Leadership “Coaches” Using Social Media: Utopian Ideologues

Leadership as a topic in business became popular in the 1980s. It was not enough, however. James Burns distinguishes transformational leadership from the mere transactional leadership in his book, Leadership. Servant leadership raised the ethical bar by applying the ethical model of Jesus in the Gospels to leadership in business. Leadership vision quickly became a buzz word, as was charismatic leadership. All of these renderings can be interpreted as business trying to escape its mundane terms for a loftier enterprise in which ideals are more salient or applicable. As valuable as efficiency is, it is difficult to get excited about it. The problem is that many (or some) leadership consultants on social media have gotten too caught up on their utopian platitudes that leadership becomes a mere subterfuge. Certainly the utopian ideologies do not define leadership or are attributes of it, and yet the "coaches" claim that platitudes are necessary to leadership. In other words, I contend that leadership gurus, or "coaches" (a mis-applied analogy that wrongly dismisses the word "consultant" as too boring), had by 2023 taken to social media to project whatever utopian ideology they value onto leadership. The term has become too vague as a consequence. In fact, the concept of leadership became a near synonym for goodness in human relations and excellence in terms of virtue ethics. As a result, the concept approaches being a tautology whose actual meaning has been rendered vacuous from the a projection of so many subjective, utopian ideologies. Relative to such lofty remakes of leadership, management has become almost a dirty word—certainly not as flashy as visionary leadership. In actuality, the "coaches" are evangelical ideologues.

The full essay is at "Utopian Ideologues in Leadership Consulting."

See also: The Essence of Leadership

Walmart: Encroaching on Employees' Private Lives

In 2023, Walmart relaxed its policy requiring anyone applying for a job at the company to get a drug test, including for marijuana, which at the time was legal in several U.S. member states. Once hired, however, employees were still subject to random testing. An employee in a member state in which the drug is legal could be fired even if the person is never affected by the drug while working. I contend that the practice is unfair, unethical, and an over-reach in terms of the nature of a labor contract. 

The full essay is at "Walmart: Encroaching on Employees' Private Lives."

See Related: Walmart: Bad Management as Unethical

Getting the Seasons Wrong: Purblind Meteorologists

You may think you know the answer to the question, “When is the autumn season?” But do you? Watching the weather section of local news on television or the internet, you could be excused for getting the beginning date wrong because it is the meteorologist who has misled you. In itself, getting the exact day right is not a big deal; it is not as if the temperature can be expected to take a nose-dive on the first day of fall. The astonishing thing is that so many meteorologists either knowingly or out of ignorance present the astronomical beginning of the “autumn” quarter of the Earth’s orbit as the meteorological start of fall, for the two are different yet admittedly related.

The full essay is at "Getting the Seasons Wrong."

On the Infallibility of the Pope: The Assumption of Mary

What does it mean for a human being to be vested with infallibility in a religious organization even though like all humans, that one is a finite being? Ironically, it is often the ignorant who presume that they cannot be wrong (i.e., that they are infallible). That is something else entirely. The sort of infallibility granted by the Roman Catholic Church on its pope does not mean that he knows everything or can’t be wrong about anything. The infallibility is circumscribed to cover only religious doctrine. In short, Roman Catholicism gives the Pope the authority to promulgate theological truths that go beyond, yet are consistent with, the Bible. A pope cannot say that Jesus is no longer to be regarded as the Son of God, for such a claim obviously contradicts the canonical gospels. Yet more could be said that is consistent with Jesus’ divinity, and even about Mary, whose womb is regarded as blessed. The “Mother of God” is itself a title that practically invites further theological elaboration beyond the material on her that is in the Gospels. I have in mind here the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on August 15 annually. The feast-day is not a minor holy day for Catholics, for they are obligated to attend Mass. Indeed, a human body being admitted into a spiritual state is no small matter theologically. 

The full essay is at "The Assumption of Mary."

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding. 

The full essay is at "Judgment at Nuremberg."

