Scott Killingsworth, a corporate attorney at Bryan Cave who specializes in compliance and technology matters and is a prolific writer (especially for one who still has billable hour constraints!) recently wrote a short and thought-provoking article: How Framing Shapes Our Conduct. The article focuses the link between framing business issues and our ethical choices and motivations noting the harm in thinking of hard choices as merely “business” decisions, viewing governing rules and regulations as a “game” or viewing business as “war.”  Consider these poignant excerpts:

We know, for example, that merely framing an issue as a “business matter” can invoke narrow rules of decision that shove non-business considerations, including ethical concerns, out of the picture. Tragic examples of this ‘strictly business’ framing include Ford’s cost/benefit-driven decision to pay damages rather than recall explosion-prone Pintos, and the ill-fated launch of space shuttle Challenger after engineers’ safety objections were overruled with a simple ‘We have to make a management decision.’ (emphasis added)

Framing business as a game belittles the legitimacy of the rules, the gravity of the stakes, and the effect of violations on the lives of others. By minimizing these factors, the game metaphor takes the myopic “strictly business” framing a step further, into a domain of bendable rules, acceptable transgressions, and limited accountability. (emphasis added)

The war metaphor conditions our thinking in a way distinct from the game frame, but complementary to it. War is a matter of survival: the stakes are enormous, the mission urgent, and all’s fair. Exigent pressures grant us wide moral license, releasing us from adherence to everyday rules and justifying extreme tactics in pursuit of a higher goal; we must, after all, kill or be killed. If business is war, survival is at stake, and competitors, customers, suppliers, rivals or authorities are our enemies, then not only may we do whatever it takes to win, it’s our duty to do so. (emphasis added)

The full article is available here.

In light of the new ABA regulations on Learning Outcomes and Assessment, including the requirement that students have competency in exercising “proper professional and ethical responsibilities to clients and the legal system” this article seems like a great addition to a business organizations/corporations course line up.  I know that I will be including it in my corporate governance seminar this coming year.  And if I were responsible for new associate training, this would definitely merit inclusion in the materials.

-Anne Tucker