Strategic CSR - Moral character

The article in the url below is an interview on NPR with David Brooks, who is talking about his recently published book, The Road to Character. The book is a personal journey for Brooks, but also talks about moral character in general terms, featuring pillars of history who overcame specific character flaws and are presented as models to emulate:

 

"I do think the turning point in a life toward maturity is looking inside yourself and saying, 'What's the weakness that I have that leads to behavior that I'm not proud of?'"

 

A particular focus of the book is to contrast the goal of living a life defined by moral character against what Brooks calls "the culture of the Big Me," a characteristic of society that has become more prominent in recent decades. Brooks highlights this 'culture' because it presents such a challenge to overcoming any narcissistic tendencies we have and living for and on behalf of something that is larger than the individual:

 

"My favorite statistic about this is that in 1950 the Gallup organization asked high school seniors: Are you a very important person? And in 1950, 12 percent said yes. They asked again in 2005 and it was 80 percent who said they were a very important person."

 

Although the book is not about business, per se, I played the interview in my strategy class because I thought it was instructive in terms of building the leaders we hope our students will become. In essence, I suggested my students would be better managers if they are asking themselves the questions that Brooks poses. I believe that building moral character should be a central component of a business education, as opposed to the functional factories our business schools have become.

 

Have a good weekend.
David

 

David Chandler & Bill Werther

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders, Globalization, and Sustainable Value Creation (3e)

© Sage Publications, 2014

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/chandler3e/

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

 

Take It From David Brooks: Career Success 'Doesn't Make You Happy'

April 13, 2015

National Public Radio

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/13/399391894/take-it-from-david-brooks-career-success-doesnt-make-you-happy

 

Strategic CSR - Citizenship

This will be the last CSR Newsletter of the Spring semester. Have a great summer and I will see you in the Fall!

Along with Christopher Caldwell in the FT, David Brooks (NYT) is one of the columnists who I try and read every week. Brooks’ recent columns have been heavily influenced by a book that he has just published, The Social Animal, which is an effort to use more social science research (particularly sociology and psychology) to inform policy making. For those interested, Brooks was interviewed about the book recently on PBS’ Newshour:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june11/davidbrooks_03-08.html

I am forwarding Brooks’ column in the url below because he has some thoughts on the relatively recent rise in self-centered individualism in U.S. society and what implications this may have for the broader concept of citizenship:

“Citizenship, after all, is built on an awareness that we are not all that special but are, instead, enmeshed in a common enterprise. Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation. I wonder if Americans are unwilling to support the sacrifices that will be required to avert fiscal catastrophe in part because they are less conscious of themselves as components of a national project. Perhaps the enlargement of the self has also attenuated the links between the generations. Every generation has an incentive to push costs of current spending onto future generations. But no generation has done it as freely as this one. Maybe people in the past had a visceral sense of themselves as a small piece of a larger chain across the centuries. As a result, it felt viscerally wrong to privilege the current generation over the future ones, in a way it no longer does.”

I suspect this same effect translates to the organizational level of analysis and explains much of the resistance to the changes necessary to establish a more sustainable and socially responsible society.

Interestingly, Brooks’ view of the younger generation runs counter to the more popular narrative I see often repeated that the Millennials are more concerned with sustainability, more keen to take ethics classes at university, and more willing to hold corporations to account for their levels of social responsibility. While this greater concern regarding issues such as sustainability, on the surface, appears to be genuine (higher levels of recycling, etc.), in terms of self-perception (self-importance) and the role of the individual in society (rights versus responsibilities), I see more evidence in support of Brooks’ perspective.

Have a good weekend

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)

© Sage Publications, 2011

http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/

Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

The Modesty Manifesto

By DAVID BROOKS

851 words

11 March 2011

The New York Times

Late Edition - Final

27

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/opinion/11brooks.html

Strategic CSR - The child in the basement

Good social commentators seek to hold up a mirror to society so we can see what we look like to others. The best ones are able to do it while inviting us in, rather than pushing us away. The goal is to enlist our participation in seeking change, rather than highlighting our weaknesses and moving on. David Brooks of The New York Times is one of my favorite commentators because he does this with good writing and by drawing on a wide source of literary and academic sources. I don't always agree with his columns, but there are a critical mass of them that truly hit home, powerfully. I have written a number of Newsletters that were stimulated by his columns (see here) and my favorite of his columns that speaks directly to my research interests is here. The article in the url below is another good one. The foundation for the column is a short story by Ursula Le Guin ('The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas') and the center of the story is the child in the basement in the town of Omelas. You'll have to read the column to understand why the child is in the basement, but the central moral decision lies in those who choose to live in Omelas and those who choose not to accept the moral tradeoffs that living in Omelas entails:

