| The Ethics of Corporate Grantmaking Part 3 of 3 Thinking About the Unethical We might find it fruitful to study what lies under the rock of ethics as well as that which basks in the sunshine of our approval. The handiest guide to the set of problems that plague us will be found in J. Barton Bowyer's book Cheating.[14] Shortly after it was published in 1982, 1 made reference to it in a talk to college and university development officers. Since I believe that people who raise money are engaged in an inextricable relationship with those who give it away, it should also be appropriate here. (The relationship between fundraisers and grantmakers is to be the subject of another essay.) Bowyer provides a summary table that is suggestive of what he has discerned to be "the structure of deception":[15]
The Structure of Deception (with process defined)
DECEPTION (distorting reality)
From Cheating, by J. Barton Bowyer, copyright 1982 by St. Martin's Press, Inc., New York. Reprinted by permission. Cheating is to ethics as crime is to law. I am not here concerned with the illegal aspects of grantmaking (which are probably most often those associated with using foundations in self-dealing abuses of the tax law). In fact, I am most interested in the gray areas of behavior where it is often difficult to know the right way to behave, the right thing to do, the right rule or principle to apply. I have not re-read Bowyer's book to see whether there are examples in it drawn from charity and philanthropy, from fundraising or grantmaking. Most of the examples seem to be drawn from military strategy, politics, and business. But it is instructive to think about "cheating" in the context of the ethics of everyday life. It is especially useful to keep in mind the terms of art proposed by Bowyer: hiding the real; showing the false. I use some of these techniques—but not all—every time I face an opponent on the tennis court. Ruses are employed in every sport: Faking permeates every move in basketball; trap plays and hand-offs are used in football (where the quick kick was once popular). Baseball is filled with stratagems, ploys, and gambits: stealing bases, pick-off plays, the pitcher's deceiving changes of pace. When we speak as we did earlier of how morality is taught to children, we should remind ourselves how much of it is learned in sports—playing by the rules. One might have said playing by the ruses. The arts of deception are part of sports, even though they are not required by the rulebooks. Deception is useful to victory, perhaps even essential when the physical skills are evenly balanced. Having been sensitized to the feminine perspective, I must also mention that children learn much from other forms of play than sports, not overtly competitive, and without written rules. Fantasy—the delights of pretending, of dressing up, of deceiving oneself as well as one's friends. Misapplied, the harmless deceptions of childhood fun in sports and fantasy can become pathological in adults.[16] "Hiding the real" and "showing the false" are so much a part of some aspects of our behavior that an important judgment involves deciding which rules and norms apply in each situation. Their misapplication in our personal lives is what Eric Berne's Games People Play[17] was about—and the terrible problems that usually follow from applying the wrong rules or playing the wrong game. Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandals are variations on a familiar political theme of deception: that one can cheat and still be moral if the cause is just. Those whose professional tools are words have reason to be uneasy about the ethics of persuasion. (Those whose professional tools are numbers are equally uneasy about the ethics of statistics.) Corporate grantmaking takes place in a world that uses persuasive language (and statistics) all the time. The deceits of language used in fundraising brochures and in corporate annual reports are alarmingly similar. Beneath the surface of fundraising and grantmaking language is the social dynamic of power and influence. The philanthropic relationship is usually asymmetric: in its cruder forms, it appeals to the cupidity of the one and to the vanity of the other. It is an environment in which cheating can be commonplace and yet unrecognized as such. Bowyer concludes his book with this observation: Nature may not cheat but man does—to be human is to cheat and be cheated. Bowyer has also come to a conclusion about some people: The clever mind, prepared or not, can be cheated more easily than the simple. The avaricious mind will cheat itself. The wise mind, here prepared, taking "consiglio," [advice] will at least know the rules of the game.