The Screen Actors Guild Strike: American Capitalism Is Inherently Unbalanced

On July 14, 2023, Hollywood actors joined the writers in going on strike against the studios, which had changed the business model in ways, according to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), that were leaving the vast majority of actors out financially. At the time, AI (artificial intelligence) was the red-hot buzzword, promising unheard of advances but also baleful clouds on the horizon. The president of SAG sounded the alarm on not only the threat of AI given the studios' new business models predicated on ubiquitous streaming and digital technology, but also the more long-standing and ingrained American corporate system of Capitalism wherein upper managements get away with not sharing the surplus of corporate wealth due to an inherent or institutional conflict of interest. Indeed, Fran Drescher, the president of SAG, was not far from calling into question the taken-for-granted assumption in Capitalism that residual profits should go to stockholders exclusive. Questioning that default (as well as claiming that CEOs get to set their own compensation by controlling their respective boards of directors) would have made Drescher's announcement of a strike truly revolutionary. She was so close. 

The full essay is at SAG Strike

Turkey's President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues

The European Union is not a military alliance, like NATO or the ancient Spartan League. Nor is the E.U. merely a free-trade agreement like NAFTA. In terms of the history of federalism, the E.U. instantiates “modern federalism,” wherein governmental sovereignty is split between federal and state levels, rather than confederalism, wherein all such sovereignty is retained by the states. Both the U.S. and E.U. instantiate modern federal systems, although ironically the U.S. was originally a confederal system of sovereign states. In likening the E.U. to NATA in 2023, President Erdogan of Turkey unwittingly committed a category mistake. This in turn weakened his attempt to leverage his power in approving Sweden as a country in NATO with his demand that the E.U. admit Turkey as a state. 

The full essay is at "Turkey's President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues."

On the Decadence of American Journalism: Journalists as Celebrities

I submit that when a conveyer of the news becomes the story, something is wrong; in typing this sentence initially, I did not include I submit that. To state my thesis statement as if it were a fact of reason (Kant’s phrase) seemed to me rather heavy-handed (i.e., arrogant). Similarly, when some Americans insisted after the U.S. presidential that Don Trump had won as if the asseveration were a fact of reason, I could sense aggressiveness along with the presumptuousness in treating one’s own opinion as a declaration of fact, especially if the actual fact—Joe Biden being sworn into the office—was otherwise. Opinion is one thing; fact is another. When a person misconstrues one’s opinion with fact, something is wrong. I believe this happens so often that it may be due to a problem innate in the human brain. Religious folks would not have to reach far to point out that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the sin of pride manifests in wanting to be omniscient; eating of that proverbial apple of the knowledge of good and evil ushers in original sin. A person perceiving one’s own opinion as fact, or even as important as fact, implicitly regards oneself as God. A journalist who interlards one’s role in conveying the news with one’s own commentary, and an editor who then makes that commentary the point of a story both treat a means (i.e., the conveyer of news) as an end (i.e., the news itself). I contend that at least by 2023, American journalism had fallen into this hole with impunity, which involved a lack of industry self-regulation and individual self-discipline. 

 

The full essay is at "American Journalism." 

The U.S. Supreme Court: Free Speech Trumps Public Accommodations Law

I contend as a matter of reasoned opinion rather than infallible fact that the Free Speech protection in the U.S. Constitution applies to not only human beings, rather than to non-human legal “persons” (e.g., corporations), but also to speech where the purpose is speech rather than something else. I have written elsewhere on the mistake in treating corporations as if they were human beings, so I treat only the second claim here. I reference the first claim only as context for my broader claim that the U.S. Supreme Court has tended to over-extend applications of the free-speech clause not only beyond its original intent, but also common sense. The latter violation is particularly astonishing. 

The full essay is at "Free Speech and Public-Accommodations Law"

Pittsburgh Businesses Encroach on Public Property with Impunity

Private property, competition, and the market-mechanism have come to be assumed to be integral to the economic system of Capitalism. The assumption that this cluster of attributes is necessary is faulty though, as, for example, the state can own some or all of the “means of production” (i.e., firms) that are subject to market competition, especially if privately-owned enterprises also exist. China had a mix of private and state-owned enterprises compete in several industries when the state opened the economy to competitive forces setting supply and demand. In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packers, an NFL football team, is owned by the residents of that city, such ownership being Socialism, and yet that team has competed not only to win, but also in the hiring of players and managers. A competitive market does not require that the property of the means of production be privately owned. Even in the case of private ownership of companies, the widely accepted custom wherein the owners receive the residual profits after expenses is dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. Alternatively, creditors or employees/managers could receive any excess revenue after expenses have been paid. In short, Capitalism as it has come to be known and exercised is more arbitrary than capitalists may realize. Even the taken-for-granted distinction between public and private property is not as stark as may be typically supposed. This is no excuse, however, for businesses that knowingly encroach on public property as if it were their own private property. A Capitalist economic system predicated on private property may contain not only the seed of monopoly, as Marx claimed, but also a tendency of private enterprises to over-reach on the public domain. If so, government has a responsibility to prune back the overweening tentacles. Two examples make this point.

