Medicated America

Pharmaceutical advertising in the United States over the past ten years has been socially ever-present. Television, radio, billboards, waiting rooms--most everywhere can be found the likeness of a smiling user of Allegra, Zyrtec, Claritin, Prozac, Viagra, or one of a slew of countless other drugs which all conclude with the same message: "Ask your doctor."


The attention-grabbing pharmaceutical ads seem to imply that the only way a person should be is carefree and happy, and that the desired state can easily be attained by asking for a prescription for the associated drug. A few things here. One, while I like to see smiling people as much as the next person, is it really true that only experience people want is to be happy? The pharm ads create a message that says that you can either be up (cheerful) or down (depressed, miserably uncomfortable, unfulfilled), and that by using the advertised product you will have the best chance of being 'UP'. The ad, as a manipulating agent, modifies the audience's "sense of options by affecting the person's understanding of the situation (Ethical Theory and Business, 279)." That is to say, the ad leaves little room for the full range of emotions which can occur--and be meaningfully experienced--between an 'up state' and a 'down state'.

Two, the message to "ask your doctor" is more leading than it sounds. In today's health care market, it is my perception that most doctors will write prescriptions to satisfy most patients' requests, pending somewhat of an understanding of what the drug does on the end of the requester (which we all have from pharm ads) and a consideration for any obvious health hazards that may exist (pregnant women, heart-diseased adults, under-aged teens). Where conceptually one might think this "asking" of a doctor about a pharmaceutical product is a qualified system of checks and balances, pharmaceutical marketing tactics shape the situation differently. Drug-sales representative are known to pamper and even 'bribe' physicians in such a way when pitching their companies' products that many a doctor may be inherently predisposed to writing 'blockbuster' pharmaceutical prescriptions--exactly the ones that armchair 'downers' are asking about. Carl Elliott says that "pharmaceutical company marketing undermines the objectivity of prescribing decisions made by physicians and unduly interferes with physician-patient relationships (282)."

Shouldn't a doctor be serving the needs of a patient's health instead of that same patient's manipulated want to ascend into Upness? Perhaps the general physician has simply been reduced to a messy (but respected) signature for an increasingly self-medicated America...

NYS Thruway Toll Calculator

The New York State Thruway Authority offers on its website a widget for calculating toll costs and travel distance:

 

http://www.nysthruway.gov/tolls/calc/index.html

 

$1 Gasoline

Check it out--products usually derived from petroleum may eventually be affordably created from raw plant materials!

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum. [read article]

I have been a subscriber to the flex-fuel / ethanol idea myself, however in light of its perceived negative impact on the economy hybrids may be the eventual reality for personal and business automobiles. Even so, as John Regalbuto points out in the article, "we’re still going to need diesel and jet fuel—you can’t run trains or fly planes with ethanol or hydrogen" and "if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go."

Paper Ethics

Corporate employee-protective policy writing is a word game. The goal is to create a policy acceptable to all stakeholders and then publish and disseminate it in compliance with legal and industry standards. The resulting policies usually exist as a gray blanket spanning the full scope of all Equal Opportunity and Sexual Harassment issues.

Such all-encompassing policies necessarily create subjective rulings of policy-violating accusations. Is a case-by-case determination the wrong answer? Not at all--in fact today, it is probably the only approach. The lack of societal moral standards in the realms of both anti-discrimination and harassment prevention, coupled with the fact that "the U.S. Supreme Court has never established comprehensive criteria for legally valid" plans, forces each unique situation to be considered separately, "balancing the interests of affected parties (Ethical Theory and Business, 188)."

Equal Opportunity (EO) policy includes such terms as affirmative action, preferential treatment, and diversity. Affirmative action is a set of steps for creating increasingly favorable environments for discriminated groups, and preferential treatment expands on this idea as an end-state that an organization strives to meet (ie. goals, quotas). Both concepts have been said to act as compensation for past and previous "wrongness" dealt to certain groups of people.