[18] Virtues and Vices [Top] We don't often reflect enough on the relevance of cheating to ethics. We have also lost touch with the immensely useful traditional ways of talking about moral behavior—that part of ethics that focuses on the study of virtue. The words themselves appear to be a major obstacle. On the one hand, the word virtue, for many people, calls to mind puritanical religious values, narrowness, priggishness, sexual repression, and the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. On the other hand, virtue represents for them a goal of perfection, which a corporate colleague finds to be "both unrealistic and personally destructive." Although some corporate grantmakers find as I do that using traditional ethical language and concepts is helpful, some others do not find it so. I have found to my chagrin that it is easy to be misunderstood if virtue-language is brought into a conversation about ethics. At the same time I agree with Bernard Williams, whose Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is immensely readable as well as challenging: The word "virtue" has for the most part acquired comic or otherwise undesirable associations, and few use it now except philosophers, but there is no other word that serves as well, and it has to be used in moral philosophy.[19] What I want to talk about is a pattern of behavior in situations that encourages us to praise some behavior as ethical and to criticize other behavior as unethical. The notion of a pattern of behavior suggests persistence, predictability, the "conventions" that make up the conventional: Conventions embody expectations; they impose limitations; they result in liberation.[20] The author—a theologian named G. R. Dunstan—argues that "mutual expectation is at the heart of professional ethics.... Society, and his professional colleagues, attach certain expectations to his role." Behavior is not determined by how the professional happens to feel at the moment, or spelled out in every detail by regulations. Conventions also impose limitations: "the first demand of community is limitation—an ethics which requires the limitation of self-interest where it conflicts with the interests of other persons or of the community itself." And, although it always sounds self-contradictory, the limitations must be self-imposed beyond the minimum standards established by law. A healthy community requires that the limitations essential to corporate life be, so far as possible, inward and voluntary; the product of conscience, conviction, inward persuasion, and belief, and not imposed from without. Conventions embody expectations and impose limitations, but Dunstan argues that they result in liberation—"liberation for the individual and the conditions of freedom for the community." Where there is a convention of honesty and fair dealing, buyer and seller can negotiate together without crippling suspicion or fear.... As in personal behaviour, so also on the social level: it is worth reflecting how much more constricted social life would be—how much less free—were not so much of it governed by an extensive conventionalized morality. The autonomy of the professional is based on the conventions that we can take for granted: Our expectations make possible the professional's latitude. The cost of not having those conventions accepted and understood are at the source of the explosion of medical malpractice insurance costs, to cite only the most familiar example. The loss of professional freedom of action is obvious: Never act boldly in a patient's behalf; don't run risks in a patient's behalf; keep your own interests in mind. My conclusion from Dunstan's discussion of convention is that it squares with my experience in various areas of professional life: journalism, diplomacy, teaching and administration, and grantmaking. Convention is also consistent with the theory of virtue. A virtue is defined as "an ethically admirable disposition of character"; the word disposition is crucial. Under normal circumstances a person can be expected to behave in a certain way. If the way of acting happens to merit praise for its moral quality, it will be considered virtuous. Other writers make the same point. John Dewey, for example, identified persistence as one of the aspects of virtue; more recently, James D. Wallace spoke of conscientiousness.[21] The point is fundamental: What counts is not the isolated act; what counts is reflective habit. Doing the right moral thing at the right time and in the right place requires reflection on each case, and when that reflection becomes a disposition, it is called a virtue. Is "enlightened self-interest" a virtue? Enlightened Self-Interest [Top] The conventions of grantmaking are based on a rationale of enlightened self-interest. I quoted Frank Abrams earlier on "self-interest tempered with a broadening sense of social consciousness." I found that quotation in a book written in 1956 by Richard Eells of Columbia University: Corporation Giving in a Free Society. Eells lists seven principles of corporate philanthropy, and this is the first one: The corporate donor's motive should properly be one of enlightened self-interest that reflects the socially dimensioned purposes of the enterprise.[22] Bearing in mind what was said earlier about conventions, enlightened self-interest as a principle will be spelled out in written statements that are widely shared by grantmakers. In the course of preparing this essay I came upon a "check sheet" for the corporate contributions committee of a large corporation (that has since been swallowed up by a larger corporation). The list is almost identical to another offered in the same book—Corporation Giving, by F. Emerson Andrews[23]—and I think we can take it as representative. Although it is 35 years old, I have seen many like it in recent years. The list is an effort to spell out the conventions that will guide the committee in making decisions about grants and their recipients. 1. Is the cause a worthy one?