 

"That is the social contract in Omelas. One child suffers horribly so that the rest can be happy. If the child were let free or comforted, Omelas would be destroyed. Most people feel horrible for the child, and some parents hold their kids tighter, and then they return to their happiness. But some go to see the child in the room and then keep walking. They don't want to be part of that social contract. 'They leave Omelas; they walk ahead into the darkness and they do not come back.'"

 

In reality, as Brooks notes, the vast majority of us, facing the same tradeoff, choose to live in Omelas:

 

"The story compels readers to ask if they are willing to live according to those contracts. Some are not. They walk away from prosperity, and they make some radical commitment. They would rather work toward some inner purity. The rest of us live with the trade-offs. The story reminds us of the inner numbing this creates. The people who stay in Omelas aren't bad; they just find it easier and easier to live with the misery they depend upon. I've found that this story rivets people because it confronts them with all the tragic compromises built into modern life — all the children in the basements — and, at the same time, it elicits some desire to struggle against bland acceptance of it all."

 

Of course, we can rationalize living in Omelas because we are trying to make the town better. In reality, we all compromise our principles on some level, both collectively and individually, for the benefits that living in Omelas provides:

 

"In another reading, the whole city of Omelas is just different pieces of one person's psychology, a person living in the busy modern world, and that person's idealism and moral sensitivity is the shriveling child locked in the basement."

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


The Child in the Basement

By David Brooks

January 13, 2015

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A23

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/opinion/david-brooks-the-child-in-the-basement.html

 

Strategic CSR - The Big Me

Over the break, I read David Brooks 2015 book, The Road to Character. I had been meaning to get to this for a while, not least because I use an NPR interview with Brooks about the book in the strategic management class I teach on values:

 

https://www.npr.org/2015/04/13/399391894/take-it-from-david-brooks-career-success-doesnt-make-you-happy

 

The book emphasizes the importance of building a character-based moral life, mostly via profiles of people who have lived such lives (e.g., Ida Stover Eisenhower, mother of Dwight Eisenhower, or George C. Marshall). Brooks refers to this moral life as one that is "internally-oriented," rather than "externally-oriented." The difference is in how you conduct yourself on a day-to-day basis. To live an externally-oriented life, for example, it is necessary to "cultivate your strengths" and seek recognition for those strengths in objectively-acknowledged achievements (i.e., cv-building). In order to live an internally-oriented life (a life of character), however, it is instead essential that we "confront our weaknesses" and use the lessons learned to build loving, trust-based relationships.

 

As well as profiling various upstanding people, Brooks spends a lot of the book building an argument about the extent to which we have moved away from raising children to idealize values and, instead, to focus on meritocratic achievement – what he terms the culture of "the big me." Here are just a few of the statistics Brooks uses to demonstrate how our priorities, as a society, have changed during this shift: 

• "… in 1950, the Gallup Organization asked high school seniors if they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was asked in 2005, and this time it wasn't 12 percent who considered themselves important, it was 80 percent." (p6)
• "The median narcissism score has risen 30 percent in the last two decades. Ninety-three percent of young people score higher than the middle score just twenty years ago. … Fame used to rank low as a life's ambition for most people. In a 1976 survey that asked people to list their life goals, fame ranked fifteenth out of sixteen. By 2007, 51 percent of young people reported that being famous was one of their top personal goals." (p7)
• "In 1966, only about 19 percent of high school students graduated with an A or A- average. By 2013, 53 percent of students graduated with that average, according to UCLA surveys of incoming college freshmen. Young people are surrounded by so much praise that they develop sky-high aspirations for themselves. According to an Ernst & Young survey, 65 percent of college students expect to become millionaires." (pp.254-255)

The consequence for the CSR debate is that we are building weaker communities. In their place, we are instead fostering a stronger sense of individual self-worth – the idea that I do not need others because I am capable of generating 'the best answer' on my own:

 

"But if you proudly believe the truest answers can be found in the real you, the voice inside, then you are less likely to become engaged with others. Sure enough, there has been a steady decline in intimacy. Decades ago, people typically told pollsters that they had four or five close friends, people to whom they could tell everything. Now the common answer is two or three, and the number of people with no confidants has doubled. Thirty-five percent of older adults report being chronically lonely, up from 20 percent a decade ago. At the same time, social trust has declined. Surveys ask, 'Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?' In the early 1960s, significant majorities said that people can generally be trusted. But in the 1990s the distrusters had a 20-percentage-point margin over the trusters, and those margins have increased in the years since."

