengthen an ethical analysis.
Deontology: Principles, Duties, and Rights
Deontology is based on moral principles as opposed to consequences. Consequences are but one consideration among many in a deontological approach. This paradigm places duty, principles, and rights as “the good” that should be taken into account in order to make a decision ethical. Those concepts are intrinsically good, meaning good in themselves apart from any consequences.
Moral principles are the underlying values that guide decisions: beliefs that are generally held to be true or good. Examples could be: the sacredness of life, justice, accountability, dignity, liberty, honesty, and peace. Most rational people across various societies, time, and cultures hold that those principles are morally good. Deontology seeks to eliminate capricious decisions by minimizing bias and holding to standards that have a universal acceptance as right or good.
Determining moral principles when conflicting perspectives are present is never easy. Deontology is a demanding form of moral analysis, requiring much information, analyses, time, and autonomy to thoroughly consider numerous competing perspectives. Deontology requires familiarity with the philosophy in order to implement the three tests that deontologists consistently apply. Another constraint of this perspective is that it requires a great deal of research, time to assemble and analyze data, and the ability to place oneself in numerous positions to understand perspectives from outside the organization. However, these seeming drawbacks are also strengths because deontology results in analytical, rigorous, and enduring moral analyses free of bias and inclusive in nature.
Deontology was created by the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who used the virtue ethics of Aristotle to create a more concrete decision-making paradigm. Argued to be one of the most influential philosophers in history, Kant imbued his philosophy with a sense of duty that is supposed to govern all moral decisions.25 A characteristic named moral autonomy means that all rational human beings are equally able to reason through the duty of their decisions; therefore, all rational beings are equal. Kant views equality as ethical. Equality also means that everyone is equally obligated with the duty of making moral decisions.
Under that equal obligation, Kant posed three decision tests that he called the categorical imperative. These three decision tests are used to test options to determine whether they maintain moral principle for those involved, including stakeholders and publics.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Decisions must meet the standard of all three of the tests of the categorical imperative before they can be said to be ethical. Table 11.2 presents a summary of the three decision tests or standards to be applied in a deontological analysis. A situation may have numerous alternatives to resolving an ethical dilemma; those options can be put through the three tests to reveal any ethical flaws. It is not unusual for a new option to emerge after testing others with the three forms of the categorical imperative.
The first form of the categorical imperative tests universal duty: it reads, “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”26 This form of the categorical imperative asks if we could accept the same universal standards as would be applied to all others, for all time. If we could be on the receiving end of a decision, and still believe that it is ethical then it may be because it “leaves little room for subjective interpretation or self-interested decisions.”27 Honesty, fairness, freedom, life, human rights, respect, and safety are examples of universal moral principles.
Ask: What universal principle is at the very basis of this issue?
Kant’s second decision-making test, formula two of the categorical imperative, humanity, commands dignity and respect. Kant obligates decision makers to respect themselves, their organizations, as well as all other human beings. If the decision does not maintain the dignity and respect of the involved publics and stakeholder, then it is not ethical. Because an organization may have dozens of stakeholders and publics affected by a decision, this test requires the analytical ability to consider multiple points of view on a proposed action. A stakeholder map, a good deal of formative research, and discussions with leaders both inside and outside the organization are useful.
Conduct research, talk with involved publics and stakeholders, consider the issue from the perspectives of numerous vantage points.
Formula three of Kant’s categorical imperative, good will, tests the intention behind making a decision. Kant wrote, “If our conduct as free agents is to have moral goodness, it must proceed solely from a good will.”28 Good intention is the only morally worthy basis for decision making in the Kantian view because it maintains autonomy and duty and prevents people from being used simply as a means to achieving an end.29 It is incorruptible and requires us to proceed out of good intent rather than from a basis of selfishness, greed, opportunism, exploitation, avarice, deception, falsity, and so on. A manager could ask: “Are we proceeding with this decision because it is the right thing to do?”