Some moral philosophers, such as George Sher, find it difficult to justify current preferential treatment for past wrong doing. An instance where I see Sher's point of irrelevance is in the allowances provided to contemporary descendants of the North American Indian. These people, who from my skewed perspective are as "American" as the rest of the melting pot of United States' citizens, have unfair advantages over their streamlined, law-abiding neighbors. Celebrate their peoples' history and the Native American Indian tradition--yes; but provide an immeasurably disproportionate compensation for an inexact cultural offense that totally blows away the restrictions in place for the rest of U.S. economy--no. Absolute sovereignty for some requires the moral consideration of all.

Thinking of affirmative action policy structure as an involuntary practice imposed by regulatory law though, and preferential treatment as a voluntary means of expanding EO aims, the compensation of the Native American Indian people should not entirely be dismissed. Preferential treatment's more flexible implications, as well as the introduction of the idea of diversity, points back to the case-by-case method of determining ethical appropriateness. Diversity, albeit its cloudy definition, "is less controversial and legally less worrisome than the language of 'affirmative action' (Ethical Theory, 189). Take the diversity-dependence of a state's economy such as Arizona's--per se--and the balanced interest of all affected parties may completely agree with the justness of the national sovereignty of a historic group of people.

Paper ethics and stated policy are a good starting point and "CYA" (cover your ass) tactic for discriminatory and related issues, but the real penny is in the process.

Damn Good Coffee

Old Bisbee Roasters of Bisbee, AZ roasts some damn good coffee.



The taste of truly flavorful coffee has been a part of my life ever since being served my first, free Kenya Peaberry espresso by Roastmaster Seth Appell in Bisbee's Peddler's Alley. That day, my buddy Jim brought home a 1 lb. bag of the same, which we thoroughly enjoyed at our Sierra Vista TDY home. A consequent trip to Bisbee brought me back to Peddler's Alley (this time on purpose) and another friend, Andrew, purchased one of the great Old Bisbee Roasters' sampler packs.

By the time Jim's bag of Kenya Peaberry beans was empty, it was about time for me to make the long drive back to New York in my Av. I have been ordering my coffee online from www.oldbisbeeroasters.com since. The orders are roasted and mailed on the same day, and when that aroma that can only mean Old Bisbee Roasters gushes out of the mailbox, life is good for another month.

The Crossfire of Employee Treatment

(7 April 2008) - The rights and responsibilities of employees in the workplace have great opportunity to conflict with one another. While an employee may have the responsibility to fulfill a certain duty per the fine text of a labor contract agreement, that employee also has the right to refuse work above and beyond the salaried time or at a higher risk than that which the employee feels to be personally acceptable. These types of "human rights" in the workplace have blossomed into prevailing issues of ethical treatment of employees over the past thirty years and seem to be today at a point that is often too complicated for employers to even want to deal with.

Traditionally, as mentioned in Chapter 3 of Ethical Theory and Business, businesses followed the principle of "Employment-at-Will"--wherein "the freedom of the employee to quit, the freedom of the employer to fire, and the right of the employer to order the employee to do his or her bidding" (107) were the standard practice. After 1980s and -90s legislation passed laws forbidding the firing of employees in a manner that could be construed as discriminatory (ie. relating to age, sex. nationality, handicapped-ness) and for failure to comply with suggestive action perceived as a sexual advance, the traditional approach to employment was thrown away. Companies were essentially forced by the legal restraints on employee treatment to build human resources departments which dedicate an absurd amount of time and process to ensuring that the rights of individuals were not infringed upon.

So today, with employee rights on every manager's mind, the workplace is in a Golden Age, right? It's questionable. An extreme example of the crossfire involved is the court decision made in "Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc., which determined that employers cannot legally adopt 'fetal protection policies' that exclude women of childbearing age from a hazardous workplace, because such policies involve illegal sex discrimination" (110). If a company cannot legally prevent a female from performing a job which can have a significant health impact on females only, without fear of court scrutiny, has room been left for the company to disclose the hazardous conditions at all? Isn't it possible that some women out there may have a strong desire to know that employment of some kind can potentially impair the growth of a fetus currently being carried or is possible of developing in the future?

To cope with the possibility of the given example and other complexities of the ethical worker treatment concern, businesses are again finding a way to return to the old, traditional EAW (Employment-at-Will) principle by having employees necessarily "sign their life away" as terms of the contract (ie. validating the employers right to fire at any time, etc.) so that businesses can once again functionally operate within the law. What's next? Taking away the right for a person to agree to and sign a document that effectively takes away their rights

Pin Money

Dictionary.com's Word of the Day.

pin money \pin money\, noun:

1. An allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for private and personal
expenditures.
2. Money for incidental expenses.
3. A trivial sum.

