All Posts in Business Ethics

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It’s time to vote. It’s a tough choice this year. No, I’m not going to endorse either George “Fratboy” Bush or Al “Cyborg” Gore. This being an IT publication, that wouldn’t be appropriate. Personally, I’m using my Aunt Lila’s logic. Years ago she explained why she was voting for Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan. “I can’t stand the thought of voting for somebody stupider than me.”

At least we weren’t treated to a dueling dirt campaign. Much to my astonishment, the Gore campaign didn’t try to uncover the specifics of Bush’s youthful indiscretions, nor did the Bush campaign ever accuse Gore of getting high on WD-40 while lubricating his bearings.

Miracle of miracles, everyone seems to have respected both candidates’ privacy.

If only we could extend that respect to the rest of us.

For consumers, the privacy battleground is greasy corporate behavior vs. the BIG/GAS theory (“Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid”). The heavily promoted and highly popular BIG/GAS theory says government regulation is always a bad thing and industry can regulate itself (despite more than a century of evidence to the contrary). Greasy corporate behavior includes stalking technology that surreptitiously follows you around the World Wide Web, privacy “policies” like Amazon.com’s, which, as Ed Foster recently reported, collects data now to be used according to whatever privacy policy Amazon.com happens to publish in the future … and use of the BIG/GAS theory itself to promote self-regulation as a solution, despite ample evidence of business shortsightedness, stupidity … and greasiness.

For employees, the privacy battleground is more nebulous, which may be the reason employees seem to be giving up. Awhile back the Society of Financial Service polled managers and employees on the subject. According to the survey, two-thirds of all companies monitor their employees in some fashion or other, and most employees don’t seem to mind: Only two out of five employees considered even video surveillance a breach of employer ethics.

Once the automated monitoring of e-mails and web usage becomes acceptable employer behavior, we accept the principle of automated surveillance for detecting violation of all company policies and procedures.

Consider the future. Computers will have built-in cameras; we’ll have software that surreptitiously watches employees at their desks. Telephones will include software that surreptitiously records all conversations in an office. And why not? It’s the company’s computer and telephone, not the employee’s.

The source of employer indifference regarding employee privacy rights is fuzzy, but as my upcoming book, Lewis’s Laws, points out, modern business theories dehumanize the workforce, so they’re a likely culprit. The process perspective, for example, treats employees as roles in processes, seeking to move intelligence from employees to the process. Similarly, the knowledge perspective treats companies as collections of knowledge and seeks to move intelligence from employees to knowledge management systems. With employees viewed as process role-holders and replaceable bags o’skills and knowledge, is it any wonder companies see no problem monitoring their behavior, “hoteling” them in shared workspaces, and otherwise failing to acknowledge their natural need for privacy?

Why employees aren’t outraged is a mystery. Regardless, don’t mistake employee docility for evidence that surveillance is a good idea.

The untheoretical reality is that companies succeed and fail more on the quality and motivation of their workforce than on any other factor. The employee anti-privacy policies now prevalent in the American workplace communicate a lack of trust that’s surely as de-motivating as any message an employer can send.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Some people prefer Dear Abby, others Ann Landers. I’m an Ann kind of guy — too often, Abby’s advice lacks specifics and substance, whereas Ann’s advice is always practical and specific.

One of Ann’s better pieces of advice goes to “the other woman”. “If he cheated on his wife with you,” Ann regularly points out, “he’ll cheat on you, too.”

Unfamiliarity with Ann’s analysis is just one of the many flaws in a new Gartner Group report titled, “The Cost of Migrating COBOL Developers to Java,” by J. Feiman and R. Flatau-Reynoso (mentioned to me by IS Survivalist Joe Kruger who also pointed out some of its flaws). If you’re the kind of person who likes to look at the aftermath of train wrecks and traffic accidents, you might want to read the report yourself — you’ll find it at http://gartner5.gartnerweb.com/public/static/hotc/00092702.html.

The report begins, “Gartner has warned IS organizations that migrating their mainframe COBOL developers to Internet and Java development would be a painful experience. Here, we measure in dollars just how painful this process would be.” What’s painful is reading the report. It totes up every imaginable cost associated with retraining COBOL programmers in Java, compares it with just one of the costs of new Java programmers (their compensation), and concludes the Java recruits cost about $20,000 less.

It’s pretty hard to take seriously an analysis that ignores recruiting costs and hiring bonuses. These obvious omissions are less astounding, though, than the report’s assumption that Java developers will be available and productive the day the company starts recruiting.

Last I heard, the average lag time for hiring a skilled Java developer was about three months, but there’s no estimate of the business impact from a three month recruiting-generated project delay.

Nor is there any recognition of the ramp-up time any new developer needs to get accustomed to a new company, corporate culture, and IT environment. If the standard tools used by their new employer are different from those they already know, that will cause additional delays. Usually, new developers also find it pretty handy to understand the legacy environment they’re going to be dealing with. That learning isn’t instantaneous either.

New developers are never productive their first day of employment, and in fact are rarely productive the first month. Significantly, most of the process they go through to become productive requires the involvement of currently productive programmers, whose productivity suffers a bit from the time needed to get the newbies up to speed.

And then there’s the Ann Landers effect. A company that replaces long-time employees rather than retraining them will do the same thing again for the next bunch. I’m guessing most Java recruits will be familiar with Ann’s advice, which means the chance they’ll be loyal to their new employer is exactly bupkis. The next good offer they get and they’re gone, and why not? The report ignores this factor, but ironically it does comment on the risk of retrained COBOL programmers either demanding a raise or leaving. Maybe it’s assuming the Java recruits will all be here on H1b visas, where they can’t change employers.

When Ann Landers gives bad advice, she accepts 50 lashes with a wet noodle. Perhaps we should all mail some noodles to the Gartner Group and see what it does with them.

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