Moral Management: Fact or Fantasy?

4.6 Moral Management: Fact or Fantasy?

Controversies: 6.11 Key Words: county, morality, policy Case Complexity → Moderate CD: 4.12 Ethics Management in Cities and Counties CD: 4.32 Leading with Integrity

Imagine that you are the top elected official of a county constitutional office, such as the sheriff or clerk or property appraiser. As part of your campaign to get elected, you promise that you will demand that employees of the organization behave prop- erly and not behave in a manner that jeopardizes the credibility and integrity of the office. A week after you take office, you learn that several married employees are engaging in intimate behavior which offends your sense of morality and is causing disruption in the agency.

What do you do?

Discussion Questions

1. Do you turn your head and hope the situation disappears?

2. Do you call the employees to your office and teach them a lesson in moral behavior?

3. Do you consider revising the agency’s written standard of conduct to prohibit married employees from dating or entering into intimate relationships with other employees, single or married?

After much discussion with your top staff, you decide to issue an order pro- hibiting married personnel from engaging in adulterous affairs. The order reads as follows:

“Agency personnel, whether married or single, shall not develop an associa- tion with another member whom they know or should have known is married to

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another person. Married members also shall not develop an association with agency members who are single. Excluded from this are members who are separated and residing apart from their spouse, or those who have legally filed for divorce. For the purpose of this policy, ‘association’ means, residing with, dating, or entering into any intimate relationship with.”

How to enforce this policy is the $64,000 question.

4. Suppose you were called by the sheriff to advise him on how to enforce the policy. What would you say to him?

Results

Two married employees (not to each other) entered into an intimate relationship. As fate would have it, the husband (let’s call him Matt) of the woman (let’s call her Heather) who was in the forbidden relationship came home around noon to find his wife’s lover (let’s call him Joe) napping in bed while Heather was in the shower! Th e incident was the breaking point for Matt. He ran downstairs and grabbed a video camera to record the proof. With this evidence, along with pictures, e-mails, and hotel receipts, he filed a complaint with the sheriff’s department. After evaluat- ing the evidence, the sheriff concluded in letters sent to Joe and Heather that “You engaged in an intimate relationship with a member of the agency whom you knew was married.”

Joe received a three-day suspension and Heather received a written reprimand. Th e moral of this story—enforcement is in the eye of the beholder!

Discussion Questions

1. Is this a management issue or an ethics issue? Both? Neither?

2. Is moral management fact or fantasy?

3. Should one’s religious beliefs influence the situation?

Assessment

Karl Thoennes III, Judicial Circuit Administrator, Unified Judicial System, State of South Dakota:

I love the sheriff’s delicate use of the phrase “develop an association with …” I think we can manage morals on some behaviors—outside employment at the strip club, Internet porn—but I do think trying to manage adultery at the office is a fantasy.

98 ◾ Ethics Moments in Government: Cases and Controversies

Bonnie Beth Greenball, Associate Director, Institute for Public Policy and Leadership, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee:

As the top elected official in a county constitutional office, I have obli- gations both to uphold the constitution and to ensure that the office is a productive work environment. Faced with employees engaging in inap- propriate intimate behavior, I would take several steps before making a major change such as the personnel rule proposed in the second portion of this case study. First, I would like to know whether these actions were taking place in the workplace and/or during normal business hours. If married employees are engaging in intimate behavior outside of the workplace and/or normal business hours, I would not become involved in this at all. I am not in the business of regulating the morality of my employees; rather I believe that what they do on their own time is their own business. I believe that there is a certain “zone of privacy” that all citizens can expect under the U.S. Constitution and that government agencies should not create rules or regulations which might prohibit certain private activities.

However, if either of the parties involved was in a superior/subor- dinate relationship with the other, and the relationship became finan- cial as well as romantic, then I would seek to enforce the county’s conflicts of interest policy, provided that it had a clause prohibiting fi nancial relationships between superiors and subordinates. In all likelihood, I would transfer the subordinate to another portion of my office, if at all possible, so that he or she would not be a direct report to the other.

If, on the other hand, these amorous activities are taking place at work or during business hours, I would likely take action. Engaging in sexual activity in the workplace is completely inappropriate for several reasons. It is disruptive to the office, and more importantly, all employ- ees are expected to work in the best interests of the citizens and not be distracted by amorous activities at work. In contrast, if these activities take place off site during a lunch hour or break and do not interfere with the employees’ work product, then I would, as stated above, stay out of this matter.

I would not revise the agency’s written standard of conduct to regu- late morality because I believe the employees have a right to engage in private activities on their own time, provided those activities do not conflict with their work. It is my view that we ought to give public employees respect and autonomy to make their own decisions about their personal lives.

However, if, as proposed in the hypothetical case, an order pro- hibiting married personnel from engaging in adulterous affairs was on

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the books, and I had overwhelming evidence to support a claim that Heather, a married woman, and Joe were indeed involved in such an affair, I would have to advise the appropriate enforcement agency that

there was sufficient evidence (once I reviewed it) to make a finding of probable cause of a violation of the personnel rules. I would certainly not want to set a precedent of permitting activities that are in violation of the personnel code; however, I would personally have trouble with this case in that I do not agree with the validity of the rule. I may sug- gest that the two be reassigned to avoid disruptions in the workplace and then work to remove the rule from the personnel code, which I find overly invasive.

Author’s Note: Based on a case published in the St. Petersburg Times, December 28-29, 2007. Policy statement is actual wording contained in the Pinellas County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office, General Order 3-1, section