Women's groups have contended that jobs that usually go to men pay more because of the old-fashioned idea that a man is supporting a family while a woman is merely working for pin money.
-- Juan Williams, "A Question of Fairness", The Atlantic, February-1987

Many young people take jobs in hotels and pubs as a way of earning a bit of pin money, or to top up the student loans and parental hand-outs that see them through the cash-strapped college years
-- Nick Pandya, "Failed to make the grade? You're still wanted", The Guardian, September 7, 2002

A record-smashing fine sounds tough, but it's pin money for Credit Suisse.
-- Nick Cohen, "Life in a bubble bath", The Observer, December 22, 2002

Pin money originally referred to money given by husbands to their wives for the specific purpose of buying pins.

The Enron Goldmine

The Enron Scandal is a goldmine of case study fodder for business instructors everywhere. Finance, Management, Law, Policy, Ethics—this one touches them all. The complex and twisted corporate meltdown of Enron Corporation fireballed so rapidly that there may always exist a wealth of questions inquiring as to what happened and what otherwise SHOULD have been done.

While an unnamed number of employees were certainly participants in the events leading to Enron's downfall, there are specific names which generally are held to some degree of responsibility: Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and David Duncan—to name a few.

The accounting profession as a whole, however, may be the real underlying cause. Colin Boyd is quoted in Ethical Theory and Business as saying that "ethical tensions, like pressures between tectonic plates in geology, had built up over decades as the structure of the accounting profession evolved" (364). These tensions in turn, were a major influence in the decisions made by Enron's auditing firm Arthur Anderson.

Global growth via international mergers, the demise of long-term auditor-client relationships, and the price-shopping and opinion-shopping practices of the client pool combined to force the accounting industry to reshape its normative business methods. Similar to the Sears Auto Center case, auditing firms turned the audit itself into a loss-leader; lowballing prices so as to get an inside look at the processes of client businesses and then seize opportunities to offer consultations for discovered problems.

The ensuing cross between auditing and consulting produced conflicts of interests which "placed intolerable pressures on the ethical judgments of experienced professionals" (Ethical Theory 365). As accounting firms fought to survive, or in Arthur Anderson's case to continue to stand among giants, standards were flexed more and more to convey the desired result. On the cuff, such practices were beneficial to parties on either side of the deal—Audit/Consultant Companies (ie. Arthur Anderson) and Client Businesses (ie. Enron Corp.) were both happy.

The type of business relationship between AA and Enron at its heart was a legitimate one—morally adhering to the contemporary norm—although compounded over time with the numerical results, they were the ones to "get caught."

The Long Count

Today's date by the Mayan Long Count Calendar is 12.19.15.04.2--fascinating!

LoTf Power Struggle

(2 April 2008) - Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a widely-reviewed, fictional novel on the subject of human behavior. Written in 1954, the story follows the journey of a group of school-age boys as they struggle to develop community amongst themselves following their untimely plane crash onto a desert isle.

Key characters in Lord of the Flies include Ralph, Jack, Simon, Piggy, and to a certain extent the inseparable twins Sam and Eric. Shortly following the crash, as most of the boys are wandering at an attempt to orient themselves to their current situation, Piggy meets Ralph. Piggy--the thinker of the group--does his best to encourage the day-dreamy Ralph to draw himself up and take action. Through the expressive musical note of a conch shell that the pair have discovered together, Ralph initiates the first of what will become many "assemblies" of the deserted children.

At that first meeting, Ralph is voted chief. Effectively, the group of varying-aged boys had just become a unified entity, after which progress could be made. Ralph appoints a 3-person exploration team (including himself) to walk the beach and seek to determine whether their current location was in fact, an island. The other 2 members of the scout team are Jack and the diminutive Simon. Jack--head of the boys'--choir, was somewhat miffed that Ralph won the vote over him for chief, however at that early point recognized that a democratic decision had been made. Simon tended to be a quiet boy, appearing to imagine to see things that others couldn't see. His role later played a significant part in the exposure of raw human behavior at the climax of the story.

