Our family had a lively discussion at dinner time today about the court martial trial of Ehren Watada which begins today in Fort Lewis, Washington.

Watada is the Army officer who decided, after spending months researching his anticipated assignment to Iraq, that the war was a morally indefensible war. He offered to go fight somewhere else, and he even offered to resign. But, he is a soldier, and a soldier is supposed to obey his superiors without question.

Therefore, the Army had to do what it is doing, court martial him. He is being charged on one count of failure to deploy and two counts (reduced from the original four) of “conduct unbecoming of an officer” for making statements against the war and against the Bush administration. While there are many who support him, there are also those who label him un-American, and “a weasel”.

I asked my children what they thought of Ehren, and their comments were interesting. If he is right, my daughter, opined, then they should let him go. She was referring to Watada’s contention that the war is illegal. Unfortunately, that is not the basis of the trial. Read the rest of this entry »

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eBay is now an entrenched part of our culture. We shake our heads at the exorbitant prices that some people are willing to pay for some products that are sold through that medium. For instance, recently, the craze of the PS3 limited release with prices reaching almost ten times the original retail prices for the units is well publicized.

Although it is convenience for shoppers as well as sellers, and there are many who are making comfortable living out of eBay retailing, I wonder if the ethical ramifications is worrying anyone. A while back, I was wondering if the eBay philosophy of the marketplace promoted sound ethical practices among (especially) the young and impressionable.

Recently, promoters of a widely popular Australian concert event Big Day Out tried to curtail ticket scalping by adding a condition of sale to their tickets to prevent on-selling of tickets for profit.

However, the legal beagles of eBay Read the rest of this entry »

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I have just added the latest book by Tom Morris, If Harry Potter Ran General Electric to my LibraryThing catalog. Morris is an erswhile philosophy professor extraordinarire turned business success and achievement coach and guru who also wrote the acclaimed If Aristotle Ran General Motors (which is also part of my LT catalog). I mentioned LibraryThing the other day, and it is not just a cool catalog that you can create to keep track of your books. You can also use it to track books you have read that your like (or dislike) and find others who may have read or who own the same books.

Just looking at my profile, I can see that I share many books with quite a number of seminarians and other academics. So, what does this tell about me? I am neither, and work in corporate world as a sales guy! The thing is I love my job and I also love to read what I read! I guess you can say that I am an enigma!

Anyway, this latest addition to my catalog is quite an interesting read. I have just begun reading it, and already I like it. So, how do you fancy Harry Potter as CEO?

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In the classic scene in A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson, playing Colonel Jessep shouted, “You can’t handle the truth!” when grilled about the extent of military coverups, secrets and leadership knowledge about wrongdoings in a military base. The unspoken understanding, apparently, is that leaders have privileged access to the truth, so they have a responsibility to guard it, to act (or not act) upon it and only they are appropriately situated to appreciate it.

Leaving aside the questionability of this seemingly widespread assumption, I would like to ask a related question: what happens when leaders do not know the whole truth? What happens, that is, when the system fails them and they have lack of access to the information, or when those “in the know” hide the truth from them? Read the rest of this entry »

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Technorati Tags: truth, misrepresentation, leaders, knowledge, enron, awb, corruption, food-for-oil iraq, alexander downer, transparency, accountability

While battling on BlogExplosion today, I visited Imago Dei and read this post on Social Justice and Christianity. I have been working on my next post in the series on Fear of the LORD which is on the same topic, so I read it with interest. Her post linked to this one from The Library Lady Rants. I really resonated with this post. I recommend that you go check it out.

There are so many unsaid emotions in the midst of the kerfuffle that is the “illegal immigration” debacle. As I said before, it will not resolve the problem by making those who cross borders without proper documentation felons and it is simply impractical attempting to round up all 12 million and deporting every single one of them. Read the rest of this entry »

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Technorati Tags: immigration, justice, compassion, law, illegal immigration

This article, which reports on the fallout from a smirk on a face of an employee during a staff meeting, brought back memories, and perhaps a little bit of a smirk. Not at the poor guy who “got the sack” as they say downunder, or at the employer who brandished his toxicity in response to what he felt to be a personal threat.

It reminded me of the times I was accused of smirking not a few times while working for my former boss (whom I profiled as a paradigmatic toxic boss). Up until then, no one has ever attributed that kind of action to me, and I honestly didn’t know exactly how to do that. Honestly! Tell, me! How exactly does one smirk?

Those were the days. It surprises me that managers and others who have the responsibility to run people and organizations have the audacity to act as if they deserve unfeigned loyalty and respect without earning them. I hope the pressure that the union and the authorities are putting on the company will bear fruit and justice for all.

NOTE: Previously, I posted on toxic leadership here, here and here. I also mused about what it is about the position of leadership that apparently makes it so unique that not only do leaders think there have a justification for moral deviations, but most of us seem to tolerate these moral shortcomings and some even expect them of our corporate and political leaders. See also this short wikipedia article.

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In every sphere of life, “thinking outside the box” is a virtue that is not only encouraged, and highly desirable. This is especially so in the area of business, politics and probably also in religion.

But, does “thinking outside the box”, the virtue of not allowing the constraints of culture, habit or history limit one in problem solving or decision making, also cause one to take short cuts in moral issues?

This is especially significant for people in leadership positions, for they have the power to influence people, organizations and society itself. Recently, I reflected on a problematic question in leadership and moral justification, specifically about the nature of our understanding about the responsibilities of leadership that make us think that there are reasons to excuse or at least justify their immoral actions, at least some of the time.

When one thinks about the type of people that we typically choose to be leaders, one of the more highly prized virtues we desire in those who lead is this quality of flexibility and creativity. However, does this mean that we are also seeking those who are more prone to take liberties in ethical matters?

For certainly we do not wish to have our leaders not respect moral demands upon them or their organizations, while at the same time we do not wish for our leaders to be hampered by restrictive thinking and inflexibility.

Is this a real dilemma? How do we reconcile this state of affairs?

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Technorati Tags: leadership, moral justification, creativity, ethics, virtues

Interesting thought this. Considering the number of corporate leaders who misbehave badly and political leaders who often put themselves above the law, or at least, above the demands of morality, this might not such a crazy question after all.

By virtue of the responsibilities that some leaders hold, is it possible to justify their immoral acts on the basis of these unique demands or responsibilities of their position? Perhaps leaders with a consuming vision and who have access to resources and influence that can bring about massive transformation and change the world for the better face unique enough challenges to set them apart from ordinary people. So much so that they can be excused, and even justified, in deviating from the demands of morality.

Further, what if a leader have access to privileged information, say, that the country is in mortal danger, perhaps, from terrorists who do not play by the rules? Read the rest of this entry »

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