Although we find that many people go along and just follow orders, it is not a hopeless situation. With moral imagination and moral courage, we can all do better. [MUSIC] In the last section of this module, let's talk about how we can develop moral courage and moral imagination to avoid simply going along and following orders, particularly when we know they are wrong. So how do we combat unethical behavior with moral courage? One of the things is to question authority. Ask where the power is, ask, would you engage this on your own? Do a test, I would call it the mirror test. Would I really do this if I were doing this by myself? And would I be proud of those behaviors? I would think, if I were a Volkswagen engineer, I wouldn't have done this by myself. And I certainly wouldn't be proud of those behaviors, as I'm sure these engineers are not. The idea is to kind of step out of your box, step out of who you are, and ask questions, just keep asking questions. Step back, and if you're in a company, question the corporate's dominant logic or the culture of why they do things that way. And when people say, we've always done it that way, that's a really good time to ask a question, why? Well, does that mean you have to be a maverick and sort of stick out? No, find colleagues, you'll discover in every company, there are colleagues that are asking the same questions you are. And as a team, as a group you can make a difference. Let me give an example that I don't have on a slide. Unilever, it's a great company. Huge Dutch/British multinational, I don't know, $80 or 90 billion company. You can look it up. But they didn't do anything about the environment. They just didn't think about it. And all the time, they grow things, and they fish, but they weren't doing a good job in sustainable fishing. They weren't doing a good job in sustainable farming. But one of their middle managers got a group together and went to the president, the CEO, and said, look, we have to do something about this. And guess what the guy said? You're right, we do, and you're in charge of it. Now that took a lot of courage. I mean, this is a middle man, Dutch guy, nice guy, but middle manager, not a big deal, right? And so he got a couple of colleagues together. And now Unilever has a program throughout the whole company, not yet perfect, to work on being as green as possible. So he was challenging the authority, but he had good arguments. This is the way it's going, this is the way it has to go. So he found other stories. And so he was able to change the climate and change, actually, the dominant logic at Unilever. Now what's interesting here, one of the logics, one of the stories to present to Volkswagen is there are plenty of successful auto manufacturers who don't falsify their software. How many? I don't know, I'll let you count, 30, that's a lot. So they're, in some sense, Volkswagen is an outlier, they are doing things other companies are not doing. That's a good reason not to engage in this behavior and a good reason, a good argument, for questioning the behavior. So you have to challenge they authority, but you have to be really careful and get facts right. Not just say, this is wrong, but can we justify this action? Is it the kind of place we want to work? Is it the kind of model behavior? Does it fit with our mission and code of conduct? And of course, this violated Volkswagon's code of conduct. Also, would we want other companies to engage in this? Well, no, we wouldn't. Do you want it to be made public? Well, we found out we didn't, but it did become public. Can we be transparent? But it will be transparent anyway, there are no secrets. People will find out sooner or later. So who's harmed and who is benefited? Well, pretty much the American environment is harmed, and the environment in other countries where these diesels are running, as well. And what about the company's brand image? It's really been hurt. And what about other stakeholders? So more questions to ask, how does this fit with the local culture? Well, we saw cases where that was the problem with Motorola. And what are the international expectations? The right to a livable environment is a right we've developed more recently than other rights, but it's a very important right. And our very basic values, the basic value of safety was challenged here without anybody challenging it. I find it amazing how you could be a professional and engineer and not question this, I find simply astonishing. And the only way I can account for it is that someone was obeying authority, the managers, the executives said, yes, we're going to do this. Okay, all right, I guess I'll go along, very scary. So the other thing we want to think about is, how do we be imaginative? How do I think a little bit differently about things? How do I step out of my normal behavior? I find that challenging, myself. I'm an academic, so I get involved with reading, and writing, and talking, but sometimes, I just take a break. I create documentaries, or I go for a walk, or I go on the public transportation at night in Chicago. And during the day is fine, at night, [SOUND] but I want to challenge myself to think out of my box. And I think we all have to try to do, and you may have different ways of doing that. Travel is often good because you see a whole nother culture, and that can shake you up. Show ways to shake, not to become revolutionaries, but just shake us up out of our sort of, when we all get into this, we all have this normal sort of siloed way of thinking. And we need to get out of those boxes to avoid this kind of thing and to help the companies we work for to be more creative, as well. Now at Volkswagen, falsifying software ws wrong, period. This is not a dilemma here, it's just wrong, it's against the law. But the other piece of it is, there are no secrets. Behind every one of those doors is a secret. And every one of those doors will be opened. That's just the way the media is, there are no secrets. For those of you who are on Facebook, you know, right? Whatever you put on Facebook, everybody will find out about it. There are no secrets unless you don't tell anybody ever, ever. And we're not so good at that, we're not so good at keeping secrets. So we have to remember that, in a company, there are no secrets. People find out, the media is too curious, it'll find out. The same, by the way, for our politicians, but I'm going to bracket that question a moment for this. We have to develop a thing about viable alternatives. The alternative for the Volkswagen was to fix this and fix it right away to avoid breaking laws, bad publicity, harm to the environment, loss of customer loyalty, reputational harm, fines, enormous fines, huge fines. And a lot of people are going to lose their jobs because Volkswagen's going to have to downsize because not as many people are buying their cars. No question about it, any of their cars, so they're in trouble. So this was, I would have to say stupid but it happens And it happens a lot. So we, as managers, we as corporate citizens, we as political citizens, we have to keep asking questions and prodding. And we can, and we can do better, we can improve. Let me end with a quotation from Margaret Mead, who was an anthropologist. And in fact, she is the, really, founder of the whole field of anthropology, and studied peoples all over the world. She once said, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. We can change the world, too, and make it better, thank you. [MUSIC]