 

There needs to be a strong "S" in "CSR." It is essential to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior within which corporations can be held to account, but those boundaries need to be defined by the group, together, not a bunch of atomistic individuals, separately. Without the strong S (i.e., social/society), there is nothing for corporations to be responsible to.

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

Strategic CSR - The amoral market

How do you best incentivize people in order to optimize societal outcomes? I often struggle with this; the argument presented by David Brooks in the article in the url below warns against a pure economic answer to the problem:

 

"We turned off the moral lens. You probably know the example of the Israeli day care centers. Parents kept showing up late to pick up their kids. To address the problem, the centers experimented with fining the late parents. But the number of late pickups doubled. Before, coming to pick up your kid on time was a moral obligation — to be fair to the day care workers. After, it was seen as an economic transaction. Parents were happy to pay to be late. We more or less did this as an entire society — we switched to a purely economic lens."

 

In essence, Brooks suggests that we somehow chose to emphasize the economic and remove the moral—as he puts it:

 

"… economic priorities took the top spot and obliterated everything else. … We ripped the market out of its moral and social context and let it operate purely by its own rules. We made the market its own priest and confessor."

 

I think this is the wrong conclusion. There are two problems, in particular, with Brooks' logic: First, I do not think it is possible to separate the moral from the economic. When we buy something (whether it is a product, or service, or stock, or whatever), we are expressing our values. Disposable income, for most of us, is a scarce resource. As such, we reveal our priorities when we use it. Second, the accusation that we removed the moral assumes that our morals remained the same and that we just took them out of the equation. Apart from being an overly-agentic description of human decision-making (a completely separate issue), my take is that the morals and values are there, just as they have always been (it is impossible to remove them from any decision we make), it is more likely to me that they changed. Why they changed is difficult to answer – whenever I think through issues at the societal level, the explanation often seems to come back to education. What does a High School education mean today? For that matter, what does an undergraduate degree mean, or a master's degree? If those things mean the same that they used to, then it is possible that not much has changed (unlikely, but possible). But, if they mean something different, then something has definitely changed. The outcomes that Brooks is highlighting, to me, suggest they have changed in a way that has made our society more individualistic and less collective (among many other changes). This shift makes it more acceptable to replace moral responsibilities with economic payment—as in the above quote and subsequent examples Brooks includes:

 

"Anything you could legally do to make money was deemed O.K. A billion-dollar salary for a hedge fund manager? Perfectly acceptable. The Apple corporation exists because of American institutions. But, as Pearlstein notes, Apple parked its intellectual property in an Irish subsidiary so it could avoid paying taxes in America and support those institutions. It saved $9 billion in 2012 alone. This is clearly sleazy behavior. Apple employees should be humiliated and ashamed."

 

It is not that the morals have been removed, therefore, but that we have changed our morals to allow certain kinds of behavior that would have been frowned upon in earlier times:

 

"Human beings are moral animals, and suddenly American moral animals found themselves in an amoral economic system, which felt increasingly alienating and gross."

 

No, it is not that our economic system is "amoral," but that the morals today are different than they used to be. This distinction matters, I think, because suggesting morals have been removed gives us all a pass on some level. Reiterating that morals and values are still very much there, but have changed, keeps the burden on us to do something about it, … if we want to.

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


Remoralizing the market

By David Brooks

January 11, 2019

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A23

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/opinion/market-morality.html

 

Strategic CSR - Self-interest

The article in the first url below is an excellent analysis by David Brooks of the current administration's view of America's place in the world – in particular in relation to its decision over the summer to withdraw from the Paris Accord. On that particular decision, there is not much I can say that won't get me into trouble, but I think the article in the second url below by Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, is particularly eloquent.

 

The purpose of this Newsletter, however, is to comment on Brooks' column. While I agree with almost all of what Brooks writes, I disagree with his equating "self-interest" with "selfishness." I have thought a lot about self-interest and its role in motivating human behavior and, in particular, in generating optimal outcomes. I have two responses that, in my thinking, allow the pursuit of self-interest to lead to optimal outcomes for society, but in a way that also incorporates all of the good points that Brooks raises.