2. Will the contribution benefit [the company] directly or indirectly?
3. Is the request likely to lead to other similar requests in the future? Is this objectionable?
4. Does the organization have widespread acceptance and support?
5. Is it efficiently and honestly managed?
6. Is the immediate need significant or does the organization have substantial reserve funds?
7. Does it aid all kinds of people, or is it restricted in its operations?
8. Is the request consistent with our place in the community?
9. Will there be a public relations reaction if we give or do not give?
10. Will the contribution advance the community and public relations of the company?
11. Are important customers, dealers, or other business contacts interested in the solicitation?
12. Are other organizations in the community similar to ours supporting the soliciting organization, and if so, in what amounts? If grantmakers are to be ethically alert, what kinds of questions should be asked about that list of questions? • Which of those questions might be thought to be self-interested (or self-regarding, as the philosophers say)? Which of them might be thought of as "enlightened"? Questions 2 and 8 through 11 are clearly focused on the company rather than the recipient. • Questions 4 through 7 seek to determine whether the organization is worth investing in and whether the funds are really needed. • Only the first question deals with the cause itself. • Some grants are useful but not important, according to question 6. That suggests that a small grant to a large and successful capital campaign, for example, might be unimportant in that context but that the same amount of money given to a small and struggling organization could be important to its very survival. Grants that are token grants are not "bad" in some absolute sense, but they are often the result of laziness or timidity. They are examples of poor stewardship. • Might the answer to question 1 ever be so compelling that the answers to questions 2-12 should be brushed aside? How might we go about weighting the 12 questions? • Questions 4 and 5 are the source of the criticism of mainstream corporate philanthropy and the mainstream nonprofit organizations supported by business. Where do innovation or risk appear on the list? Should corporations limit their bets to favorites and sure things? • Question 5, about "efficient and honest management," calls to mind the frequent efforts to put a ceiling on fundraising expenditures by nonprofits. Yet every effort to do so brings out the difference between the fundraising costs required of a new and unknown organization in a controversial field and the fundraising costs that claim a share of the resources of established organizations serving traditional causes. The tendency of the fundraiser is to explain away the shortcomings; the tendency of the grantmaker is to make them more important than they are. When are we deceiving each other? When are we deceiving ourselves? The term enlightened self-interest was not coined until the late 18th century. Until then the word prudence was popular, but since Aristotle, prudence has often been described as "wisdom" or practical reasoning. What is intended is the idea that morality requires action based on reflection, what Dewey described as "severe inquiry and serious consideration of alternative aims."[24] Prudence is self-regarding (egoistic); benevolence is other-regarding (altruistic). After a long and difficult discussion of the inadequacies of thinking about corporate grantmaking in terms of virtues and vices, a seminar participant put these thoughts on paper in a letter to me: I do not believe that a paradigm based on traditional concepts of right and wrong is adequate—or useful—in dealing with current motivations and practices of corporate grantmaking. New language and a new model of ethical behavior must be crafted to deal with the changed dynamics in today’s corporations.
A revised paradigm should identify a new balance point between altruism and self-interest and define parameters for corporate giving that tap and blend the best of both motivations. Though difficult to craft, this approach would take advantage of the complexity inherent in corporate grantmaking today. In many ways, this model would be characterized by compromise.