To be considered ethical, all three tests of the categorical imperative must be answered affirmatively.
Kant’s test is considered the most rigorous standard in moral philosophy. It requires a great deal of research and analytical ability, yet is worth the effort. Once you have put potential decisions through these three tests, you can be certain that a decision with an affirmative answer on all three tests is ethical. A decision that passes two tests may be reworked, but it indicates progress. Once all three tests of the categorical imperative are passed, an organization can proceed with confidence in knowing its action is ethical.
Analytical: Room for Disagreement
A decision may be deemed ethical when it is arrived at through the use of a deontological framework. Deontology allows the most comprehensive, systematic, and thorough means of making difficult decisions.30 Yet, publics may still disagree with the decision or policy because of differences in their priorities or values. Decisions made using deontology have the benefit of being analytical and they can be explained to stakeholders and publics. Some may agree to disagree. The dignity and respect of listening to publics may result in better relationships overall. Therefore, ethical dilemmas resolved through a deontological paradigm are defensible, because they are analytical and made without selfishness. The defensibility arises from using a rational paradigm that does not privilege the organization alone, so the publics can see their view was thoroughly considered.
Deontology should always be used as the means of ethical analysis because it offers the most robust test. It is the gold standard, offering both a normative and practical approach. Arriving at ideal (normative) solutions to complex problems in public relations can often benefit from the use of both utilitarian and deontological analyses when public interest or consequences are central. Utilitarian analysis is good at finding public interest and majority benefits, and these can aid a decision. Yet a deontological analysis is a far more powerful, sophisticated or nuanced, and thorough approach, and should always be used as the first step and final word in ethical decision making. With the required knowledge of how to implement the categorical imperative tests, one reveals an organization’s moral responsibility to the greater principles involved, including universal duty, dignity and respect for multiple stakeholders and publics, and good will.
Case Study
Leadership and Ethics at Home Depot31
Change often begins in turmoil or crisis, as you can see in a decade of transition at Home Depot (HD). After months of pressure from shareholders, HD’s board of directors ousted high-profile CEO Robert Nardelli in 2007 and replaced him with a much less visible executive named Frank Blake. Though both Nardelli and Blake had joined HD from General Electric, they were extremely different leaders. Nardelli was a tough, authoritarian, Theory X manager who had shunned much of the organizational culture of HD, including its founders, Arthur Blank and Bernard Marcus.
Blake decided to reconnect HD to its values. Whereas Nardelli and his team had catered lunches on the top floor, Blake instructed the senior executives to eat in the cafeteria with everyone else, and to pay for it themselves. He asked Blank and Marcus to serve as advisers as HD worked to reconnect with its customers.
Blake based his communication platform on two images, one called “the Value Wheel” showing the ethical values that drive HD (see Figure 11.2). The other image was “the Inverted Pyramid” showing an ethical leadership style with the CEO at the bottom of the structure (see Figure 11.3).
Blake began showing the Value Wheel and Inverted Pyramid on his first day as CEO. The wheel portrayed core values and offered them for discussion, placing ethics at the center of all decisions at HD. The Inverted Pyramid emphasized the company’s most important objective: servant leadership focused on customers and the frontline associates who directly served them. Deontological ethical values are prevalent in HD’s values wheel, as seen in doing the right thing based on principle, respect, relationships, service, spirit, and the intention to take care of people. Utilitarianism is seen in creating shareholder value and giving back.
Blake’s strategic decisions included reinvesting in frontline service and outreach to employees. To reach all associates, Blake decided to use a 1-minute online forum each month to present a brief message to all 300,000 frontline associates. He also asked employees to offer suggestions on how to improve the company. Even though headquarters received from 300 to 400 of these ideas each week, Blake read them all.
