Lesson 2: Ethics of Teamwork

Module Introduction
Much of your future work will be organized around group or team activities. This module is
designed to prepare you for this by getting you to reflect on ethical and practical problems that
arise in small groups like work teams. Four issues, based on well-known ethical values, are
especially important. How do groups achieve justice (in the distribution of work), responsibility
(in specifying tasks, assigning blame, and awarding credit), reasonableness (ensuring participation,
resolving conflict, and reaching consensus), and honesty (avoiding deception, corruption, and
impropriety)? This module asks that you develop plans for realizing these moral values in your
group work in this lesson. Furthermore, you are provided with a list of some of the more common
pitfalls of group work and then asked to devise strategies for avoiding them. Finally, at the end of
the lesson, you will review your goals and strategies, reflect on your successes and problems, and
carry out an overall assessment of the experience.

Module Activities
1. Groups are provided with key ethical values that they describe and seek to realize through
group activity.
2. Groups also study various obstacles that arise in collective activity: the Abilene Paradox,
Groupthink, and Group Polarization.
3. Groups prepare initial reports consisting of plans for realizing key values in their
collective activity. They also develop strategies for avoiding associated obstacles.
4. At the end of the semester, groups prepare a self-evaluation that assesses success in
realizing ethical values and avoiding obstacles.
5. Text boxes in this module describe pitfalls in group activities and offer general strategies
for preventing or mitigating them. There is also a text box that provides an introductory
orientation on key ethical values or virtues.

A Framework for Value-Integration

The objective of this module is to teach you to teach yourselves how to work in small
groups. You will develop and test procedures for realizing value goals and avoiding group
pitfalls. You will also use Socio-Technical System Analysis to help you understand better
how to take advantage of the way in which different environments enable group activities
and to anticipate and minimize the way in which other environments can constrain or
even oppose group activities.

 Discovery: "The goal of this activity is to 'discover' the values that are relevant
to, inspire, or inform a given design project, resulting in a list of values and
bringing into focus what is often implicit in a design project." [Flanagan et al.
323]. The discovery of group values is a trial and error process.
  Translation: "[T]ranslation is the activity of embodying or expressing...values in
a system design. Translation is further divided into operationalization, which
involves defining or articulating values in concrete terms, and
implementation which involves specifying corresponding design
features" [Flanagan et al., 338]. You will operationalize your values by
developing profiles. Then you will implement your values by developing
realization procedures. For example, to realize justice in carrying out a group
task, first we will discuss the task as a group, second we will divide it into equal
parts, third, fourth, etc.
 Verification: "In the activity of verification, designers assess to what extent
they have successfully implemented target values in a given system. [Strategies
and methods] may include internal testing among the design team, user testing
in controlled environments, formal and informal interviews and surveys, the use
of prototypes, traditional quality assurance measures such as automated and
regression-oriented testing and more" [Flanagan et al., 344-5]. You will
document your procedures in the face of different obstacles that may arise in
your efforts at value-realization. At the end of your semester, you will verify your
results by showing how you have refined procedures to more effectively realize
values.

Value Profiles for Professional Ethics

1. Definition - A value "refers to a claim about what is worthwhile, what is good. A
value is a single word or phrase that identifies something as being desirable for
human beings." Brincat and Wike, Morality and the Professional Life: Values at
Work
2. Reasonableness - Defusing disagreement and resolving conflicts through
integration. Characteristics include seeking relevant information, listening and
responding thoughtfully to others, being open to new ideas, giving reasons for
views held, and acknowledging mistakes and misunderstandings. (From Michael
Pritchard, Reasonable Children)
3. Responsibility - The ability to develop moral responses appropriate to the
moral issues and problems that arise in one's day-to-day experience.
Characteristics include avoiding blame-shifting, designing overlapping role
responsibilities to fill responsibility "gaps", expanding the scope and depth of
general and situation-specific knowledge, and working to expand control and
power.
4. Respect - Recognizing and working not to circumvent the capacity of autonomy
in each individual. Characteristics include honoring rights such as privacy,
property, free speech, due process, and participatory rights such as informed
consent. Disrespect circumvents autonomy by deception, force, or manipulation.
5. Justice - Giving each his or her due. Justice breaks down into kinds such as
distributive (dividing benefits and burdens fairly), retributive (fair and impartial
 administration of punishments), administrative (fair and impartial administration
of rules), and compensatory (how to fairly recompense those who have been
wrongfully harmed by others).
6. Trust - According to Solomon, trust is the expectation of moral behavior from
others.
7. Honesty - Truthfulness as a mean between too much honesty (bluntness which
harms) and dishonesty (deceptiveness, misleading acts, and mendaciousness).
8. Integrity - A meta-value that refers to the relation between particular values.
These values are integrated with one another to form a coherent, cohesive and
smoothly functioning whole. This resembles Solomon's account of the virtue of
integrity.