The full essay is at "Companies on Public Property."

When Police are the Bad Guys: Extricating the Aggressive Personality and the Presumption of Being above the Law

The assumption that more police than we might expect have in not being subject to the law even while off-duty suggests that hiring, training, and retention practices of police departments are inadequate. The presumption of being an ubermench and thus untouchable is dangerous when the person can legally carry a gun. Memo to police departments in the U.S.: please notify your employees that they are subject to local, state, and federal laws, period. Any indication of any presumption to the contrary subjects the culprit to termination. Unfortunately, police departments and their respective city governments in the U.S. are far from such enlightenment as could hold their employees accountable.

The full essay is at "Presumptuous City Employees."

Starbucks: A Racist Company Against Racism

In June, 2023, Starbucks had to face a unanimous jury decision in favor of a regional manager whom Starbucks' upper management had fired because she had resisted the company's racist policy of punishing innocent Caucasian managers for good public relations, which the CEO felt was needed and appropriate after a store manager had legitimately called the police on two Black people in a Starbucks restaurant who presumed the right not only to sit in a restaurant without ordering anything (before Starbucks allowed this),  but also to ignore the authority of the store's manager. Starbucks cowered to the unjust negative publicity, and thus showed a lack of leadership, and went on to act unethically in wanting to show the world that the company can go after Caucasian employees. This racism is ironic, for several years earlier, Starbucks' CEO had ordered employees at the store level to discuss racism with customers. Interestingly, the anti-racist ideology being preached was partial, and thus contained a blind spot wherein racism such as the company's upper management would exhibit is acceptable. 

The full essay is at "Starbucks"

See also: Bucking Starbucks’ Star

Turning a Church into a Partisan Billboard

By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.

The full essay is at "Church Billboards"

Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity

Taylor Swift, an American singer and cultural icon in 2023, spoke “out against anti-queer legislation” during a concert in early June. “We can’t talk about Pride Month without talking about pain. There have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put [gay people] at risk. It’s painful for everyone. Every ally. Every loved one . . . ,” she said[1]. So much hurt. This motivated me to volunteer to carry a full-size gay flag in a gay Pride parade until the end of the route even though I am not gay. When I arrived in the morning, I thought the issue was political; by the time the parade began, religion had trumped the political. A small but vocal group of evangelical Christians and a larger group of young women wearing and carrying gay flags (in part to hide the Christians) were shouting at each other in utter futility of noise. What if people would use religion to dissolve the religious and political anger and even tension instead of stoking them? Both sides missed an opportunity.

The full essay is at "Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity."

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1. Shruti Rajkumar, “Taylor Swift Breaks Silence And Condemns Anti-LGBTQ Bills During Eras Tour,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2023.

A Republican Catholic Bishop Violated God In Blocking Freedom Of Conscience

A salient aspect of the U.S. Constitution is the separation of church and state. A government cannot establish or show preference for a religion or sect thereof. Although church clerics can state a politically partisan preference, they risk their religious organization’s tax-exempt status. In the presidential election of 1960, John F. Kennedy was under sufficient popular pressure to publicly assure the American electorate that he would, if elected to America’s highest governmental office, let himself be an agent for the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome. So, when Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck, North Dakota urged his flock to vote for the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012, Maureen Fiedler, a Sister of Loretto and a holder of a doctorate in government from Georgetown University, wrote, (I)t is flatly unacceptable for a bishop to be giving voting instructions to his flock.”[1] Interestingly, the instructions trump even the primacy of an informed individual conscience.

The full essay is at "A Republican Catholic Bishop Violated God."

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[1] Maureen Fiedler, “Catholic Senator in North Dakota Challenges Bishop’s Election Letter,” National Catholic Reporter, October 25, 2012