Goodwill Dismisses a Solid Societal Norm: A Mentality beyond Unethical Conduct

When managers of a business or non-profit interact with a societal norm by openly rejecting any obligation to act in accord with the norm, the reaction from stakeholders can be utter disbelief. The refusal to act in accordance with the norm as it impacts the organization can be beyond bad management and even unethical conduct. The refusal to acknowledge a societal norm even as its impact on the business and stakeholders has been arranged by the business is beyond, though it can include, unethical conduct. Norms are not in themselves ethical, for as David Hume wrote, you can’t get an ought from an is; rational justification by ethical principles must be added before we can get to, “You ought to do X” from “X is the practice.” Yet ethical principles can be in norms, in which case we can say, “You ought to act in accordance with the norm because it is ethical.” In some cases, the norm-business relationship (i.e., Business and Society) can be more salient than an ethical principle in the norm itself. A managerial practice at Goodwill, a non-profit retailer based on donations for the poor, serves as a case in point.

The full essay is at "Goodwill Dismisses a Solid Societal Norm."

A Lack of Good Will at Goodwill

Redefining words to suit a business’s financial interest is misleading, even if the herd animals who serve as customers look the other way, or, even worse, do not notice the fact that the words have been redefined! At a Goodwill store in Phoenix, Arizona,  I bought a black suit for singing in a choir. Before I paid, I asked a manager whether I could return the suit as long as I do so within a week. “Yes, you can get a refund,” he replied. Three days later, I returned to the store to return the suit. I approached an available cashier, but she told me that I had to go to the other cashier if I had a return. That cashier was not even at his register, and even when he returned I had to wait at least five minutes for one customer. Only the head cashier can process refunds, whereas any cashier can accept money—an interesting, meaning convenient, asymmetry. Money comes in easier than it goes out.

The full essay is at "False Pretenses as Good Will."

Does Refusing Rolling Stone Magazine's Use of a Criminal's Picture For Marketing Purposes Violate Corporate Social Responsibility?

In 2013, the editors at Rolling Stone must have been kicking themselves after several retail chains announced that they would not be selling the issue that displays Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a young hottie. Criminal charges had been made against him for the Boston marathon bombing that took place in April of that year. Selling a magazine by playing off the good looks of a terrorist was more than several—but not all—retailers could stand. Were the offended retailers being socially responsible, or is the matter of CSR not as clear-cut as has typically been assumed.

The full essay is at "CSR or Not: Refusing to Sell a Magazine Whose Marketing Includes Use of a Criminal."

Steve Jobs at Apple: A Visionary

Typically as a company transitions from an enterprising, creative new venture to a large organization to be managed, a staid CEO replaces a visionary founder. In the case of Steve Jobs at Apple, the very nature of the man’s vision was not only inherently at odds with the status-quo underpinning of a large organization with a budget, but also essential to the company’s business model. Hence, the company, including its shareholders, paid a price for years for jettisoning Jobs. The film, Jobs (2013), is centered on the distinctiveness of Jobs’ vision. Although the film also hints at why this distinctiveness is such that the company would (and did) lose as a large organization after making the typical founder-to-CEO transition.

The full essay is at "Jobs."

Facebook: A Distrustful Company Projecting Distrust

Cambridge Analytica, political data firm founded by Stephen Bannon and Robert Mercer, and with ties to U.S. President Trump’s 2016 campaign, “was able to harvest private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without the social network’s alerting users.”[1] The firm had purchased the data from a developer (a psychology professor at Cambridge University in the E.U.) who had developed a personality test that Facebook users could take, and whose purpose was supposedly academic. The developer violated Facebook’s policy on how user data could be used by third parties. The data firm “used the Facebook data to develop methods that [the firm] claimed could identify the personalities of individual American voters and influence their behavior.”[2] In other words, Cambridge Analytica used the purchased data to manipulate users to vote for Donald Trump for U.S. president in 2016 by sending pro-Trump messages. Although Facebook had not known of the sale of the data to Cambridge Analytica at the time, the social network, upon learning Cambridge Analytica’s political use of the data in 2015, failed to notify its users whose data had been compromised. Although 270,000 Facebook users took the developer’s personality test, “the data of some 50 million  users . . . was harvested without their explicit consent via their friend networks.”[3] It bears noting here that those of the 50 million users who had not taken the personality test should definitely have been informed. At the very least, Facebook’s management could not be trusted to not only  keep users informed, but also protect users in the first place by adequately enforcing the third-party-use policy. So it is ironic that Facebook’s untrustworthy management could be unduly distrustful of ordinary users.