 

First, "self-interest" does not equal "selfishness." My self-interest can be served by making the community around me stronger – by contributing, rather than taking away. I can easily justify paying higher taxes as in my self-interest, for example, if I know the extra funds will be reinvested in education or healthcare or providing a safety net for those most in need (and as long as I value those things, which I do). Conversely, I can see the harm done to me individually if I refuse to contribute to the common good simply because I want to increase my personal income in the short term. It is against my self-interest, for example, to refuse to contribute to funding the police if, as a result, crime increases and my personal property (or safety) is jeopardized as a result.

 

Second, the idea or "rational self-interest" is a misnomer, a core feature of classical economics that has produced highly constrained theoretical models founded on warped assumptions that lead to misinformed public policies. Humans pursue their perceived self-interest, not their actual self-interest. That does not mean these two things cannot be the same thing, on occasions. In my experience, however, more often than not, they are different (even assuming someone's 'actual' self-interest can be identified). The difference between the two is accounted for by the emotions, biases, morals, and values that make us human (and flawed, on many levels).

 

It is the combination of these two points at the intersection of economic theory and human psychology that, in essence, differentiates strategic CSR (or sustainable value creation) from mainstream discussions of CSR and sustainability. Understanding how humans actually make decisions, rather than how we wish they made decisions (what they are, rather than what we wish they were), is essential to understanding how our economic and social systems work. Once we agree on that, we can begin to discuss how to build a more sustainable economic system, but that discussion is pointless if it is based on false or unrealistic assumptions.

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

 

The Axis of Selfishness

By David Brooks

June 2, 2017

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A25

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html

 

Trump's Reckless Climate Decision

By Bill McKibben

June 2, 2017

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A25

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-accord.html

 

Strategic CSR - Penn State

Of all the articles that have been written about the Penn State tragedy, the two best that I read appeared together on the op-ed page of The New York Times last Tuesday.

The article in the first url below by David Brooks is titled ‘Let’s All Feel Superior’ and highlights the hypocrisy of those who claim they would have done so much more to prevent the abuse if they had been in the same position as those who have featured so prominently in the Penn State case:

“Unfortunately, none of us can safely make that assumption. Over the course of history — during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the street beatings that happen in American neighborhoods — the same pattern has emerged. Many people do not intervene. Very often they see but they don’t see.”

Brooks concludes:

“Commentators ruthlessly vilify all involved from the island of their own innocence. Everyone gets to proudly ask: “How could they have let this happen?” The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. … But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.”

For related arguments and a similar message, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/your-money/why-doing-the-ethical-thing-isnt-automatic.html

“As much as we would like to think that, put on the spot, we would do the right — and perhaps even heroic — thing, research has shown that that usually isn’t true.”

The article in the second url below by Joe Nocera is titled ‘Penn State’s Long Road Back’ and charts a course for the university to recover “its moral bearings”:

“[Last] Saturday’s game was just another example: The message it sent was that football comes first. A university with its priorities straight would have forfeited. But Penn State clearly just couldn’t bring itself to do that.”

Nocera outlines five steps the university can take to reprioritize the values that drive Penn State. The surprise lies not in the proposals themselves (which all seem reasonable suggestions), but that Nocera can contemplate any President of a large U.S. university enacting them:

“First, it should announce that it will not participate in a postseason bowl game this year. … Second, it must discipline the rioters. A university cannot allow its students to rampage so destructively — and so amorally — without consequences. Third, it must promise not to use its status as a state institution to shield itself from the inevitable civil lawsuits that will be brought by those who were allegedly abused by Jerry Sandusky. … Fourth, Penn State should establish a compensation fund [for the victims]. … Finally, Penn State should announce that it will cancel the 2012 football season.”

Cancel football? But, what would a major university in this country do without a football season?

“As for the students and the fans, who can scarcely imagine life without Penn State football,  well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? In words and deeds, they have shown that their priorities are askew. It’s the job of the university to reset those priorities and teach new ones.”