Combining the self-regarding with the other-regarding, as enlightened self-interest implies, is difficult. For one thing, the word enlightened tends to have an elastic quality. It is often a fudge word, useful to have on hand because it can be reshaped when circumstances call for it. It will mean one thing when the CEO is being addressed; another when speaking to a volunteer from an arts organization. The problem I have with the position just outlined is that the overall pattern of behavior today is indeed changing, and is changing strongly toward the self-interested side of the scale. The "new balance point" tips the scale away from other-regarding and toward self-regarding. The result is a diminished concern, even a disregard, for the purposes served by the philanthropic part of the corporate enterprise. The author of that appeal for a new model of ethical behavior in grantmaking wants desperately to preserve the other-regarding aspect. What sort of "commitment" does one expect to find in the new environment to "do the ‘right thing' in situations devoid of self-interest"? A moral philosopher, observing and then reflecting on the argument, might argue that self-interest is deeply grounded in human nature, and that it is by definition the dominant characteristic of the marketplace. By inference, then, it is plausible to expect that the most powerful forces at work in a corporation will always be those of self-interest. Other forces and constraints will be necessary in order to restrain that self-interest and to keep it from destroying itself. It is not intended to show disrespect in arguing that one need not be concerned about the corporate determination to pursue its self-interest. The problem has always been that of broaden that self-interest, to lengthen the time horizon, to take into consideration those who fell outside the direct benefits of the self-interest. Frank Abrams's "broadening sense of social consciousness" and Richard Eells' "socially dimensioned purposes of the enterprise" are other-regarding, even if the rationale for them is put in the form of long-term and indirect benefits to the self. But the point is well-taken: Either we need new language and a new way of thinking about corporate morality and the ethics of corporate grantmaking, or we need to clean the barnacles of misuse from the traditional language and values. Or some of both. The Road Less Traveled [Top] The title of this section is drawn from the extraordinarily successful bestseller by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (who borrowed it from Robert Frost).[25] Peck offers a simple and evidently persuasive guide to behavior. He begins with a warning that life is difficult. Because life is difficult, we need disciplines to cope with it. He names four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. That list fits well with enlightened self-interest by putting "delaying of gratification" first. Delaying gratification is the psychologist's equivalent of the philosopher's prudence. Acceptance of responsibility may also apply to enlightened self-interest—if the corporation's sphere of responsibility is broad enough to include some of those who won't share directly in the benefits. But we should ask: Responsible for whom? Responsible at what time? Responsible by what standard? Dedication to truth is very tricky in this context, for several reasons. "Honesty is the best policy," is often claimed as business policy but we reserve judgment until we observe the practice. The language of advertising and public relations undermine not only honesty but meaning. In much of the self-reporting literature about corporate philanthropy that I have read—and in much that I have written myself—the goal is persuasion rather than truth. Persuasion is self-regarding; truth-telling is other-regarding. There are those who have argued fervently for full reporting of corporate grantmaking activity, and companies are sometimes praised for making public information that used to be considered private company business. But such material usually has very little effect on the grantmaking policies and practices of the corporations involved. Most corporations see their reports instead as another opportunity to present the corporation in a flattering light—whether deservedly so or not. Peck's notion of balancing is most intriguing of all. He refers to it as "the discipline of disciplines." Consider the discipline of balancing in the context of the traditional concept of character. Character [Top] Virtue is both a unitary
idea and an aggregative one. There is virtue and there are virtues. Classical
philosophy identified four virtues as "cardinal "—that is, as summarizing all
the other virtues. (The word cardinal, I'm told, comes from the Latin
cardo, or hinge.) Prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. Prudence
is the disposition to think about the consequences and other aspects of
alternative courses of action. (Gary Hart was imprudent.) According to John
Dewey, temperance—which became a term of amusement when swamped in the
rhetoric of Prohibition—meant to the Greeks “a happy blending of the authority
of reason with the force of appetite."[26] It meant
self-discipline. Courage is often advanced as the highest of the
virtues, because if one lacks courage he lacks the will to act virtuously. But
courage is double-edged: courage can be employed as prudence can in a bad cause.