The full essay is at "Facebook: A Distrustful Company."

For more on Facebook, see Taking the Face off Facebook

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1. Matthew Rosenberg and Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Role In Data Misuse Sets Off Storm,” The New York Times, March 19, 2018.

2, Ibid.

3. “Cambridge Analytica: Facebook ‘being investigated by FTC,’” BBC News ( accessed March 20, 2018).

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The First Multiracial U.S. President: Leadership as Personified Symbol over Political Advantage

Barak Obama had a tendency to modify his manner of speaking, and even his dialect, to fit with his audience. Listening to his speech to the National Urban League, I was stunned; early on, he pivoted off from his ordinary manner of speaking to speak in what was surely a more familiar way to much of his audience. The crowd loved it. The audience must have been looking at him as the first black US President. It occurred to me while listening to him and observing his strategy to connect to his audience that although there would be less political advantage in it, he could have run for president by presenting himself as multi-racial (technically, mulatto). 

The full essay is at "Obama: The First Multi-racial U.S. President."

Advertisers Remove Ads on YouTube: Fair to YouTube and Video-Producers?

One day after Thanksgiving in 2017, “a fresh wave of advertisers suspended commercials on Youtube after their ads showed up next to videos that appeared to attract pedophile viewers.”[1] Youtube had removed ads from roughly 3 million videos, but the company’s use of human and AI checkers simply could not keep pace with the number of uploaded videos. Even so, Diageo, maker of Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker (alcohol drinks), announced it would hold off its ads until “appropriate safeguards are in place.”[2] Mars and Adidas took a similar line. The question is whether those advertisers were being fair to Youtube and even the producers of the videos.

The full essay is at Advertisers and YouTube.

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[1] Stu Woo and Sam Schehner, “YouTube Deals With Another Advertiser Backlash,” The Wall Street Journal, November 25-26, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

Uber Tricking Law Enforcement: An Unethical Corporate Culture Externalized

A company with a culture in which in-fighting and heavy-handed treatment of subordinates are not only tolerated, but also constitute the norm can have good financials. With operations in more than 70 countries and a valuation of close to $70 billion in 2017, Uber could be said to be a tough, but successful company. Yet the psychological boundary-problems that lie behind such an organizational culture can easily be projected externally to infect bilateral relations with stakeholders. In the case of Uber, those stakeholders include municipal law enforcement. Even more than as manifested within the company, the external foray demonstrates just how presumptuous “boundary issues” are. Such presumption can blind even upper-level managers to just how much their company has overstep. In reading this essay on Uber’s program to evade law enforcement, you may be struck by the sheer denial in the company.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Bad Psychology and Political Violence: A Toxic Cocktail

Before the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in early 2011, it had been quite some time since there had been a major assassination attempt on American soil. The attempt on President Reagan had been almost thirty years earlier. During the intervening time, the naive view that American politics had outgrown such barbaric acts of political violence could grow and thrive. Then in July 2011, the world witnessed an anti-Muslim European go on a shooting spree in a delusional sense of being at war. In his mind, there was an actual war and his acts were justified. In fact, he viewed himself after the fact as a savior. Undoubtedly, there was no internal check in his mind for how far his sense of political reality could get from the “facts on the ground.”

The full essay is at "Bad Psychology and Political Violence."