The Golden Eggs (2)

"The captain of a cavalry fort was having breakfast when his lieutenant ran in the door.

'Captain,' he said with a salute, 'we’ve just received an urgent letter from our desert outpost. It states their dire need of water.'

'The water supply should arrive there in a few days. They can wait,' said the captain.

'Sir, I don’t believe so,' the lieutenant replied. 'The stamp was attached to the envelope with a paper clip,'" Wulansari started again.

"So, let's continue," said Wulansari. "As mentioned before, morality refers to beliefs concerning right and wrong, good and bad—beliefs that can include judgments, values, rules, principles, and theories. These beliefs help guide our actions, define our values, and give us reasons for being the persons we are. Ethics, then, addresses the powerful question that Socrates formulated more than twenty-four hundred years ago: How ought we to live?

The continued relevance of this query, suggests something compelling about ethics: you cannot escape it. You cannot run away from all of the choices, feelings, and actions that accompany ideas about right and wrong, good and bad—ideas that persist in your culture and in your mind. After all, for much of your life, you have been assimilating, modifying, or rejecting the ethical norms you inherited from your family, community, and society. Unless you are very unusual, from time to time you deliberate about the rightness or wrongness of actions, embrace or reject particular moral principles or codes, judge the goodness of your character or intentions (or someone else’s), perhaps even question (and agonize over) the soundness of your own moral outlook when it conflicts with that of others. In other words, you are involved in ethics—you do ethics—throughout your life. Even if you try to remove yourself from the ethical realm by insisting that all ethical concepts are irrelevant or empty, you will have assumed a particular view—a theory in the broadest sense—about morality and its place in your life. If at some point you are intellectually brave enough to wonder whether your moral beliefs rest on coherent supporting considerations, you will see that you cannot even begin to sort out such considerations without—again—doing ethics. In any case, in your life you must deal with the rest of the world, which turns on moral conflict and resolution, moral decision and debate.

In public service, there is hierarchy that relates to the various levels of ethics, each having its own set of responsibilities and own possibilities for complexities. At the first step is personal morality, or an individual’s concept of right and wrong. This is formed as a basis of upbringing and environment. Second is professional ethics. These are typically codified within an organization or professional association relating to the organization or position. The third level is organizational. These can include written policies and procedures that dictate organizational expectations relating to ethical decision making and behavior. Lastly, there are social ethics. These are typically enacted as societal laws and also can be part of an individual’s personal social conscience.

History has shown that the vast majority of civilizations have been destroyed from internal forces, not from external ones. Corporations, agencies, and organizations are not immune from the same fate. Greed, power, competition, and materialism are just a few of the reasons behind internal destruction. The area of public service is not exempt from such tradition. The world that we live in very often can be morally disappointing. In many instances, this is often due to a lack of ethics with regards to the area of leadership.

Individuals become leaders as a result of a variety of possibilities and for a variety of reasons. Some are developed. Some possess qualities that lend themselves to being an effective leader. Some acquire leadership through force, wealth, social, or political connections. Yet, others become leaders as a result of circumstances or timing. However, regardless of the reason that an individual finds himself in a leadership role, he cannot be a leader without also having willing followers. Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex moral relationship between people based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the goal. Leaders must consider a multiplicity of issues and concerns in making consistently ethical decisions and in developing a code of ethical behavior for their organizations. It is the leader’s role to set a clear and uniform example of ethical behavior and to articulate specific expectations and goals so that ethical behavior becomes an integral theme of the organization.

Leadership is as complex a topic as that of ethics, so when one stops to combine the two, the result can be quite intimidating. Richard Brookhiser describes leadership as 'knowing yourself, knowing where you want to go, and then taking others to that new place.' There are countless leadership styles employed to accomplish this daunting task. One way is to focus analysis upon the ends/means/consequences equation that is suggested by Brookhiser. This leads to three primary questions: What is the goal? What means will we use to get there? What types of tradeoffs and compromises must be made along the way?