Take care

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)

© Sage Publications, 2011

http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/

Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

Let’s All Feel Superior

By David Brooks

November 15, 2011

The New York Times

A25

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/brooks-lets-all-feel-superior.html

Penn State’s Long Road Back

By Joe Nocera

November 15, 2011

The New York Times

A25

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/nocera-penn-states-long-road-back.html

Strategic CSR - Market morality

Two quotes from a recent David Brooks column in The New York Times (the article in the url below) got me thinking about the morality of the market. The first quote highlights the percentage of the global population who have emerged from poverty as a result of economic advancement:

 

“… the percentage of people in the world living on $1 a day has declined by 80 percent since 1970s, adjusting for inflation. That’s the greatest increase in human possibility in human history. The primary cause is globalized capitalism.”

 

The second quote, in contrast, reflects on the recent Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion:

 

“When Facebook entered a deal to buy WhatsApp this week, it agreed to pay a price equal to $345 million per WhatsApp employee. Meanwhile, the share of the economic pie for the middle 60 percent of earners nationally has fallen from 53 percent to 45 percent since 1970.”

 

Brooks’ takeaway from these two statistics is that, while the market in abstract terms has enormous potential to deliver societal advancement, the market as currently structured is failing to deliver on that potential:

 

“The real moral health of an economic system … can be measured by how well it helps all people make an enterprise of their life. Whether they work at odd jobs or at a nongovernmental organization or at a big company, do they get to experience the joy of achievement? Do they know that their work amounts to something?”

 

The reasons for this disparity are largely structural and the Facebook deal is a perfect example—lots of wealth that is increasingly concentrated and, as a result, excludes a large percentage of people who it would be in society’s better interests to keep more engaged:

 

“This economy produces very valuable companies with very few employees. Meanwhile, the majority of workers are not seeing income gains commensurate with their productivity levels. This puts a strain on the essential compact that you can earn your success. … the middle class is being proletarianized, and the uneducated class is being left behind.”

 

The article also argues that the policy solutions that are being advocated, from both the right and the left, are failing to address the core problem:

 

“Republicans need to declare a truce on the social safety net. They need to assure the country that the net will always be there for the truly needy. Then they need to point out that it is the web of middle-class entitlements, even the home mortgage deduction, that really threaten benefits to the poor. … Democrats embrace a raise in the minimum wage that could drive another half-million workers out of the labor market. Much better … would be to expand the earned-income tax credit or maybe use direct payments or loans to help people move to opportunity.”

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler & Bill Werther

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders, Globalization, and Sustainable Value Creation (3e)

© Sage Publications, 2014

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/chandler3e/

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


Capitalism For the Masses

By David Brooks

February 21, 2014

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A23

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/brooks-capitalism-for-the-masses.html

 

Strategic CSR - Social cohesion

The article in the url below by David Brooks is not directly related to CSR, per se, but registers a strong statement on the cohesiveness of a society—in particular, society in the U.S. Brooks is discussing how best to give a greater number of children an opportunity to be successful in life. And, by “successful,” he is not talking about any major contributions to society, simply that they do not detract from social value. The article is good and is designed primarily to widen the debate beyond merely spending more government money trying to improve education and school systems, for example. One quote stood out for me, though, because it illustrates vividly how far we have to go to reach a bar that is not set very high:

 

“According to work done by [the University of Pennsylvania’s Isabel] Sawhill and others, a significant number of kids stay on track through the early years, but then fall off the rails as teenagers. Sawhill set a pretty low bar for having a successful adolescence: graduate from high school with a 2.5 G.P.A., don’t get convicted of a crime, don’t get pregnant. Yet only 57 percent of American 19-year-olds get over that bar. Only one-third of children in the bottom fifth of family income do so.”

 

It is hard to imagine a stronger indictment of where we are as a society than a simple statistic such as that. And, that does speak to the CSR debate in terms of how we can envision moving it forward.

 

Have a good weekend

David

 

David Chandler & Bill Werther

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders, Globalization, and Sustainable Value Creation (3e)

© Sage Publications, 2014

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/chandler3e/

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


It Takes A Generation

By David Brooks

January 24, 2014

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A25

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/opinion/brooks-it-takes-a-generation.html

 

Strategic CSR - The Pope

In the aftermath of the publication last year of the Pope's encyclical 'Laudato Si' (Praise Be To You), the majority of the media coverage I saw focused on the Pope's support for the science of climate change. The media took particular delight in noting what a bind this puts those Catholics who deny this science (read right-wing Republicans). Not much of the coverage discussed the implications of the Pope's message in the context of his wider critique of capitalism. The article in the url below, by David Brooks of the NYT, on the other hand, took a different perspective:

 

"Pope Francis is one of the world's most inspiring figures. There are passages in his new encyclical on the environment that beautifully place human beings within the seamless garment of life. And yet over all the encyclical is surprisingly disappointing."

