Article“Morality”, “character” and, worst of all, “virtue”, are finger-wagging words out of favour in a less judgy age.
But we didn’t completely abandon expectations of upright conduct, and being a good, honourable person. Instead, we rebranded them as “company values”: the closest thing left to a moral compass in an age where morality is the last dirty word.
How else to explain the recent resignation of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, caught canoodling on Coldplay’s kisscam at their recent Massachusetts gig, with someone most decidedly not his wife but instead the company’s chief people officer Kristen Cabot? Byron appears to have lost his job because he failed a character test, and for bringing disrepute on the company, even if his private behaviour had no bearing on his professional output.
Not that any of this can be plainly stated. Instead, the company said on LinkedIn it was “committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”
In other words, we’ve evolved beyond passing judgement on people’s private lives. Around here, we don’t brand suspected adulterers with a scarlet letter of condemnation. Instead, we opt for bland corporate lingo (“that standard was not met”) and move them on.
Or take the note now apparently affixed to Mark Latham’s portrait in Parliament House. Latham, former Labor leader and now the subject of allegations of domestic abuse, as well as claims of sordid conduct in parliament, can’t be written out of Labor history. But he can be publicly repudiated: “His actions do not accord with Labor values and failed to meet the standards we expect and demand”.
Talk of company values, especially when offered to explain a parting of ways with an employee or individual, is diplomatic and doesn’t indulge in gossip. It won’t get a company sued but protects its reputation in a time when image management is everything. It’s also far less likely to get the offending party crucified. All upsides.
But we’re kidding ourselves if we think company values are the value-neutral, more evolved, alternative to old-fashioned, black-and-white attitudes and beliefs about right and wrong.
Each company value is like a line in the sand of what an organisation stands for. Step over it, and your fate is the present-day equivalent of being chucked out of the village. Our modern instincts recoil: we think that the village that enforces the morality of its members by turning its back on anti-social individuals, is backward and medieval. But moral norms exist for a reason: they ensure the survival of the community and the protection of the most vulnerable within it.
Moreover, the modern “village” – the company, organisation, or political party – does exactly the same moral policing, and often to protect its reputation more than anything else. But don’t mention the “m” word around here. Just talk about “culture”, “standards”, “values” or questions over whether someone is a “good fit” with an organisation.
According to the Wankernomics guys, when it comes to company values, the usual suspects are integrity, respect, innovation, collaboration, and excellence. All – with perhaps the exception of innovation – affect how we live and work alongside others.
Left off the list? A 2022 study out of Oxford revealed that humility, gratitude, curiosity, and hope rarely make the cut, even if these traits and virtues are likely to make someone better to know personally. Which all raises the fascinating question: what kind of corporate personality are we aiming for, and what do we want said organisation to stand for?
The New York Times columnist David Brooks once shrewdly observed that our cultural and educational institutions are more interested in cultivating “résumé virtues”, or the skills for getting ahead in the marketplace, rather than “eulogy virtues”, or the things we want others to say about us at our funerals. He meant individuals, but the question of legacy raises what impact over the long run we want our corporate selves to leave behind.
According to internet lore, in 2018 Google updated its official motto “don’t be evil” to “do the right thing”. (For kids of the nineties like me, a phrase forever associated with the public campaign to throw your rubbish in the bin). The move by Google was an upgrade inasmuch as the company slogan was stated positively rather than negatively.
But, more broadly, the question of what’s “right” – and what this means for our personal and professional lives, and our organisational and corporate selves – is still somewhat vague in a morally inarticulate age. But we vibe it as soon as the moral transgressors – sorry, ex-CEOs and ex-Labor leaders – step over the line.
Morality by any other name smells just as sweet.
Justine Toh is a Senior Research Fellow at The Centre for Public Christianity. This article was first published in The Canberra Times.