Ethics lie at the heart of all human relationships and, hence, at the heart of the relationship between leaders and followers. Throughout history, successful leaders have been those who have gained the trust of those who they have been responsible for leading. There can be much debate over how 'trust' is defined; however, regardless of this lack of agreement, most individuals are well aware when trust is in place and when it is not. Trust is a result of proper communication and clarity of purpose within an organization. Trust is confidence and reliance upon an individual, organization, or object. It includes possessing confidence in strength and integrity of the same. Through the establishment of trust within an organization and, if able to maintain the trust, leaders will be able to provide effective guidance and work on the proper development of the organization. As with personal relationships, a proper foundation of trust serves to support an organization through difficult times and enable leadership the time and ability to find and implement solutions that will assist the organization in overcoming challenges and obstacles when they are presented.

Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith mention qualities of leadership that are integral to engendering trust. The qualities mentioned by the authors are:

Vision. Successful leaders are those who inspire and create vision. Leadership vision serves to provide a foundation for organizational purpose and engender trust, which can enable followers to develop personal identity and feel vested in the vision and its creation. The leader involves us in the visions, empowers us to create it, and communicates the shared vision so that we integrate it into our lives.

Empathy. Leaders who possess unconditional empathy for those working within the organization will emerge as the most successful. Although their opinions may vary considerably from those who work for them, trust is established when employees believe that a leader understands their view and can relate to where they are coming from.

Consistency. A leader who maintains a level of consistency with regard to his stance on topics, his vision, his leadership style, and organizational placement will be trusted and emerge as successful. Although consistent, the successful leader also will be willing to consider new evidence and new events when making organizational decisions.

Integrity. A leader who maintains integrity that is above question will have the trust of his employees and co-workers. When a leader takes a stance on topics, based on his moral standard, and these actions are observable to those who work with and for the leader, he will gain their trust. This same leader must be ready, as well, to hold others accountable for their actions and decisions based on the standard of ethics laid out and adhered to by the leader.

As typically witnessed within sports, motivation originates with leadership. The leadership values and motivation of an organization must start at the top if it is to find its way to those farther down the line. If the ethical behavior of an organization is in question, or there is a need for change, then the establishment, or modification, of an organizational ethical code may be necessary.

A code of ethics (sometimes called an ethical code) is an assembly of institutional guidelines used to reduce ethical vagueness within an organization and serve as a means of reinforcing ethical conduct.

Organizational leadership establishes these codes based on moral values. A typical code of ethics contains general, nonspecific expectations and target guidelines that attempt to reduce vagueness and, thus, lessen the burden of ethical decision making with regards to gray areas. The codes are developed based not only on past organizational or individual experience, but also based on actions that the organization wishes to prevent from ever occurring.

According to Robin Bowen, codes of ethics have two primary purposes. First, they provide moral guidelines and professional standards of conduct. The professional codes hold people accountable for proper performance and devotion to honesty and obligation. The second purpose of codes is to define professional behavior to promote a sense of pride, tolerance, and responsibility among professionals.

The codes typically serve as the foundation for disciplinary action relating to ethical violations. Sometimes a code of ethics may incorporate personal expectations that are significantly beyond what is legally expected of employees. These may include such matters as morality, honesty, and truthfulness. A well-written code of ethics should properly dissuade people from committing unethical acts, and should incorporate procedures for discipline as well as the consequences for unethical actions.

Ethical behavior is the foundation of any professional organization. In law enforcement, many courses addressing ethics may be good, but they lack the knowledge of the ethical ideologies of the police officers that are being taught. Various divisions within a department may require different ethical framework because of the unit to which the officers are assigned. Patrol officers have different needs than narcotics officers, school resource officers, traffic officers, or special weapons and tactics officers. This makes the 'onestop shop' for ethics training not practical or efficient.

Often, when ethics is discussed as it relates to the criminal justice system, the emphasis is typically placed on law enforcement, the judicial system, corrections, and parole. However, law is the starting point for each of these and as such, legislators are the ones responsible for the formation of the law.