Obstacles to Group Work

1. The Abilene Paradox. "The story involves a family who would all rather have
been at home that ends up having a bad dinner in a lousy restaurant in Abilene,
Texas. Each believes the others want to go to Abilene and never questions this
by giving their own view that doing so is a bad idea. In the Abilene paradox, the
group winds up doing something that no individual wants to do because of a
breakdown of intra-group communication." (From Huff, Good Computing, an
unpublished manuscript for a textbook in computer ethics. See materials from
Janis; complete reference below.)
2. Groupthink. The tendency for very cohesive groups with strong leaders to
disregard and defend against information that goes against their plans and
beliefs. The group collectively and the members individually remain loyal to the
party line while happily marching off the cliff, all the while blaming “them” (i.e.,
outsiders) for the height and situation of the cliff. (Also from Huff, Good
Computing, and an unpublished manuscript for a textbook in computer ethics.)
3. Group Polarization. Here, individuals within the group choose to frame their
differences as disagreements. Framing a difference as non-agreement leaves
open the possibility of working toward agreement by integrating the differences
or by developing a more comprehensive standpoint that dialectally synthesizes
the differences. Framing a difference as disagreement makes it a zero-sum
game; one’s particular side is good, all the others bad, and the only resolution is
for the good (one’s own position) to win out over the bad (everything else).
(Weston provides a nice account of group polarization in Practical Companion to
Ethics. This is not to be confused with Cass Sunstein's different account of group
polarization in Infotopia.)
4. Note: All of these are instances of a social psychological phenomenon called
conformity. But there are other processes at work too, like group identification,
self-serving biases, self-esteem enhancement, self-fulfilling prophecies, etc.
More Obstacles to Group Work

 Free Riders: Free riders are individuals who attempt to "ride for free" on the
work of the other members of the group. Some free-riders cynically pursue their
selfish agenda while others fall into this pitfall because they are unable to meet
all their obligations. (See conflict of effort.)
 Outliers: These are often mistaken for free riders. Outliers want to become
participants but fail to become fully integrated into the group. This could be
because they are shy and need encouragement from the other group members.
It could also be because the other group members know one another well and
have habitual modes of interaction that exclude outsiders. One sign of outliers;
they do not participate in group social activities but they still make substantial
contributions working by themselves. ("No, I can't come to the meeting--just tell
me what I have to do.")
 Hidden Agendas: Cass Sunstein introduces this term. A group member with a
"hidden agenda" has something he or she wants to contribute but, for some
reason or other, hold back. For example, this individual may have tried to
contribute something in the past and was "shot down" by the group leader. The
next time he or she will think, "Let them figure it out without me."
 Conflict of Effort: conflict of Effort often causes an individual to become a free
rider or an outlier. These group members have made too many commitments
and come unraveled when they all come due at the same time. Students are
often overly optimistic when making out their semester schedules. They tightly
couple work and class schedules while integrating home responsibilities.
Everything goes well as long as nothing unusual happens. But if a coworker gets
sick and your supervisor asks you to come in during class times to help out, or
you get sick, it becomes impossible to keep the problem from "spilling out" into
other areas of your schedule and bringing down the whole edifice. Developing a
schedule with periods of slack and flexibility can go a long way toward avoiding
conflict of effort. Groups can deal with this by being supportive and flexible. (But
it is important to draw the line between being supportive and carrying a free
rider.)

Best Practices for Avoiding Abilene Paradox

 At the end of the solution generating process, carry out an anonymous survey
asking participants if anything was left out they were reluctant to put before
group.
 Designate a Devil's Advocate charged with criticizing the group's decision.
 Ask participants to reaffirm group decision--perhaps anonymously.
Best Practices for Avoiding Groupthink (Taken from Janis, 262-271)

 "The leader of a policy-forming group should assign the role of critical evaluator
to each member, encouraging the group to give high priority to airing objections
and doubts."
 "The leaders in an organization's hierarchy, when assigning a policy-planning
mission to a group, should be impartial instead of stating preferences and
expectations at the outset."
 "Throughout the period when the feasibility and effectiveness of policy
alternatives are being surveyed, the policy-making group should from time to
time divide into two or more subgroups to meet separately...."
 One or more outside experts or qualified colleagues within the organization who
are not core members of the policy-making group should be invited to each
meeting ...and should be encouraged to challenge the views of the core
members."
 "At every meeting devoted to evaluating policy alternatives, at least one member
should be assigned the role of devil's advocate."

In general, to avoid Abilene Paradox and Group think, you should design roles
to realize values and avoid pitfalls.

• Leader
– There are different kinds of leader. Rotate this role and experiment with
these
• Spokesperson
– This individual communicates group concerns, interests, and contributions
to the teacher and the rest of the class
• Independent outside observer
– Have somebody outside of group respond to procedures, practices, and
habits. Listen, don’t defend.
• Recorder
– This person participates but also records and documents the group’s
procedures. How did the group prepare its first assignment? What
challenges did the group face? How did it respond and how successful was
this response?
• Devil’s Advocate
– This person criticizes the group’s consensus. This should be a rotating
position so that no individual gets labeled as a trouble-maker.
• Mediator
– This individual is especially adept at empathy, compassion, and role taking.
Bridges the gap between differing individual and prevents difference from
hardening into opposition
 • Sub-Groups
– If the group has a difficult reaching a consensus, divide into sub-groups
charged with exploring the differing points of view. At the very least, this
guarantees a voice for dissenting views.

Best Practices for Avoiding Polarization (Items taken from "Good Computing: A
Virtue Approach to Computer Ethics" by Chuck Huff, William Frey and Jose Cruz
(Unpublished Manuscript)

 Set Quotas. When brainstorming, set a quota and postpone criticism until after
quota has been met.
 Negotiate Interests, not Positions. Since it is usually easier to integrate
basic interests than specific positions, try to frame the problem in terms of
interests.
 Expanding the Pie. Conflicts that arise from situational constraints can be
resolved by pushing back those constraints through negotiation or innovation.
 Nonspecific Compensation. One side makes a concession to the other but is
compensated for that concession by some other coin.
 Logrolling. Each party lowers their aspirations on items that are of less interest
to them, thus trading off a concession on a less important item for a concession
from the other on a more important item.
 Cost-Cutting. One party makes an agreement to reduce its aspirations on a
particular thing, and the other party agrees to compensate the party for the
specific costs that reduction in aspirations involves.
 Bridging. Finding a higher-order interest on which both parties agree, and then
constructing a solution that serves that agreed-upon interest.