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Some employees may hold materially prejudiced/discriminatory views. It isn't the companies role to morally educate people/employees in general nor may it be po
by nullc 6y ago
Some employees may hold materially prejudiced/discriminatory views. It isn't the companies role to morally educate people/employees in general nor may it be possible for it to do so, and any attempt to do so might itself be morally and legally fraught. ("Accept our position on right vs wrong or lose your job" can become awfully close to "become $religion or get fired").
Rather, the companies obligation is to provide a safe environment for workers and customers and to uphold basic standards for non-discriminatory professional conduct in the at-work activities of its employees and the orginization as a whole. It doesn't matter if people think some harmful stuff, so long as they leave that thinking outside of the office and conduct themselves in an appropriate manner.
Inviting debate might help set some people's moral thinking straight, but it has the much larger risk of inviting into the office stuff that doesn't belong there, invoking avoidable bad conduct, and turning the company into dystopian thought police.
We very much shouldn't want corporate HR forcibly imposing their concept of right and wrong onto people outside of the extremely narrow confines of work interactions: A millennia of debate by philosophers and religious leaders world wide have failed to settle innumerable moral questions. FooCorp HR-- which has almost every ethical incentive set in the wrong direction (e.g. maximize profits for FooCorp), and wields more power over people's lives than all but the most abusive cults-- simply isn't qualified or appropriate for the task of controlling people's personal moral compasses.
- bigyikes 6y ago>inviting into the office stuff that doesn't belong there, invoking avoidable bad conduct, and turning the company into dystopian thought police I don't necessarily disagree with your general sentiment -- I would actually prefer to keep all of this out of the workplace entirely. But I think this sort of behavior is already happening in companies, and it is exacerbated by the fact that there isn't debate. I think it is difficult for a company with an open culture to keep politics away from work. And if we suppose that politics will inevitably find their way into work, I would much rather have debates than not.
- muyuu 6y agoIn a company setting, debate more often than not actually exacerbates the issue. You don't want the conversation in that setting because the relationship in the company hierarchy is inherently negative for moral debates.
- afiori 6y agothe debate would not need to be about the morality of issues but on identifying the problem to be solved and evaluating efficient ways to do it. For example in some cases the best solution might be too reorganize company values.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]