 

Brooks suggests that the Pope's criticism of climate change deniers is really an extension of his critique of capitalism that he expressed in more depth in his earlier encyclical 'Evangelii Gaudium' (The Joy of the Gospel) published in 2013:

 

"Hardest to accept … is the moral premise implied throughout the encyclical: that the only legitimate human relationships are based on compassion, harmony and love, and that arrangements based on self-interest and competition are inherently destructive."

 

In particular:

 

"He is relentlessly negative … when describing institutions in which people compete for political power or economic gain. At one point he links self-interest with violence. He comes out against technological advances that will improve productivity by replacing human work. He specifically condemns market-based mechanisms to solve environmental problems, even though these cap-and-trade programs are up and running in places like California."

 

In contrast, Brooks offers a more honest, and I think inspiring, view of the power of capitalism to deliver social progress:

 

"You would never know from the encyclical that we are living through the greatest reduction in poverty in human history. A raw and rugged capitalism in Asia has led, ironically, to a great expansion of the middle class and great gains in human dignity. You would never know that in many parts of the world, like the United States, the rivers and skies are getting cleaner. The race for riches, ironically, produces the wealth that can be used to clean the environment."

 

The solution, at least as outlined in Strategic CSR, is to harness the creative energy of capitalism and shape it via stakeholder action to produce the behavior from companies that optimizes value creation broadly across society. While the Pope is quick to denounce the failings of capitalism, he is slow to understand the potential upside. Even more important, he misses the opportunity to promote the calling of all stakeholders, which should be to bring their individual values to bear in order to build entrepreneurial and innovative societies that embrace the outcomes the Pope seeks.

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler & Bill Werther

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders, Globalization, and Sustainable Value Creation (3e)

© Sage Publications, 2014

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/chandler3e/

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

 

Fracking and the Franciscans

By David Brooks

June 23, 2015

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A23

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/opinion/fracking-and-the-franciscans.html

 

Strategic CSR - Rights vs. Responsibilities

A big part of building a more cohesive and responsible society is arriving at the correct balance between personal freedoms and social obligations. Do I do something because I want to (without worrying about the consequences for others) or do I sacrifice my personal interests in situations where pursuing them will somehow negatively affect others? This debate will seem quaint to many (that we can or should subsume personal interest for the greater good), but the willingness to do so is the foundation on which a strong and stable society is built. It is inevitable that we experience the tension between our individual rights and our collective responsibilities every day as we interact with others—the difficult decision is where to draw the line.

David Brooks of The New York Times has thought a lot about this tension and the article in the url below is another component of his evolving ideas. The focus of this column from last week is the gay marriage debate and how, by seeking equality on this issue (an apparent right), gay people are in fact sacrificing their individual freedoms and surrendering themselves to an institution that benefits society—marriage constrains personal liberty in the name of long-term commitment to something that is bigger than the lives of the two people separately (an important social responsibility).

 

Although the focus of the article is gay marriage, Brooks frames the discussion within this larger tension between personal rights and societal responsibilities. I think these ideas are central to the idea of CSR as a way of ordering the relationship between for-profit businesses and their various stakeholders. It is also a feature of our modern, convenient, narcissistic society that we are surrendering—seemingly without putting up much of a fight.

 

Here are some selected quotes from the article:

 

“Over the past 40 years, personal freedom has been on a nearly uninterrupted winning streak. In the 1960s, we saw a great expansion of social and lifestyle freedom. In the 1980s, we saw a great expansion of economic freedom … . Since then, we’ve had everything from jeans commercials to rock anthems to political conventions celebrating freedom as the highest ideal.”

 

“The big thinkers down through the ages warned us this was going to have downsides. Alexis de Tocqueville and Emile Durkheim thought that if people are left perfectly free to pursue their individual desires, they will discover their desires are unlimited and unquenchable. They’ll turn inward and become self-absorbed. Society will become atomized. You’ll end up with more loneliness and less community. … For these writers, the goal in life is not primarily to be free but to be good. Being virtuous often means thwarting your inclinations, obeying a power outside yourself. It means maintaining a balance between liberty and restraint, restricting freedom for the sake of an ordered existence.”

 

“Recently, the balance between freedom and restraint has been thrown out of whack. People no longer even have a language to explain why freedom should sometimes be limited. The results are as predicted. A decaying social fabric, especially among the less fortunate. Decline in marriage. More children raised in unsteady homes. Higher debt levels as people spend to satisfy their cravings.”