HD’s CCO during Blake’s tenure, Brad Shaw, explained: “We’ve taken our frontline associates and given them ongoing access to the CEO.” Shaw maintained that the message conveyed by the CEO’s action is really quite simple. “You have to listen to your people,” he said. “The days of centralized top–down communication are over. It’s a two-way communication process.”32
When the CEO is reading the company suggestion box and spending time with frontline employees, other executives tend to follow the example. “What we’re finding is that when Frank asks a question about a comment he read in the In Box, other executives want to be prepared with answers, so they’re paying closer attention to the comments themselves,” said Shaw.
In declaring the importance of the frontline employees, HD backed its words with action. As CEO, Blake demonstrated the servant leadership style, facilitating the success of others. Blake retired from the CEO role in 2014. By 2018, HD’s share price had more than quadrupled since the ouster of Nardelli.
Craig Menear, who succeeded Blake as CEO, remained committed to the principles that Blake reestablished during his time as CEO and leads by example. Menear said: “Our culture is the greatest gift we received from our founders, and I truly believe it’s a competitive advantage in the market.”33
As CEO, Menear sticks with the principles responsible for HD’s turnaround: ethics and servant leadership. As he explained,
Our culture is represented by these two powerful symbols: our Values Wheel, which guides the decisions that we make in our business; and our Inverted Pyramid, who defines who’s most important in our business: our customers and our frontline associates.33
Stephen Holmes, the current CCO, noted, “I see it every day through our leadership, that cascades throughout our organization, through our values. It’s not only the everyday, but at times it is very intentional, to intentionally invoke our values in taking care of associates.”34
Holmes meets with the CEO and advises him consistently, and ethics comes up frequently. Holmes noted that Menear is most enthusiastic whenever he visits a HD store, and is careful to seek feedback directly from the frontline. Holmes said that at headquarters, the servant leadership model is prevalent: “We are at the bottom of the pyramid and ask how can we better support the stores, the online distribution centers, our supply chain, ship-to-store, and direct shipping to consumers?”35
When asked how ethics dramatically changed operations, Holmes offered a poignant example:
In 2018, when we had tax reform, it brought in a lot of money for us. We decided immediately to pay out one-time bonuses to our hourly associates, the folks on the front line. A thousand dollars in bonus for each associate goes a long way toward taking care of our people. That is a true use of our values wheel and inverted pyramid.
Holmes added that success sharing has been constant since the founding of the company 40 years ago. The change in culture, values, and servant leadership is continuing to succeed. HD, comparatively by size, is a more profitable organization in 2018 than the giant Amazon.36
What Can Be Learned from the Home Depot Case?
Home Depot demonstrates that organizational values and culture make a tremendous difference in profitability, employee retention, job satisfaction, and good relationships with stakeholders and consumer publics. The HD’s example demonstrates the power of the chief executive officer communicating with employees to facilitate success as a servant leader. It also illustrates the CCO as servant leader, and values manager. An ethical approach of values-based communication and servant leadership are clearly achieving desirable results and offering a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter, a systems theory rationale was used to explain the importance of public relations as a boundary spanner who can counsel the dominant coalition on ethics and the ethical values of publics and stakeholders. Ideally, the public relations professional should be a leader who can represent the views of publics in strategic decision making. Research on the two primary ethics roles of: (a) institutionalizing values; and (b) ethical counselor to management, were discussed, highlighting the importance of ethical leadership and values in an organization’s culture.
The moral frameworks of both utilitarianism and deontology were offered as means of conducting ethical analyses. Utilitarian analysis advises focusing on the outcomes and effect of potential decisions to maximize good outcomes for a majority and minimize bad outcomes. Deontology offers three tests through which to analyze decision options: universal duty, dignity and respect, and good intention. Deontology is the strongest decision-making test available. The categorical imperative offers an ethical resolution that is defensible, rational, lacks selfishness, is enduring and inclusive, and can be explained to stakeholders and publics.
The HD case was offered as an example of ethical (servant) leadership and a deontological organizational culture, based on principle, represented in the values wheel. The financial success of the HD illustrates that ethics can offer a competitive advantage to help an organization achieve its goals and build strong and enduring relationships.