Morality and Immorality

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

The explanation of organizational distrust missed covertly concealed managerial ignorance (hereafter: CCMI), a dark secret veiled on organizations' dark side and facilitated by managers' unknowing of their own ignorance and by unstudied " jumper " managers' coping with gaps in local tacit know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wisdom). Employees may trust " jumpers " coming from the outside who risk their own authority, expose their ignorance, learn, fill the gaps, and become competent, but managerial power enables defense of authority by using CCMI and camouflaging resulting mistakes and failures by bluffs, power abuses, scapegoating, and other subterfuges aimed at amoral careerism (AC). Anthropologists untangled subterfuges, but without becoming managers they missed how such defensiveness caused mutual distrust, curbed knowledge-sharing, learning, and problem-solving, furthering mistakes and failures in vicious distrust and ignorance cycles. A longitudinal study of five automatic processing plants by a management-educated and experienced semi-native anthropologist untangled that only few of their " jumper " executives, 7 of 32 studied, chose ignorance-exposing vulnerable involvement and became job-competent. As the import of " jumper " executives is now common, this problem is worsening and calls for solutions that are, suggested besides recommendations for further study.

While brand punishment – through either individual or collective action – has received ample attention by consumer psychologists, absent from this literature is that such punishment can take the form of unethical actions that can occur even when the consumer is not personally harmed. Across three studies, we examine consumers’ propensity to act unethically towards a brand that they perceive to be harmful. We document that when consumers come to see brands as harmful –even in the absence of a direct, personal transgression – they can be motivated to seek retribution in the form of unethical intentions and behaviors. That is, consumers are more likely to lie, cheat, or steal to punish a harmful brand. Drawing on these findings, we advance implications for consumer psychologists and marketing practitioners and provide avenues for future research in the area.

Mismanagement, “Jumpers,” and Morality
Covertly Concealed Managerial Ignorance and Immoral Careerism in Industrial Organizations
Reuven Shapira
Routledge, New York and London, 2017
Abstract
Managers who advance by “jumps” among firms suffer large gaps of local know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wisdom), known to subordinates due to specialized education, practicing jobs, and learning in communities of practitioners. Sharing their knowledge requires the “jumper” to jeopardize his/her authority by exposing ignorance until learning, but many reasons deter exposure, while managerial powers tempt “jumpers” to defend their authority by covertly concealing managerial ignorance (hereafter: CCMI). CCMI causes incompetence, mismanagement, failures, and vicious distrust and ignorance cycles that bar performance-based career advancement and encourage covert immoral careerism (Im-C), defending jobs and advancing careers by various immoral subterfuges.
Im-C is a known organizational malady, but its explanation missed the CCMI practiced by “jumpers”, probably due to secrecy and conspiracies of silence as well as managers’ ignorance of their own ignorance. Anthropologists untangled managers’ immorality, but without becoming executives themselves they missed its furthering of vicious distrust and ignorance cycles. Anthropologists usually lacked managerial education and experience, while Dr. Shapira’s early managerial socialization resembled that of the managers he studied. He held various executive positions at his kibbutz, Gan Shmuel, and in its food processing factory, while acquiring a social science education. He knew some of the managers personally prior to his research, and was familiar with their context, the kibbutz system. Due to this unique background he was able to perform semi-native anthropological research, approaching managers and executives as their peer and turning interviews into open discussions of common managerial problems.
Combining this advantageous openness with extensive interviewing of executives, their subordinates, and many freely speaking ex-employees, as well as participant observations and studying organizational histories with free access to their documents, enabled penetration of managers’ dark secrets. The book summarizes a 5-year semi-native study of five “jumper”-managed automatic processing cotton gin plants and their parent inter-kibbutz cooperatives. It finds that CCMI-induced Im-C was practiced by some 75% of executives, versus only some 25% of mid-levelers. Mid-level “jumpers” mostly prevented plants’ total failure by authority-jeopardizing vulnerable involvement that engendered virtuous trust and learning cycles, enabling executives’ career advancement versus mid-levelers’ stalled careers.
This negative gradation of managerial morality suggests that organizational cultures which encourage “jumping” careers tend to nurture immoral executives. This helps explain the emergence of scandalous executives such as those recently exposed at Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, and similar cases. This book gets to the root causes behind the immorality and incompetence of corporate executives, traits now regularly exposed in financial crises, bankruptcies, fraud investigations, and books on the evils of “casino capitalism.” Ideas for remedying this corporate malady are suggested, and further study of how “jumpers” cope with ignorance is called for.

Difficulties in translation between Western and non-Western languages are identified in this article as contributing to corruption, incompetence and hence growing poverty and dependency on the West in much of Africa. The problem with Western languages arises because African people are expected, for the sake of international credibility, to use them in the same way as they are used in the West. This forces the African populous, including their scholars, to function formally in respect to an absent and unfamiliar ‘culture’ while disregarding their own history and traditions. Political and economic pressures that ‘force’ African people to operate formally using Western languages are here decried as immoral; leading to the proposal that mission from the West should take the lead in encouraging policies based on the use of indigenous tongues.

Postface à La Haine de la littérature (Éditions de Minuit, 2015). Pourquoi vaut-il la peine de s’intéresser aux discours contre la littérature ? Que nous révèlent-ils de la littérature elle-même ? En quoi les discours antilittéraires externes (venus de philosophes, théologiens, savants, hommes politiques, etc.) se distinguent-ils des discours antilittéraires internes (sous la plume des écrivains) ? Autrement dit, qu’est-ce qui distingue La Haine de la littérature de mon livre précédent, L’Adieu à la littérature (Éditions de Minuit, 2005) ? La leçon à retenir est qu’il est profitable d’examiner la littérature non pas seulement en elle-même, mais par les reflets qu’elle jette dans les autres discours, par l’image que ces discours en proposent, c’est-à-dire par réflexion, en creux ou en négatif. L’approche de la littérature par le négatif, en creux ou par réflexion, permet en effet de mieux comprendre un certain type de discours (la littérature) qui longtemps n’eut pas de nom à lui, parce qu’il était mis au rebut de tous les autres.