 

“The proponents of same-sex marriage used the language of equality and rights in promoting their cause, because that is the language we have floating around. But, if it wins, same-sex marriage will be a victory for the good life, which is about living in a society that induces you to narrow your choices and embrace your obligations.”

 

Take care

David

 

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)

© Sage Publications, 2011

http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/

 

Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

 

Freedom Loses One

By David Brooks

April 2, 2013

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A19

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/opinion/brooks-freedom-loses-one.html

 

Strategic CSR - The End of Ideology?

While I would not have chosen Rick Warren as my beacon of hope, the article in the url below by David Brooks makes a compelling argument that the inauguration of Barack Obama represents a shift to a new social environment. Obama is not the beginning of the shift, Brooks argues; instead, he is the latest development in a longer process that has been occurring since the 1960s:

“… societies do mend themselves, slowly and organically. In 2002, Rick Warren wrote a phenomenally popular book called ''The Purpose Driven Life.'' The first sentence was, ''It's not about you.'' That was a sign that the age of expressive individualism was coming to an end. New community patterns and social norms were coalescing.”

In Brooks’ view, Obama both personifies this change process and also carries the potential to take it to the next level—translating the rhetoric and ideas into meaningful action:

“… folks in the Obama camp hope to create a Grand Bargain. That would mean building on a culture of cohesion and tackling the issues that require joint sacrifice -- like reducing deficits, fixing Medicare and Social Security and reforming health care. These problems were insoluble during the era of division and distrust.”

If true, it is likely that this new environment will be more conducive to an argument in favor of CSR, whether moral, rational, or economic (Chapter 1, Towards A Responsible Society, pp. 15-19).

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006

The Politics Of Cohesion
By DAVID BROOKS
806 words
20 January 2009
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
33
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/opinion/20brooks.html

Strategic CSR - Diversity training

David Brooks' column in the NYT on New Year's Day (the article in the url below) covers the way people make decisions, but focuses almost entirely on diversity training in the workplace. I think it is worth sharing because of the way various companies responded to the rise of the BLM social movement last summer; it is interesting, though, because, to me at least, it illustrates how complex such topics are and, most importantly, how good intentions often do not lead to good outcomes. These two paragraphs from the article are pertinent (particularly, the second one):

"One of the most studied examples of this flawed model is racial diversity training. Over the last few decades, most large corporations and other institutions have begun racial diversity programs to combat the bias and racism pervasive in organizational life. The courses teach people about bias, they combat stereotypes and they encourage people to assume the perspectives of others in disadvantaged groups. These programs are obviously well intended, and they often describe systemic racism accurately, but the bulk of the evidence, though not all of it, suggests they don't reduce discrimination. Firms that use such courses see no increase in managerial diversity. Sometimes they see an increase — not a decrease — in minority employee turnover."

"First, 'short-term educational interventions in general do not change people.' This is as true for worker safety courses as it is for efforts to combat racism. Second, some researchers argue that the training activates stereotypes in people's minds rather than eliminates them. Third, training can make people complacent, thinking that because they went through the program they've solved the problem. Fourth, the mandatory training makes many white participants feel left out, angry and resentful, actually decreasing their support for workplace diversity. Fifth, people don't like to be told what to think, and may rebel if they feel that they're being pressured to think a certain way."

As an attempt to minimize or counteract implicit biases (that we all have to some degree), the research suggests that most of the training programs employed in organizations today are, at best, ineffective and, at worst, counterproductive. Executives think they are doing something to correct the injustice, but in fact are not doing anything at all to address the underlying problem (and might well be making it worse):

"… as Tiffany L. Green and Nao Hagiwara wrote in Scientific American this past August, 'But to date, none of these interventions has been shown to result in permanent, long-term reductions of implicit bias scores or, more importantly, sustained and meaningful changes in behavior.'"

Brooks' solution to what seems like an intractable problem is, in essence, forced integration:

"Real change seems to involve putting bodies from different groups in the same room, on the same team and in the same neighborhood. That's national service programs. That's residential integration programs across all lines of difference. That's workplace diversity, equity and inclusion — permanent physical integration, not training."

Take care

David

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (5e)

© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

We Just Saw How Minds Aren't Changed

By David Brooks

January 1, 2021

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

A19

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/opinion/social-change-bias-training.html