(Some terrorists are courageous.) Justice is the only one of the four
cardinal virtues that has real contemporary popularity, and it has particular
importance for grantmaking. In our day, justice means
fairness. To add the virtue of charity to corporate grantmaking is awkward, at best. ("Corporate philanthropy is not almsgiving," Eells wrote.)[27] We find other ways to rationalize the charitable, usually calling upon prudence. For example, as people argued in 1935 and again in 1970: "If we don't help to alleviate conditions in this city we're going to have a riot on our hands." Or, to paraphrase Frank Abrams and others in 1952: "If we don't provide more financial support for the private colleges, they'll go under, and then government will fill the vacuum. Not only will our taxes go up, but freedom will be lost." The purpose of this quick summary of the virtues is to bring out the point that some of the virtues are sometimes in conflict (or seem to be). Justice and benevolence are often at odds. We seem unable to resolve the conflicts by arranging them in a hierarchy and subordinating everything to a single virtue. (Try it.) And so we balance them. Those who balance the virtues well are said to be virtuous or people of good character. A person of good character is someone who persists in the disposition to do the morally right thing. Such a person knows when deception is appropriate and when it must be avoided, even at great cost. A person of good character will be someone who will weigh the alternatives prudently and have the courage to choose and then to act wisely with conviction tempered by justice. A person of good character will not have to have a rulebook or a set of instructions to tell him how to make the right decision. The person will know the conventions of his profession, and he will be reliable about meeting the expectations that people have of him. The person of good character will be a person with a conscience, a lively sense of the right thing to do and an itch to do it. The problems arise when the conscience of the individual comes into conflict with the conscience of the corporation. It is easy to write, as I just have, about "doing the right thing," but how is one to behave when the personal perception is different from the collective one? Corporate Character and the Individual Grantmaker [Top] The important question that I've been building up to, of course, is that the things that I've just said about the qualities of character as they are attributed to persons might also be usefully applied to corporations. Corporations also have character—revealed in what is popularly called "corporate culture" these days. Corporate culture can strengthen the personal integrity of employees or undermine it. Corporations can fail in truth-telling so often that they are unable to be truthful even to themselves. Corporations can be prudent to the point of being cowardly, just as individuals can. Failure can be punished in a corporation in such a way that prudence becomes timidity. I have seen the average of behavior in business and other organizations deteriorate under stress, and I have seen the average rise as well. It is that average of behavior among those who set the tone of a corporation that I'm talking about when I try to apply the notion of character to the business corporation, to stretch some of the useful ideas of individual virtue and personal character to collective action. In the course of our seminar, someone referred to the grantmaker as "the conscience of the corporation." That is an awkward role at best. It seems self-serving and self-flattering. It puts the grantmaker in the position of moral superiority, which is presumptuous. It also puts the grantmaking function at a higher moral level than the mainstream of the business—which is accurate, and hence awkward at times. There is a practical aspect to the place of conscience in the grantmaking function. Grantmakers are in touch with the community in important ways, but with aspects of the community and in ways that are very different from others in the same corporation. There is a generally positive mutual relationship of grantmakers with nonprofits. An effective grantmaker will have an easy rapport with a wide range of people whom others in the corporation would never know or deal with in an official way. The interaction of the grantmaker with other grantmakers is also valuable. (This is especially true when corporate grantmakers are in touch with grantmakers in foundations. My impression-as one whose corporate foundation experience gave him informal membership in both groups-is that the mutual ignorance of corporate grantmakers and independent foundation grantmakers is appalling.)[28] The point is that the process of grantmaking is the source of valuable information—of intelligence, in the military and diplomatic as well as the marketing sense. The information is about values and ideas, the undercurrents of community life. Because the information that grantmakers absorb deals with values, grantmakers cannot be indifferent to the interpretation put on those values. There is a moral requirement to try to interpret values fairly and honestly. Pandering to management bias or prejudice by telling management only what it wants to hear about the changing environment is a bad habit—a vice. The grantmaker is one among many who shape the moral dimension of a corporation's culture, but someone with a very distinctive contribution to make that no one else is likely to. The internal as well as the external image of the corporation