Business Ethics Robert Jackall's "rules in use" of corporate ethics

(As described in Moral Mazes)

1. Don't get your boss in trouble by overcommitting (in setting business objectives).

2. Keep your boss from making mistakes, particularly public ones.

3. Never contradict your boss's judgement in public.

4. Never circumvent your boss.

5. Be deferential and self-effacing. (p.19)

6. Cultivate relationships with powerful patrons -- relationships which require a similar pattern of loyalty and deference. (p.19-20)

7. Understand what needs to be done without being explicitly told.

8. Protect superiors from knowledge of messy or tedious details.

9. Allow your ideas to be appropriated by superiors.

10. Allow credit for organizational successes to be allocated by your superiors without regard for who actually did the work. (p.20-1)

11. Maintain a bland and amiable manner, regardless of whatever power struggles are going on.

12. Participate in ritual affirmations of unity ("one big happy family"), regardless of conflicts, 'purges', etc. (p.36-7)

13. Satisfy the informal criteria for admission into a 'managerial circle.' (p. 38ff.)

14. Manage your external appearance, behavior and attitude to match the socially approved styles of the corporation. (p.46ff.)

15. Be seen as a team player by

a. appearing interchangable with other managers in skills and attitudes (no awkward moral or political qualms allowed)

b. putting in long hours at the office (though many of those hours are spent in social rituals as opposed to actual work)

c. sticking to your assigned role, not drawing attention to yourself through excess intelligence or creativity

d. alligning yourself to whatever the official definition of reality is at the moment (disagreeing only in private and in ways that do not call superiors' judgments into question)

e. displaying a happy, upbeat, can-do attitude. (p.50ff.)

16. Hit your numbers most of the time (i.e., make expected or promised profits). (p.62)

17. Avoid the risk of blame by postponing or avoiding decisions (cya).

18. Respond to the exigencies of today's financial markets by managing for short run profits, even if this brings long run problems. (pp.82-5)

19. Outrun your mistakes by changing jobs often (preferably through promotions). (pp.90ff.)

20. Don't play holier than thou (ie. criticize other managers for following these 'rules'). (p.97)

21. Be 'flexible' (i.e., willing to do whatever needs to be done without raising moral concerns).

22. Be willing to drop an issue (supposing that you have raised an ethical objection) if your superiors want you to drop it. (pp.109-110; 118)

23. Be willing to cover up whatever your superiors want covered up. (pp. 101-112)

24. Maintain blurred lines of responsibility so blame can be avoided. (p. 118)

25. Cultivate and break off friendships and other social relationships according to how useful they are to your career. (For example, snub those who have fallen from favor. (p.133; also pp.69-70)

26. Communicate through euphemism and indirection, so that your words can be reinterpreted if necessary, deniability can be maintained, and emotion can be defused. (pp.134-7)

27. Adopt whatever jargon, theory or rhetoric is currently in favor or fashion. (pp.142-44)

28. Adopt different explanations, vocabularies, stories, etc., depending on what your audience is likely to find convincing. (pp.146-7)

29. Pay lip service to various matters of public concern (product safety, the environment) while doing whatever is expedient and/or profitable.

30. Lobby strenuously to weaken government regulations, and then appeal to those same regulations in defense of the propriety of your actions. (pp.156-161)

31. Be willing to manipulate and intimidate other managers and to destroy their careers (regardless of their competence or contributions) if necessary to maintain and advance your own organizational position and prestige. (pp.195-6)