As time drags on, Ralph's vision of survival (via keeping a signal fire burning) collides with Jack's pre-occupation with "the hunt" (violently pursuing native pigs) and the group divides into two competing factions. As civilized organization unravels and conflict approaches morbidity, the schoolboys-turned-savage are rescued by the American Hero, a naval officer in stark white dress.

Leadership and politics are often considered simultaneously. There are all sorts of definitions of what it means to be a leader, but they all involve the dynamic of other people--and that means politics. In the political framing of organizational leadership it is necessary to recognize the conditions which create constituent offsidedness in the first place. Often the two elements at the root of conflict are "enduring differences" and the allocation of scarce resources. Such conflictual causes usually call for a positional leader of authority, inherently granting some individual with the intangible resource of Power. With said Power, the leader is expected to harmonize the dissonance of the relative masses and to provide scarce resources where appropriate (or often to those who put leader into the the authority position).

With the possibility of Power there often exists a struggle for leadership. Individuals who see themselves as best fit for the job will market themselves, build coalitions with small groups, and take highly-visible action for show. Political leadership enables a person to set a new direction for an organization, to make his or her own vision that of the public's, and to herald community in the face of diversity. While the Power of organizational leadership is sought by some, there are others who equally desire to be strongly led. This type of interdependency between Leaders and Followers is an important thread of functional organizational life. Power flows multi-directionally in the building and transacting of relationships between key stakeholders; failure to allow for these "power relationships" to exist creates dysfunctional politics and can be a lead into magnificent leadership atrocities.

In Lord of the Flies, the power struggle between Ralph and Jack was present from the time of the very first assembly. Ralph became the de-facto leader mostly by circumstance, although Jack was the more obvious leadership candidate. Jack entered the novel in command of his marching choir, already with dedicated followers. That group of choir boys would essentially remain together for the duration of the story, creating the first "enduring difference." After the group had been together for a few days, further stratification occurred. The younger boys--around the age of 6--began to be referred to as "littleuns" while conversely the older boys were "bigguns." These splits create a divide in the value and beliefs of the group as a whole, begging a leader to manage the politics.

Chief Ralph set his agenda right away (with influence from Piggy) to "act like adults" and live within rules. His followers initially complied with the society rules, including such taskings as carrying drinking water to a central area, utilizing a designating latrine-area, constructing shelters, and building and maintaining an active signal fire. Over a relatively short period of time though, most of the boys became disinterested in this type of behavior and began to deny Ralph their end of the power relationship. The littleuns became distracted from Ralph's course and began investing most of their time swimming, building sand castles, and generally running amuck. While the littleuns were subscribing to such activities, some of the bigguns were participating in their own version of the Hedonic Treadmill, dutifully starting each day as a contributing member of society but then quickly deserting in acts of self-interest. Ralph tried to right the ship by asserting his position as Chief and that others must follow his orders, but his stock did not hold. Jack, as the acknowledged Hunter-in-Charge, was becoming more and more obsessed with his quest for the kill. He was being affected by the "Human Condition" and as time went on, the need to slaughter pigs became more and more immediate. His excitement and growing blood-lust increased the tendencies of the choir boys--over whom he already held Power--to do the same.

When the two extremes of Ralph and Jack's leadership exploded into the event that was the discovery of the "Beast," Jack broke away from the umbrella organization and declared himself Chief of his own tribe. All the hunter-types (mostly the older boys) followed him right away, the littleuns not far behind as Jack began promising fresh roast pig to any in his camp. Jack, with that multi-directional power relationship in place, also had the additional leverage of allocating to his own tribesmen scarce resource of fresh meat. Ralph & sidekick Piggy were out of business---they couldn't compete.

Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and the neutral Sam and Eric attempted to move on in their own direction, however confrontation led to confrontation and Simon and Piggy were both eventually killed at the hands of Jack's savage tribe. The struggle for leadership between Ralph and Jack and the creation of two opposing organizations which could not possibly co-exist grew into tragedy. A brand new civilization on a virgin island began in a semblance of structured organization and all too quickly descended to the urges of Human Nature--the "Beast."