A good friend emailed me an excellent suggestion this morning:

I think the average visitor would benefit greatly from some historical perspective on the subject of ethics. I think it is widely accepted that “back in a day” we were a more ethically driven society. Often that point of view is buttressed up with anecdotal evidence such a “leaving our front door unlocked”, “picking up hitch hikers” , “IOU’s at the corner store” “lack of corporate fraud”, etc. Some of these, or all, may actually point to moral erosion but [I] assume there is an ethical component.

I guess I wonder if that is all true or has technology just allowed us to broadcast the misdeeds in a quicker and wider fashion? If the historical perspective does indeed point to a more ethically challenged environment today then I, the reader, desire to know why.

While I do not know of any surveys that answers this question directly, there are some proxies available that shed some light on this issue. The Bureau of Justice Statistics each year conducts a National Crime Victimization Survey where they sample over 77,000 households and 130,000 people across the nation. According to this survey, both harming and stealing (two important ethical issues) have declined noticeably from 25 years ago.

Bureau of Justice Statistics Property Crime Trends

If the ethics of our society have improved over the last few decades (at least in terms of harming and stealing), why do people general feel that ethics are in decay. Here are a few hypotheses:

• The above data is too narrowly focused. A broader survey including such things as white collar crime, lying, and other issues would show ethics in decline.

• We collectively suffer from the availability bias. This is a cognitive bias that affects our ability to assess the probability an event will occur. We believe that the ease with which we can recall information about an event is indicative of the frequency with which the event occurs. Vivid, emotionally charged examples, (think of the last time your were lied to or robbed from), seem much more frequent than they really are simply because the memories are easily available.

• We are becoming more ethically sensitive, so ethical violations that would not have gotten any attention in the past are being noticed and reported on.

I personally believe it is some combination of the last two. What do you think?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: ethics, ethical trends, clint korver, ethics for the real world, harming, stealing

The Ethics Resource Center, an organization which studies the ethical practices of public and private institutions, just released their report on the ethics of Nonprofit institutions in the US. It’s not pretty.

Ethics Resource Center: Celebrating 85 Years of Ethics Surveying and Research

Some believe that without the pressure to generate a profit, nonprofit organizations would exhibit higher ethical standards than for-profit organizations. However this report, based on data from 558 respondents , paints a different picture. Here are some highlights (or lowlights might be more accurate):

• 6% observed alteration of documents.
• 8% observed alteration of financial records–called financial fraud.
• 14% observed lying to customers, vendors, or the public
• 19% observed misreporting of hours
• 21% observed lying to employees
• 55% observed one or more acts of misconduct

The numbers for business and government are about the same across the board. Business reports 56% observations of misconduct and government 57%. Interestingly the incident of financial fraud seems to be noticeably higher in non-profits (8%) than in either business (5%) or government (5%).

The report goes on to say that when nonprofit employees saw ethical misconduct, 38% of the time they said nothing. They did not report the observed transgression to management.

• 66% of the time they did not report environmental violations,
• 49% of the time they did not report misreporting of hours worked, and
• 31% of the time they did not report stealing.

The primary reasons for staying silent include:

• 50% did not believe corrective action would be taken
• 42% feared retaliation from management or peers (a drop from 64% in 2005)
• 30% would have to report to the person involved.

The report is not all bad. The data show that attention to this issue by creating a Code of Conduct (ethical code), engaging in ethics training, creating a hotline for reporting, and others dramatically decreases incidents of misconduct.

Overall this report shows that people in the nonprofit sector fall prey to the same shortcomings and temptations as those in the for-profit sector. People are people regardless of their context. Ethics are important regardless of the context.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: nonprofit, ethics, ethics for the real world, clint korver, Ethics Resource Center,