When the workplace becomes the marketplace, trouble can follow, especially when a manager is doing the selling. Not even Girl Scout cookies escape ethicists' scrutiny.
By Sharon Tubbs
Published May 16, 2003
Hillsborough County Attorney Emmy Acton made headlines last month for selling her old clothes to office secretaries.
A test case in Workplace Ethics 101:
A county attorney sells her expensive, used fashions to the office secretaries each year so they can have nice things, she says. With the cash she raises, she throws a party at her home, to which the hand-me-down-wearing secretaries are not invited. A secretary says that she had to clean toilets at the boss' house (the boss says she doesn't know anything about that). Fed up, the staff files a complaint.
Has the county attorney done anything wrong?
Of course, you say, shaking your head at the cluelessness of Hillsborough County Attorney Emmy Acton since her quasi-consignment shop made headlines last month. Acton has discontinued the sales and apologized to her staff.
She was derided for her blatant ethical breaches. She should have known better, right?
Now for Workplace Ethics 102:
Replace the second-hand Donna Karans with a used car, a son's Little League raffle tickets or a daughter's Girl Scout cookies. Instead of cleaning toilets, the employee is asked to babysit the boss' kids, shop for a gift or mow the boss' lawn.
Are these things okay?
When people think about business ethics, they think of the egregious cases that make headlines: executives bilking corporate accounts, forging documents and buying luxury homes. But in every office, situations may arise that make employees feel as if they don't have a choice in how they spend their money or time.
The St. Petersburg Times talked to ethicists about common situations involving the exchange of money, personal property or services between managers and employees.
When is it okay to enlist staffers for services or sales that have nothing to do with their jobs? Opinions vary, and rules are few, a testament to the blurry boundaries of office interactions.
Stuart Gilman, a former senior official at the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and current president of the Ethics Resource Center, a nonprofit educational organization in Washington:
"I don't think anything being sold to employees makes a great deal of sense. You might want to say you could make a nominal exception concerning Girl Scout cookies."
But even a box of Thin Mints can be problematic. The federal government prohibits supervisors from soliciting anything from subordinates, cookie sales included.
Fundraisers for charity are different from selling personal property for profit or gain. And yet, appearances are an issue in either case. There's that one guy in the department who figures he can buy influence, Gilman said.
All for a $3 box of cookies?
"Human psychology works in a very, very interesting way," Gilman said. "It isn't the amount or how many. Look at the major spy trials we've had when people sell out their countries for $75,000, $80,000 a year, and they make $90,000 (in their regular jobs)."
What if the boss is selling a boat or even a house?
"It's absurd to think a supervisor could sell used personal objects" without bad consequences. "There is no way to eliminate a supervisor-subordinate relationship."
Exchange of money and services creates an atmosphere where "everybody's guessing about the other's behavior." (If I do this, will the boss think better of me?)
Even if the employee says that the sale was a good deal, that doesn't alleviate a conflict of interests. "The idea that you could objectively decide to buy or not buy is not in the equation," Gilman said.
Ohio law says that a professor can be criminally prosecuted for sexual battery for having sex with a student. The teacher can be 25, the student 44, doesn't matter. The same rationale applies in the office: The person in a supervisory position holds a certain degree of power that he or she must not exploit for sex or cookie sales.
George Brenkert, professor and director of the Georgetown Business Ethics Institute in Washington:
One general principle of business ethics is that a superior or someone who has authority over another shouldn't create situations in which the employee feels coerced.
The employer may be a good person with innocent intentions. But that's not what matters. "It's not always an issue of what really is the case, but an issue of what is perceived to be the case," Brenkert said.
Say that a co-worker is sick and the manager decides to take up a collection for flowers or do something nice for that person. Boss posts a signup sheet on a bulletin board. Innocent enough. And, perhaps, something that office workers would appreciate.
Yet, there is a chance that a staffer doesn't want to contribute but feels pressured because the boss asked.
In certain cases, employees "will fear in the dark recesses of their mind" that they will not be seen as team players if they don't contribute.
Asking employees to shop or mow lawns is unacceptable.
Still, when it comes to working with people and predicting how they will perceive your actions, mistakes in judgment will occur.
"We live in an imperfect world," Brenkert said. On one hand, managers do things that have unintended consequences. Their behavior may not be serious enough to be unethical, per se, but it is still inappropriate. (Brenkert reserves the term "unethical" for serious cases, such as those that cause grave personal or financial harm.)
On the other hand, employees may suspect, rightly or wrongly, that their boss has bad motives or that they will suffer unfortunate consequence if they don't play along. These people may lack the "courage or intestinal fortitude or whatever else to say, "No, I don't have to do that,' " Brenkert said.
"The selling of a dress, the selling of a Girl Scout cookie are, in and of themselves, not harmful."
The issue is how is it done? Who's doing it?
For instance, selling cookies may be fine from one co-worker to the next, but when the boss is handing out the order form, problems may arise.
Mark McConkie, a professor of public management at the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs:
"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. . . . Avoid anything that looks suspicious. Avoid the appearance of evil," he said.
What seems suspicious at one organization won't appear to be at another. Companies have different cultures or practices that are done often and deemed acceptable.
Most workers, however, won't feel pressured by charitable fundraisers such as cookie sales or discount pizza coupons because they know that the boss won't profit from the sale.
What about passive styles of selling, such as pinning a holiday candle order form on the bulletin board or placing an Avon booklet conspicuously on a desk?
"What that tests is how much we trust the boss. . . . If people don't trust, it's much easier to feel psychologically coerced," McConkie said.
So who is at fault when a misunderstanding occurs, when a boss means no harm but a staffer perceives the gesture as a career maker or breaker?
"The person who violates his own conscience is in violation ethically," McConkie said. This can be the boss who takes advantage of the position or the employee who gives "grudgingly."
Some advice from our experts:
IDEAS TO AVOID CONFLICT
Devise a code of conduct, follow it and discuss it regularly with employees.
"Everybody assumes that everybody knows what the rules are," Gilman said. "But many employees are under the mistaken idea that if the boss asks you to buy something, that's your obligation."
Set up a whistle-blower hotline.
This allows managers to be confronted with inappropriate behavior and gives them a chance to correct it. It also allows them to address or justify mistaken impressions among their staff members. "It takes out the rumormongering that goes on in a large organization," Gilman said. "You know people can get the facts" before things get out of hand. "Once it becomes a newspaper story, it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle."
Put an employee in charge of collecting money for group gifts, such as flowers for the sick or birthday parties.
This could eliminate the pressure to give that some staffers might feel if the manager were in charge and privy to who gave and who did not, Brenkert said.
Avoid selling personal property for profit to subordinates, ethicists say.
Create one officewide signup sheet for charitable fundraisers (Girl Scout cookies, school raffle tickets) when more than one person is selling and a manager is among the bunch. Divide the sales evenly among those selling.
