[MUSIC] Welcome to this first video of the sixth week of our course on unethical decision making. In this video, we're going to discuss the role of time in the development of ethical blindness. In this session, you will understand that ethical blindness is often the result of a process that unfolds over time. And you will be familiarized with the notion of shifting baselines. The ancient Greek philosopher were smart people. One of them was Heraclit and one of his insights that has been conveyed for millenia is panta rhea, everything is moving, changing. It's in a flow. It's in transition. And in the same spirit he also noted that, and here I quote, you cannot step twice into the same river. Why not? What is a river? A river has water and the water is, of course, different today and in a year. But the river has also a water bed. And this water bed also changes and it's the water that changes the water bed. And it is the water bed that determines where the water is flowing. So they mu, mutually influence each other and this is quite interesting observation. And, in fact, you can also look at an organization using this metaphor. You can consider an organization to be like a river. An organization has structure, that's the most stable part, corresponds to the water bed. But in an organization, there're also a lot of processes going on within an organization. That's the more fluid part, corresponding to the water. And the process, or the processes in an organization, will determine its structure, will change the structure of an organization over time, and vice versa. The structure also pretty much determines what processes occur. And both change. That's the important point. So, you cannot step into the same river because the river changes. But there's a second reason why you cannot step into the same river twice. You yourself change. And the same happens again if you now consider an organization. If you go to an organization, you will change. You will dive into this organization and the organization will ensure that you will be a different one afterwards. How do we recognized change? We need reference system. We need an outside observer. An outside observer can easily realize that there's some change, but how can we do it for ourselves? So, change can only be established through noticing differences with respect to a reference point. That's the important point here. Talking about the differences, there's a important concept in psychology called just noticeable difference. Question. Would you notice a difference of ten grams? So you have the weight, ten grams. Would you notice this? If you have 30 grams here, 40 grams here, you would notice. But the difference between one kilo and ten grams, and one kilo and 20 grams, you would not notice. So these differences are relative. What about time? Time is, of course, something we can measure on an absolute scale. We call it a calendar or clock or so, hm? That's so-called Newton time. But seen from the inside, we realize that we construct time and what I just explained about the reference points also holds for our construction of times. And this kind of time that we construct with respect to other things, this is called the Einstein time. Parents and children, they also spend a lot of time and they get older, both, but they get old at the same time. So we with our friends, with our parents, with our kids, we do not realize that they change over time. We change with them. At some point, the door bell rings, grandparents come in and they may say to their grandchild, oh gosh, you have changed so much. We are surprised, we wouldn't even notice that. But the grandparents who haven't seen the kid for a year, they realize it immediately. What I just explained to you with this example of the parents and the grandparents is closely related to what environmental scientists called shifting baseline. People perceive changes in their environment relative to their own background of experience and these experiences. So if it's a baseline for determining what is normal and natural. The term shifting baselines was coined by maritime biologist Daniel Pauly. When Pauly attempted to determine how fish population changed over time and how this was affected by commercial fishing, he needed as a reference point the natural population. That is, the population prior to the influence of human activity. And how, while he was interviewing fishermen, he found that each generation of fishermen considered the natural fish stock to be the stock at the time they themselves started their fishing careers. But almost nobody had the perspective spanning for more than a single generation. And it is exactly this overarching perspective that allows one to recognize dramatic changes, which cannot be observed by an individual bound to a specific generation. By examining the oldest available historical reports and comparing them with present numbers, the following pictures emerged. A century ago, 20 to 30 different species of fish, including large specimens, could be readily caught in the Gulf of California with a single simple rod and reel. But today, a mere handful of species remain and most can only be caught by trawling hundreds of kilometers off the coast. Between these two points in time, only a century apart, many fisherman acknowledged that the fish stock had indeed decreased. But none was really alarmed about the changes, except for a very few old fisherman with many decades of experience. Let us now consider a case that you already know. Guido walked you through this case. It's the case of Ford Pinto. Let me add some aspects that are relevant for our issue at hand here, temporary dynamics of ethical blindness. It is important and interesting to note that Dennis Gioia started out full of id, idealism. He had very high ethical standards. He said, and here I quote, I had a strongly-held value system that led me to question many of the perspectives and practices I observed in the world around me. I had a pres, a profound distaste of the Vietnam war. I was participating in various demonstrations against its conduct. I held my principles high. I espoused my intention to help a troubled world. I wore my hair long. By any measure, I was a prototypical Child of the 60s. Now you may wonder how could it be that such a person enters a company, a for-profit company, but Gioia, when he was challenged by his family and friends, he had a very effective defense strategy. He said by accepting this job at Ford, what I could do is, I could change the world. I could, with my values, make a difference. That's the ideal place for it. So in, then he entered this river, Ford, and he changed. He became part of the organization and he started to talk about us versus them. He accepted the company's values and frames. He changed over time, slightly. He became a different person from day to day. At some point, he cut his hair and he may not have even noticed how much he changed. You cannot step into the same river twice. Gioia stepped into Ford's corporate culture, working day after working day. Then he returned home each evening. He had changed slightly. And when he stepped into the river again the following morning, he was no longer the same person. This process ultimately led to his perception that exploding Pintos were just a technical problem with no ethical relevance. Interactions between teams of engineers, managers, economists and people with other backgrounds, who all shared a functional perspective and who all tried to increase Ford's profits, that's important, they contributed to the narrowing of his perspective. And just as he was part of his colleagues' environment, they were part of his. If, however, our team members change and adapt simultaneously, one thing remains stable, the perception of what is normal. If several people step into the same environment dominated by technical and functional perspectives, and if all those people change at the same pace, then chances are that none of them will notice how they have changed. In this way, even people with high ethical standards or in Gioia's case, with long hair, they ultimately enter a state in which they are no longer able to see the ethical dimensions of a decision. Is the occurrence of creeping change inevitable? I hope I've shaken the faith of those who believe they are immune to such processes of adaptation and change. As social beings, we cannot avoid encounters, contacts, and the resulting influences of our social environments. Are creeping change processes necessarily unconscious and therefore undetectable as such? Here, my answer is a clear no. One day, Gioia stood in front of a crumbled burned car at a Ford depot, a place known as the chamber of horror by some of the people who work there. Perhaps this terrible view of the scorched car catapulted him out of the reference system that had ordered his thoughts and actions as a manager until then. And he suddenly realized how much he had changed over the years. Similar, amid their daily routines, parents fail to notice how their children grow. But one day, while handling a child's long forgotten toy, the memories wash over them and they may murmur to themselves, how have the kids grown. And maybe this experience is followed by the reflection, how much older did I grow in the meantime? To conclude, people change over time. That is, we change over time. With a short time horizon, these changes may not be noticed, that is, we change without being aware of this process. Depending on the contexts we are embedded in and to which we adapt, we may change such that the risk of ethical blindness increases. And at the end, we may do unethical things without noticing it. [MUSIC]
