What the Baseball Hall of Fame teaches us about business ethics ...

Jayson Stark wrote an interesting article on ESPN.com last week entitled ?Let?s face it: Hall of Fame is a?Mess?.

He talks about the fact that despite a star-studded Hall of Fame ballot, because of the cloud of performance enhancing drugs, no one was elected.

Barry Bonds.? Roger Clemens.? Sammy Sosa.? Mark McGwire.?Rafael Palmeiro.? Mark Piazza.?

Zero inductees.

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He goes on to wonder what kind of Hall of Fame we are building.? ?What?is?the Hall of Fame supposed to be?? he asks.? ?A Hall of Fame that basically tries to pretend that none of those men ever played baseball? ?That none of the improprieties happened?? ?He reminds us that it all did happen and we all witnessed it.? And now we?ll have to decide whether we want our Hall of Fame to render all of that invisible.

?Maybe we?ll decide we want a Hall of Fame that aspires to be a shrine, not just to greatness but to purity.? he says.? ?I don?t know how we get there, but maybe that?s where this conversation will lead us.?

So what does all of this have to with business ethics?? Everything.? Because it is a metaphor for what business people deal with every day.? Decisions about the right way to conduct business and treat people.? Recognizing and defining ?gray areas? and making decisions about how to deal with them in the right way.? How we collectively make decisions about what is right and wrong.? How our business networks and communities legislate and enforce behavior.

We all know that just because something is legal does not make it ethical.? In the end, the truth prevails.? Everyone ultimately knows how others conduct their lives, the integrity they uphold and the type of people they really are.

I have not made a final decision about whether or not I believe these players should be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.? But I know one thing.? You can?t have half-baked morality.? You have to have one consistent standard of acceptability that everyone understands.? If we?re going to keep these guys out based on doing something illegal, then every player who has ever took an amphetamine, smoked pot, corked a bat, had a DUI or beat their wife should have their name stricken from the record books as well.

There are levels of magnitude in any crime. ?It all depends on where and how we draw the lines of consequence.? These players knew what they were doing was wrong, so I?m not very sympathetic. ?But the idea of including them in the Hall of Fame because they are an ?important part? of baseball history is a cop-out solution that only avoids and confuses the real issue.

If it is up to all of us to figure out what the Hall of Fame ought to do next, I say one thing is most important.? Don?t be hypocritical.? Either let them in, or clean the slate across the board and expel others who have improprieties in their past.

Because, just like in business, the real challenge is recognizing where the gray areas are.? Making collective decisions about the behavior that we consider acceptable. ?And most importantly, being consistent.

If it is true that communities within which we live and work establish social norms, then we have an obligation to deal with the inconsistencies and conflicts that arise.? We must ensure that everyone knows the rules and that there is an expectation to play by them with as little gray as possible.? We can only accomplish this through open and honest dialogue, a commitment to a truly ethical environment and a goal to deal right up front with the ever-present vulnerability of hypocrisy.

In only this way can we have that world we talk about ? the one in which people do the right thing, even when no one is watching.

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Photo credit: Flickr?baseballoogie

Source: http://www.evradvertising.com/2013/01/14/hof-business-ethics/

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