The primary obligation of the legislator is representation of the persons or community that collectively appointed the official. Legislative representation is a two-part task, where the individual is tasked with both representing and legislating. Each have relevant issues associated with ethics. Throughout each task, representation, and legislation, a legislator must communicate with his or her constituents so that legislators can represent the community’s best interests. Proper communication with constituents includes informing them and educating them as to the constitutional scope and limits of legislative rights and responsibilities. Proper communication also means informing them and educating them with regard to pending legislation, for instance, how a pending law will be worded and what impact, if any, it may have on the community. Lastly, it is incumbent upon the legislator to provide constituents and community members access to the legislator’s time so that they may express their concerns and access information they require to be properly informed.

What use is ethics—the study of morality? If you’re hoping for ethics to increase your paycheck, sell a product, or get a new job, you should probably look elsewhere. Still, this hardly means that ethics has no practical value. Ethics has to do with desperately important practical matters, including many our society struggles with: questions about genetic engineering, drone strikes, stockpiling and using weapons of mass destruction, fair taxation, campaign finance, and a host of social justice issues. It’s no accident that ethical theorists have often led the vanguard in achieving moral reforms. For instance, the nineteenth century utilitarians deliberately formulated their theory to correct abuses in the criminal justice system of their time.

Morality and ethics impact our personal lives—every time we get angry at another driver, are hurt by someone, make a commitment to a friend, or sign a document. They have this sort of living practicality because they expose the tension between what is and what ought to be, a tension we encounter daily. Studying ethics can aid us in dealing with this tension by helping us better understand what distinguishes right and wrong, how to think through moral problems, and how to address moral conflicts (among other things).

More profoundly, morality and ethics relate to the most important responsibility each of us has in life: the formation of our selves. Every choice we make contributes toward producing the moral personality that will define us in the next moment. As the twentieth-century existentialists emphasized, this power of choice—especially of moral choice—is an awesome responsibility.

Yet ethics is not just essential for handling major social problems. The study of morality is important because morality itself is important. Without any functional morality, society would not even be possible. Imagine that no one bothered about the moral duty of truthfulness. Business and government would collapse since no agreement could be depended upon. Education and the news would become useless since their accuracy could not be trusted. Science would whither to mere 'politics' and opinion. Even families and friendships would suffer since these require that we be truthful with each other.

Not only economists are faced with the problem of choice—the scarcity—but also, in terms of morality. What then, is the purpose of morality? What is morality for? It seems to have many purposes. These include enabling us to reach our goals in socially acceptable ways, enabling us to resolve conflicts of interests fairly, developing certain kinds of positive character, promoting human happiness, enabling society to survive. All of this is a matter of choice, which of course is led by 'critical thinking' to find the best solution.

You can probably think of others, to treat them as ends in themselves, not as a means to an end. We have an obligation to treat others rightly; not to take advantage of a situation."

"And lastly," Wulansari was about to go, "just think again of our story about the countryman and his goose. Imagine if the goose represented a loved one, when ethics reminded him, he could only be stunned, feared and regretted his actions, while humming,

So I walk into the dead of night where my monsters like to hide

Chaos feels so good inside, no more

I lost, I lost, I lost control again

Always do the same and I'm to blame

I lost control again

I don't, I don't, I don't know who I am

Always do the same and I'm to blame

I lost control again *)

Then Wulansari concluded with, "And Allah knows best."

Citations & References:

- Aric W. Dutelle & Randy S. Taylor, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, 2018, CRC Press

- Lewis Vaughn, Beginning Ethics : An Introduction to Moral Philosophy, 2015, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc

- Louis P. Pojman, The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, 2000, Oxford University Press

- Richard Burnor & Yvonne Raley, Ethical Choices: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy with Cases, 2018, Oxford University Press

*) "Lost Control" written by Alan Walker / Anders Froen / Fredrik Borch Olsen / Magnus Martinsen / Sorana Paula Pacurar / Thomas Troelsen

[Session 1]

Bahasa