Checking the cultural pulse: is it healthy?
Marie Gervais, PhD., Global Leadership Associates Inc. www.global-leadership.ca mgervais@global-leadership.ca
Checking the cultural pulse
Last week I was conducting a workshop on (surprise) the topic of intercultural competency. I used a vignette I have used several times previously with the intention of bringing out the link between values and cultural context. Here is the vignette:
Imagine that you and a friend are driving in a car together and your friend is going too fast. At one point he stops suddenly, causing an accident. As the police are on their way to the car your friend asks you to say that the car was not driving too fast because he does not want to be in trouble with the law. What would you do?
My intent was to point out that if this situation were happening in a country where it is known that the police torture anyone they arrest, the cultural context may trump the value of honesty and respect for authority. The second point was to be that culture of a necessity creates values and norms, and that cultural values and moral values are linked. Third, cultures have been “normed” to show a preference in moral decision-making that tends to be more strongly relational or more strongly principle-based. This is also true of the moral decision-making differences between women and men. Women tend to make their decisions based on the strength of the relationship and the desire to keep things harmonious, whereas men tend to make moral decisions based on principles, rules and regulations. The caveat of course is that we, as infinitely complex human beings, are not summed up in the constraints of either our culture or our gender and that balanced, mature adults tend to weigh both principle and relationship in their moral decision-making.
But this is what happened instead. One participant after another said that he or she would lie for the friend, no questions asked. Only a couple of people raised a concern about whether lying was the right thing to do or not. One asked if the friend was really a true friend if he was so quick to lie to try to save his own skin. When pressed further, those who so readily said they would lie for the friend no questions asked, agreed that if someone had died, then maybe they would reconsider. Even so they did not seem particularly troubled by the idea of possible damage, injury or death as a result of the friend’s actions.
Here’s another story: one of my sons is a teacher in a junior high school. A student who was disgruntled with another teacher in the school vandalized my son’s car, thinking it belonged to the teacher he wanted to “get back at”. When the student found out he had vandalized the “wrong” car, he and his father tried to argue that they should not pay for the damage done to the car because the student had intended to target another teacher’s car, so it was a mistake. After much frustrating dialogue between the school and the parents, the father finally consented to paying $400 of the $1,200 worth of damage to the car – no consequences to the kid who did the damage.
Cultural norms do shift both negatively and positively. At this point in time, a shift in one place can drastically shift the entire world. It has been heartening to note that for example human slavery is now considered morally reprehensible on an international scale. According to trafficking expert Kevin Bates, this means that it is much easier to find and stop slavers because the public opinion on slavery is that it is wrong and must be stopped. The same moral shift has happened with regard to protecting the environment and taking a stance of stewartship rather than exploitation of the earth’s resources. And it also has appeared to be affecting whether or not a people accepts to be oppressed by a dictator. This does not mean there won’t be infractions or that we have solved either problem, but it does mean we are more likely to come to some kinds of agreement because we have a common moral stance that has become locally, nationally and internationally normed and which is more likely to motivate us to act justly.
This is why there is not much point in having a human rights commission to administer penalties to organizations if there is no grass roots support for human rights. The ground swell of support for human rights in the workplace allows the laws and policies intended to deal with infractions to be effective. When that public support is absent, no amount of law making will deal with the problem.
On the other hand, the very existence of the law reminds people that there is a standard that is higher than our individual wants and needs and to which we must strive. The principle urges individuals to act in the best interests of the common good and the cultural support of that principle gives the group safety. Once the group is upholding a norm that is unsafe, we are in trouble. What kind of a world are we moving towards if everyone lies, takes no consequences for their actions and has no respect for the institutions that are there to protect and uphold the laws? Every action each of us takes contributes to the pool of cultural norming. The more individuals shrug off their moral responsibilities and turn away from facing the consequences of their actions, the more unsafe the society becomes for everyone.
Studies by sociologist Zyg Bauman show that if the group believes an individual action will have the desired benefit for the group, that individual is more likely to make the choice that is in the best interests of the group and to delay or sacrifice his/her own needs in support of that greater good from which everyone will benefit. For example in countries where the majority of people believe that their taxes are used for roads, schools and hospitals, the majority of people will pay their taxes and are more likely to be honest in their tax filing. In places where people believe that their tax dollars simply serve to line the pockets of government officials, they resist, avoid, lie about or simply do not pay their taxes. This is the delicate balance between individual actions and the group, and between the group and society.
But in my workshop example we have a case where a majority of the individuals in a group are making a decision to support a friends’ misdeed, even when there is no likely danger to the friend, and “the devil take” the consequences. When enough people adhere to this “who cares” moral stance, we are all in serious danger. I hit you with my car, so what? You break into my house, who cares? Your colleague steals from her boss, what’s the point? There are traffic lights, so who follows them? It means we are in a dog eat dog world with no standards to protect any of us.
I recently read a study about ethical behavior in not-for-profit sector by the USA Ethics Resource Centre (2007). You may be surprised to know that unethical behavior in not-for-profit is higher than both the public and private sector statistics. You may not be so surprised to know that unethical behavior is on the rise generally in all organizations and that when confronted, individuals shrug and say it was a gamble to see if they would be caught or not.
We have to think this one through, because the effects will be hard to undo. Benjamin Franklin apparently said, “Just because an idea is popular, doesn’t make it right.” Maybe we should be quoting Benjamin Franklin more often before the cultural shift in moral values takes us farther down the slope towards societal chaos.
