How your daily conversations may be eroding your ethical sensitivity
Who is really making the decisions about which values are ethically right or ethically wrong? You might be surprised that the values we choose as right or wrong are usually less dependent on their overarching moral and may be more rooted in our daily conversations.
How are “right” and “wrong” determined? That answer is highly debated, as you are well aware. I believe that unlike many socio-technical systems problems, whose frameworks can utilize a stock and flow model from Heidegger, Donella Meadows and others, that ethics are determined via conversations where there is no real “stock” or “flow” of ideas. This is because ethical decision parameters are made through conversation. Thus, there is a need for a new way in which to model idea exchanges about ethics. Below, I explore one approach using a simplified second-order cybernetics (according to Pask) approach backed up by Lasswell’s model on communication. For this discussion, we will consider the spectrum of values, outlined in my “Ethical complex article” and how groups may choose which values to accept or reject as either ethical (right) or unethical (wrong).
What is Cybernetics?
For those new to the concept of Cybernetics, I suggest reading some of the work by Paul Pangaro, an expert in the field. Out of his work and that of his predecessors such as Bon Foerster, Geoghegan, and Pask, we are able to begin modeling conversation. (See this simple article on the application of cybernetics by Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro). At the most simple level a cybernetic framework evaluates conversations between two parties and their influence on each other using two primary components called goals and actions. Goals are the internal needs or desired outcomes, while actions are the chosen response or method for communication.
The basic idea of second-order cybernetics is rooted in the evaluation the conversation between two or more parties as a system observing another system. This evaluation goes beyond the written or spoken language; it tries to evaluate the underlying goals and actions of each conversation as outlined in the diagram, below. These two factors influences outcomes. While the the discipline of communication studies provides many theories on the conversation itself, cybernetics helps us observe these interactions from a slightly higher level. A simple example is mapped out in the Modal Goal Directed ssytems diagram below.. If you are in a meeting room and want to “keep the room cool” (Goal), you’ll likely have short discussion with participants who determine it is too warm and needs to be cooled (Goal); so, you ask someone–an actor– to open the door (action) in order to cool the room or install a new thermostat to remember your desired temperature (action). However, you may still crack the door if the thermostat’s action is not meeting your personal temperature goals.
Ethical conversations in action
For each of the following scenarios, I will be using my ethical complex model as a basis for setting up each scenario and outputting a possible value spectrum for each. To read more about my ethics complex model, read my previous article here.
Individual-friend relationship
First, let’s look at how ethics may be defined at an individual and friend (or close social relation) level. In a conversation between the each party, each has underlying goals. For example, an individual, Alex, may have the goal of having a sense of being right. This need can often be seen in individuals seeking to greenwash their activities or defend their own thoughts and ideas in order to be perceived as ethical–as well as trying to maintain a positive self- and social image. The friend, Taylor, may have a different goal — gaining trust, providing support, reciprocity, and developing connection.
These internal goals affect communication and the dialogue exchange. The mutual need to feel cared for will often lead to drawing ethical boundaries around values that align with the social scripts that their community adheres to. This often leads the individual with higher referent power to draw the distinctions about what values that partnership considers ethical or unethical. For example, if the individual with more referent power decides that no life should ever be removed, no matter what, his or her group of friends will likely draw the same distinction, due to the referent power of the leader, and perceive those who hunt as “evil” or “wrong.”
Employee-employer relationship
For an employee this situation becomes even more important due to the often misaligned or hidden goals of employees and the company they work for. Depending on whether the company’s business ethics are more internal centric or customer centric (discussed in the following point) — with the caveat that the stated ethics actually may not even be lived within the culture.
For example, Google wields a great deal of position power over industries and employees within the organization. The power dynamic of reward power held by Google coupled with an employee’s desire to feel needed, important, and protected from potential unemployment may be enough for an employee to live a workplace’s cultural expectations and discount one’s own goals in favor of exhibiting preferred actions often leading to an exhibition of tendencies found in Noelle-Neumann’s Spiral of Silence Theory which lead individuals to inaction.
This often leads to forgoing conversations between employee, Alex, and cooperation leaders. This avoidance leads to a decline in ethical decision-making with a result swayed by the latest media post or motivational workshop. This means that the value decisions about what is ethical or not ends up being a moving target led by the loudest voice and may look like something like The diagram below, within the ethical complex. Only when employees unite to take a stand against what they feel to be unethical is the spiral of silence overcome, such as seen with the petition from Google employees to end Project Maven, and change occurs.
Company-Consumer/user relationship
In a company-consumer relationship, there are typically two ways to elicit a selection of ethical values. One method is what is often called business ethics–the idea that a business selects a set of values to uphold that support its own ideology and business model. Then it follows the attraction-selection-attrition model in marketing to get buy-in from consumers.
While the second conversation model is more consumer centric. In this, model a business focuses on the ethical values of its end consumer/user in order to entice them to use the service or buy a product. This customer-centric value approach encourages the corporation and their employees to adhere to company policies, reflecting customer values, with the goal of maintaining those values over time. In order to maintain a strong customer base.
A practical example of this type of conversational debate can be seen in the challenges Kathy Baxter and her Ohana team at Salesforce face as they consider how and for whom Salesforce’s software can be used, as they deliberate the ethical or unethical use of their software for border control agencies and other gray-area factors. Their experience can be an excellent model of a second-order cybernetics problem between conflicting goals and actions. As their team seeks to reconcile and address seeming disconnects, an ethics model like the following could emerge.
Tying it together
I am not suggesting that any of the above methods are exactly how ethical decisions are made, nor am I saying that this is the correct way to choose which values are ethical. What I am suggesting is that how we as humans decide what is ethical happens via conversations and less about process. Often, in those conversations, humans tend to only discuss competing value sets rather focusing on the larger concepts around morals or principles. So, the real question is this: How do we bring individual and/or corporate ideas together and create a more unified ethical delineation of values?
The fact that these conversations are happening should help us acknowledge that debates around ethics often are really about the debate between whose value decisions are “right” or “wrong.” This debate can be hurtful or hard to sort out,as shown with Salesforce’s decisions about how their software can be used and by whom.
In my mind, this situation highlights the need for ethical frameworks to structure/scaffold these conversations in an attempt to elicit the best/desired outcome and rise above the value-level debate to see the bigger picture by answering the harder moral questions before passing judgment and selecting which ethical focus to take.
