Tom, I share your skepticism about the prospect of one person in an organization being able to assume global responsibility for a company's ethics. That person can, however, be an effective ombudsman, asking ethical questions others are not likely to consider about the internal and external impact of policies. I saw this work very successfully at Cummins Engine back in the 1970s. But even that role has little influence unless the Board listens.
It may surprise some that Greenleaf did not believe codes of ethics affected behavior much. For him, the totality of an institution's ethical impact was a function of individual ethical choices and the operational (not simply stated) values of the organization's culture and its top leaders. This is discussed more fully in Anne Fraker's excellent chapter titled "Robert Greenleaf and Business Ethics: There Is No Code" in Reflections on Leadership (John Wiley & Sons, 1995). Among other traits and practices, Greenleaf thought individual ethical behavior was related to the stance of being a "seeker" who is open to knowledge, who nurtures the growth of self and others, practices foresight (the lack of which is a terrible ethical failure) and--get this--possesses humor and the ability to laugh!
He thought the antidote to top leaders who gravitated to the role of kleptocrats (using Diamond's analysis) was for them to operate as primus inter pares, "first among equals." And, Greenleaf also believed that the Social Darwinist style of competition sabotaged serving, but that's another story.
I have not read Diamond's book but would suggest that tribal size is not the only variable that affects kleptocracy. Tribalism itself has its shadows, even though it seems to be part of the human warp and woof of identity. We are each members of many tribes--familial, state, corporate, religious, professional, national, etc.--and subject to the hubris and protectionism that can come with membership in each.
For me, one of the most breathtaking possibilities offered by servant leadership is the idea that, because humans share an impulse to serve, we can also imagine ourselves as part of a global tribe of humankind. Enlightened artists and mystics have always done this but the shift in mass consciousness began in December, 1968 when astronauts on Apollo 10 sent back the first picture of an "earthrise." Exactly one year later Greenleaf was at work on the first draft of "The Servant As Leader."
Don,
Thanks for your insights. I sure do appreciate the way you can bring things back to the origin's of Greenleaf. I am sure that you are correct in that it is more complicated then population size when it comes to the evolution of "kleptocracy". It just seems that the larger an organization, the easier it is to forget our relationships. On the other hand there are some deeper disfunctions at play when we sometimes treat those we are closest to, worse then we might those we meet in our larger organizations (speaking for myself anyway). The idea of a "mass shift in consciousness" is indeed a hopeful one. Perhaps the size of our community's/global human population is in part related to reaching that "critical mass" needed for that shift to occur. I think the shift will also need to go beyond just recognizing our relationship to the human tribe, but the entire tribe of creation. It's that hope that helps me to let go of the skeptism, thanks for the reminder.
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