Approaching Literature by Reflection
Afterword to The Hatred of Literature (Harvard University Press, 2018). Why is it worthwhile to look at discourses against literature? What do they tell us about literature itself? How do external anti-literary discourses (from philosophers, theologians, scholars, politicians, etc.) differ from internal anti-literary discourses (from writers)? In other words, what distinguishes The Hatred of Literature from my previous book, Farewell to Literature (Éditions de Minuit, 2005)? The lesson to be learned is that it is profitable to examine literature not only in itself, but through its reflections in other discourses, through the image that these discourses propose, that is, by reflection, in hollow or in negative. The approach of literature by the negative, in hollow or by reflection, allows indeed to better understand a certain type of discourse (literature) which for a long time did not have a name to him, because it was rejected by all the others.

Institutionalized and internalized,‭ ‬competence intersubjectivity contain many user-illusions and an imaginary or manifest image of reality,‭ ‬including of themselves‭ (‬Dennett and Sellars‭)‬,.‭ ‬This can be contrasted we a comprehension or comprehensive,‭ ‬understanding intersubjectivity.‭ ‬It is possible and perhaps even necessary to transform or replace the competence intersubjectivity to a comprehension or understanding‭ (‬scientific,‭ ‬Dennett and Sellars‭) ‬image of reality and themselves.Ethics and morality and studies of ethics and morality deal with the reality of competence intersubjectivity‭ (‬by means of socio-cultural practices that are derived from,‭ ‬based on an created by means of this restrictive,‭ ‬misleading,‭ ‬unreal,‭ ‬illusory,‭ ‬unrealistic intersubjectivity and the life-worlds associated with it‭)  ‬and human life-worlds constituted on the basis of and in terms of this intersubjectivity.‭ ‬This is why I am a nihilist,‭ ‬a libertarian,‭ ‬at least a minarchist or rather an anarchist and epistemologically a sceptic.

Kant’s‭ ‬things in themselves are similar‭ ‬to Dennett and Searle‭’‬s‭ ‬notions of manifest and scientific image.‭ ‬With my addition that we‭  ‬are socialized and internalize the competent,‭ ‬know how to do it,‭  ‬institutionalized manifest,‭ ‬everyday intersubjectivity,‭ ‬instead of the comprehension,‭ ‬insights and understanding knowing that,‭ ‬scientific intersubjectivity of all scientific disciplines.‭


This piece can be read as independent as comments on meta-ethics,‭ ‬or it can be read as a chapter in my Book‭ ‘‬Intersubjectivity‭ (‬continued‭)’‬,‭ ‬or it can be read as an introduction to my thoughts on philosophy and more specifically Intersubjectivity as‭ –


Determining the nature of‭  ‬philosophy


Determining the nature of the subject-matter of philosophy,‭ ‬sociology,‭ ‬social psychology,‭ ‬aspects of cognitive sciences,‭ ‬ethics,‭ ‬epistemology,‭ ‬etc,


Determining the nature of philosophical methodology and approaches.

Reasons why I have refrained from reflecting and writing on ethics and morality‭ ‬-‭

a‭)‬  The intersubjectivity that are institutionalized,‭ ‬socialized and internalize and therefore being employed to constitute reality,‭ ‬life-worlds,‭ ‬selves,‭ ‬discourses and socio-cultural practices,‭ ‬including specialized disciplines,‭ ‬eg philosophy,‭ ‬is that of‭  ‬Kantian things-for-us or Searle‭’ ‬and Dennett’s notion of manifest,‭ ‬imaginary,‭ ‬competent or know-how,‭ ‬knowing-how-to images.‭ ‬This kind of intersubjectivity underlies human morality and ethics,‭ ‬as well as approaches of philosophers to these and other branches of philosophy.

‭ ‬b‭) ‬How philosophers exist and how they live,‭ ‬their attitudes and beliefs,‭ ‬are very different from the theories of human existence,‭ ‬consciousness,‭ ‬selves,‭ ‬ethics,‭ ‬morality,‭ ‬epistemology,‭ ‬ontology,‭ ‬metaphysics,‭ ‬etc they advocate or express in and as their theories.‭ ‬Philosophers have their own private ways or personal styles of im/morality and being a-ethical while they advocate theories of ethics‭ (‬and other branches of philosophy‭) ‬that are completely different from their real attitudes and beliefs.

c‭) ‬As far as institutionalized and lived ethics and morality go I am a nihilist,‭ ‬an anarchist,‭ ‬or at least a minarchist,‭ ‬a Pyrrhonist,‭ ‬or at least a Humean or Kantian sceptic if not a fallibilist.

A suggestion before I paste the usual,‭ ‬contemporary encyclopaedic notions of ethics as a branch of philosophy and present notions of the‭ ‘‬division‭’ ‬of the subject and approaches to ethics and meta-ethics.‭

When a compatibilist says free will and determinism are compatible,‭ ‬and critics say they are mistaken‭ – ‬see below‭ – ‬they talk about specific situations,‭ ‬while those who points out that there do exists some kinds of determinisms after all,‭ ‬the latter take a more general,‭ ‬big picture view and make a statement on a greater or higher level of generality or generalization.