is shaped, as is that of the individuals involved, by patterns of language and behavior over time, by the subjects that are discussed and the seriousness they are given. Perfunctory discussion about grantmaking will gloss over ethical distinctions. The gaps between statements of ethics policy and ethical practices will then, sooner or later, become evident. Failures in ethical practice on occasion will be weighed against a larger pattern. The larger pattern includes the basic standards of doing the company's mainstream business. The congruence between claims of quality appropriate to price, the interpretation of contracts and less formal agreements, the treatment of employees all involve ethical considerations that are at least as important as the ethical claims of corporate philanthropy. The difference is that corporate philanthropy enlarges the responsibility to include in the discussion the interests of those who will not directly benefit from the company's success. It is their claims and needs and rights that must be considered. Conclusion [Top] The first point of this essay is that enlightened self-interest is the core value of corporate grantmaking and that enlightened self-interest is ethically problematic in practice. It is an unreliable guide. The second point of the essay is that to behave ethically as a corporate grantmaker requires continuing reflection on the ethical dimension of the work. Although many of the conventions of grantmaking can be spelled out and serve as a guide to behavior, there is no simple set of rules to follow. These points are supposed to merge in reflection on such questions as enlightened self-interest. Why bother? Can reflection on the ethical dimension act as a guide to behavior? A long popular and respected book on ethics cautions us not to expect too much: " . . . Ethics cannot serve practice in more than an advisory capacity. It cannot decide the issue itself."[29] In order to make sound decisions we need information about the specific case, enough information to determine whether or which general rules apply. For example, we will want to anticipate the impact of our decision on others; for corporate grantmakers, "others" includes a great many people, not just the recipient. Ethical thinking forces a careful consideration of the consequences of a decision. That in itself is a major step forward. Thinking about the longer term and indirect consequences of an act, you will recall, is a characteristic of the "enlightened" aspect of enlightened self-interest. To speak seriously of being enlightened is to bring the ethical dimension to the surface. Talking about enlightened self-interest, then, can have a positive value by forcing a corporate grantmaker to weigh the consequences for others against the consequences for the corporation, and not limit the analysis to benefits to the corporation. "To make the gray areas less gray," as a friend challenged me recently, is difficult, but that is what decision-making is all about. Making decisions ethically involves the process as well as the result. Almost every decision is made in the context of uncertainty about the facts and the consequences. There is a tendency to resolve the ambiguity by pretending that the matter is clearer than it is. We seek to be consistent by forcing cases into predetermined and comfortable categories; we find such comfort in certainty that we blind ourselves to the ambiguity that won't go away. In my experience, the most common expression of that tendency is to hide behind guidelines, to make them so precise and inflexible that they make the decisions for us. Reflection is time-consuming; making judgments is risky; having opinions invites criticism. The comfort-seeking grantmaker avoids contact with grantseekers and lets rules make the decisions automatically. All grantmaking thereby becomes reduced to the mechanical processes of a matching gift program. Grantmaking should be the result of grantmakers who are engaged with grantseekers in a common enterprise-with each participant candid about the legitimate claims of self-interest on both sides. Some grants will be mechanical and pro forma, of course; some will be made simply to maintain continuing activities. The professional requirement is imposed by the need also to take risks, to explore, to innovate. Technicians can process paper; professionals exercise judgment and make decisions. How do we judge professional performance? The problem in grantmaking is that there is no clear market test. It is also true that we cannot usually isolate the decision so precisely that we can measure its impact. The evaluation of professional performance in grantmaking requires a balanced assessment of style and consequence over time. The word balanced was used to remind the reader of the earlier reference to M. Scott Peck's four virtues: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing.