Scandals follow a set trajectory. After the hysteria and the opportunistic attacks on anyone associated with the guilty parties—in the case of Oxfam, which has been accused of allowing widespread exploitation of women, that means “neo-colonialist” NGOs and bleeding heart liberals—there will be more sober discussions of how we can make sure this will never happen again. Recommendations will be made for changes in policies and procedures.
But already it seems clear that inadequate processes were not the source of the problem, although they were part of it. The word that has been used most frequently to describe the source of Oxfam’s malaise is its “culture.”
To take just a few examples. Former aid worker Shaista Aziz has written that the whole foreign aid sector suffered from “a culture where bullying was rife, women were frequently belittled and racism was casual.” Former Secretary of State for International Development Priti Patel has talked of a “culture of denial.” A confidential report on the incidents written by Oxfam in 2011 describes “a culture of impunity.”
Wherever there is scandal, it is rooted in culture. Take the sexual harassment that has come to light in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations. Many have talked of the Hollywood “culture of silence” that stopped victims speaking out. The New York Attorney General legal suit against Weinstein’s production company described its “Culture of Harassment and Intimidation.”
But what exactly is “culture”? “Culture” is the corporate equivalent of “character.” Just as individuals habitually behave in certain ways, good and bad, so an organisations exhibits a distinctive pattern of behaviour that reflects its ethos.
The sources of defects in a corporate culture are often very similar to the sources of character flaws.
For example, organisations are as vulnerable as individuals to what psychologists call “confirmation bias,” or “myside bias,” in which we judge ourselves more generously than we judge others, discounting evidence that doesn’t fit our preconceptions.
It is extremely difficult to be honest about failings that would be obvious in others, and to justify them as to ourselves.
For NGOs, this is compounded by the phenomenon of moral licensing: when doing good makes people feel more entitled to do other things that are bad, as though they have earned moral credit to be spent on vice.
NGOs are particularly prone to this as their very raison d’être is altruistic. Misdemeanours are easily dismissed as trivial compared to the good that they are doing. Hannah Bryce’s recent Prospect article on sexual harassment at the UN, a promoter of women’s rights, exemplifies this problem. When your self-image is virtuous, acknowledging the presence of vice can create intolerable dissonance.
Although corrosions of culture and character may affect what rules are introduced or enforced, they owe little or nothing to the absence of good policies.
That would not surprise the ancient Greek, Confucian and Buddhist “virtue ethics” traditions, who were always sceptical about the power of rules and maxims to improve behaviour.
“Those who don’t steal don’t need precepts against theft,” said the Zen master Bankei Ytaku. Similarly, “Precepts against lying are wasted on a truthful man.”
The need for prohibitions is in effect an admission of a failure to get to the root of the problem: corrupted character. Rules can help, in that they create reminders of what we ought to be doing. But they are only part of the story.
As Mencius put it, “Virtue alone is not sufficient for the exercise of government; laws alone cannot carry themselves into practice.”
If this is correct, then NGOs cannot fix their problems by policy changes alone. They will need to reform their cultures.
We cannot, of course, expect them to create oases of perfect virtue. No organisation can straighten the crooked timber of human nature. But the right corporate culture can promote virtue, the wrong one inhibit it.
In Oxfam’s case, one set of virtues it needs to work on concern openness, honesty and a willingness to self-criticise.
It’s easy to see why these have been lacking. NGOs are constantly under fire, which creates a defensive, self-justificatory mentality. No one wants to acknowledge failings if doing so plays into the hands of those who see the whole aid world as a racket.
But in the long run, failing to acknowledge them plays into the enemy’s hands even more—as Oxfam is discovering to its cost.
Changing the culture is not easy, but simply changing the rules we live by doesn’t stop people breaking them. NGOs will have to start by taking a good, hard look at themselves and honestly seeing how their corporate characters fail to match their ethical aspirations.
This requires brutal honesty and leadership by example. Perhaps most importantly, it requires fighting the tendency to overlook transgressions that seem minor compared to all the good work being done.
As the Dhammapada warns, “Think not lightly of evil saying that ‘it will not come near me’. Even a water-pot is filled by the falling of drops of water. A fool becomes evil even if he gathers it little by little.”