[30] A grantmaker might sometimes engage in egregiously[31] unethical conduct and deserve to be fired for a single action, just as a grantmaker might make a lucky decision and be able to make all the claimants at the door happy at the same time. The more common condition will be one of success mixed with and limited by some failure; some good things will not happen to good people; some grant money will appear to have disappeared into the sand. These philanthropic misfortunes will be offset by spontaneous and sincere expressions of appreciation, of recognition of the enlightened quality of the company's self-interest. Some troubling problems in the community will be alleviated. Some young people will have a better chance. The grantmaker throughout will have dealt with people in certain ways, treating them with respect or disdain, courteously or indifferently. The grantmaker will have won a reputation, among those rejected as well as among recipients, among peers in other companies as well as within the company. The grantmaker will have stood firm on some issues and accommodated other priorities on other issues. The grantmaker will have recommended some risky or awkward rants because of the quality of the idea or the merit of the people. The grantmaker will have pressed for increases in program funds for what his evaluators conclude are substantive rather than empire-building reasons. The grantmaker will be a person of good character. There no universally accepted ethical system, even though there are ethical systems that lay claim to universal validity. To be a person of good character will be to present a very different portrait in one culture than in another. Most of us are thus required to make a choice about the ethical pattern of behavior we will follow. Most of us fabricate a working ethic out of our personal upbringing, experience, and interaction with others we respect and think to be of good character. Occasionally our ethical beliefs will reflect study of ethical philosophers. That is not an easy context in which to find one's ethical bearings. Persons of good character are those whose movements are corrected by an internal gyroscope. Their guesses will almost always be close to the target ethically—even if sometimes deficient in other ways. Balancing. No single virtue is enough, no single aspect of personality, no single skill. To be of good character is like being liberally educated. The insight is best expressed in what I have found to be the most useful line to reflect upon in all the organizational literature: "This general executive process is not intellectual in its important aspect; it is aesthetic, and moral."[32] If that point of view pervades your grantmaking, you will be able to make your own map. The most common professional complaint is that daily pressures deprive one of "time to think." In the context of this essay, that would be revised to complain of the lack of time to reflect on being ethical—on asking what is enlightened about enlightened self-interest. The only employer for whom I ever worked who made time available for the express purpose of discussing ethical matters was not a university or a government agency but a business corporation. The corporation required an annual discussion at the smallest unit level—about 20 people on the average—of the ethical policies of the company, of shared understanding of conflict of interest, of ethical problems raised by employees. These were not moral rearmament sessions, but as practical and down-to-earth as all the other business of the company. Although those sessions and the distribution of the ethics policies of the company were about all that was done, neither were done as a matter of regular practice in universities nor in government. Government requires employees to read documents and to sign them, forever confident that such rituals influence behavior. The affectation of universities is the pretence that everyone is ethically sophisticated to start with a striking example of self-deception. Some companies and agencies offer formal codes of ethics, but reading a code is like reading a regulation: unless the ideas and values are internalized, their written form is itself a form of deception. I cannot accept the desperate view that ethical values and moral behavior are formed in early life and that all subsequent efforts at moral education are a waste of time and money. One of the reasons why ethical problems have become so much a matter of public concern is that we do so little to help people become more ethically sensitive and alert. To explore ethical problems calls for some familiarity with the working definitions of the principal approaches to ethical problems—of other people's approaches as well as our own. There is a dangerous tendency to assume that one is ethical—that one understands the principles of ethics and behaves morally—and that other people understand them in the same way. We act as if there is a "common morality" that we can all readily fall back upon. There isn't. There is more often ethical confusion than ethical consensus on issues. Any issue of a daily newspaper should make that clear. The common morality—unexamined—is as undependable as enlightened self-interest—unexamined. Finally, the reason ethics
is so important to grantmaking is that grantmaking itself is a normative,
other-regarding, moral activity. Each grant is an assertion about the way the
world should be. Anything so important is not likely to be simple or easy
or even finished. NOTES I am grateful to the Council on Foundations for the opportunity to participate in the seminar on the ethics of corporate grantmaking. The group was interested, involved, candid, and concerned. It is reassuring to think of them as representative of the quality of the field (and so I will think of them that way). Judith Healey of the Minnesota Foundation was the key organizer. Judy and Alice Buhl of the Council were especially helpful in offering suggestions about this paper. Seminar participants Nicholas Goodban (Chicago Tribune Foundation); Peter Hutchinson (Dayton Hudson); Carol Reuter (Pillsbury), and James Shannon (General Mills) were altruistic--downright supererogatory--in gifts of time and comments. |
