Interethical Competence

A paper written by Stuart D.G. Robinson

with contributions from Christoph Brünner in chapter 5

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Why will interethical competence be needed more than ever before in the global business environment?
2.1 Increasing exposure to ethically-loaded challenges, conflicts and dilemmas.
2.2 Modernism, the widespread death of ‘god-given ethics’ and the proportional expansion of ‘human-made ethics’.
2.3 The hypocrisy trap
2.4 Cultural and ethical conditioning

3. What is meant by the term interethical competence?
3.1 Introduction
3.2 What qualifies as an ethical standpoint?
3.3 What is the difference between ethical competence, multi-ethical competence and inter-ethical competence?
3.4 What is the difference between interethical competence and intercultural competence?
3.5 Who decides what behaviour is ethically appropriate?

4. Developing and experiencing ethical neutrality
4.1 Introduction
4.2 To what extent can a person exercise ethical neutrality in relation to his/her own ethical standpoints?
4.3 The crucial distinction between perceptions and perceiving
4.4 Experiencing ethical neutrality as a third-party beholder
4.5 Developing ethical empathy
4.6 Creating and experiencing ethical space

5. Examples of the ethical challenges faced by people in positions of key responsibility and of the application of interethical competence in such situations.

6. Conclusions

1. Introduction

Encouraged by the increasing level of resonance which my colleagues and I have been receiving among senior managers and other circles of people towards certain postulates concerning ethics, I decided to lay out some of the reasoning behind them in the form of a paper dedicated to the topic of interethical competence. The postulates begin as follows:

Postulate 1: Interethical competence, i.e. the ability to identify and overcome ethical differences and conflicts, will become a crucial success-factor in international business practice as a direct consequence of:

1. increased inter-national, inter-disciplinary and inter-ideological engagement,
2. efforts by various communities and organisations
   • to assert the universal validity of a certain set of ethical standards and/or
   • to propagate the need for mutual respect between differing cultures,
3. the constraints which are inherent in the phenomenon of culture, which give communities their identity and which, in so doing, make consensus-building between communities so extremely challenging, particularly at the very fundamental level of ethics,
4. the increasing prevalence and impact of ‘man-made ethics’.

Postulate 2: Whilst numerous people in operative functions have had to develop their interethical competence intuitively in order to be successful, this competence is generally not adequately recognized by the organisations they are working for. In fact, people who possess it are often misunderstood and sometimes penalised for possessing it.

Postulate 3: lack of recognition of the quality of interethical competence and of its significance for international business practice means that it is currently seriously underdeveloped in most organisations, thus jeopardising their sustainability.

Putting these thoughts to paper reminds me of articles which I wrote almost twenty years ago on the subject of intercultural competence, i.e. the ability to identify and overcome cultural differences and conflicts. ¹ At the beginning of the 90’s, some people remarked that the thoughts which we were presenting were “ten years ahead of their time”. In retrospect, this was to an extent true, but mainly owing to the general lack of sensitisation to the concept and the importance of intercultural competence – and not because it was not needed in significantly higher quantities already at that time. Two decades later, international business practice still continues to yield numerous examples of the inadequate levels of intercultural competence which are prevalent in large and small organisations alike. Whilst our banner-waving for the need for higher levels of interethical competence might have to suffer a similar fate as it did for intercultural competence, we are convinced that it is a core competence which needs to be recognized, understood and developed, most of all by senior management. In our opinion, the skills of intercultural competence and interethical competence are very closely related indeed, both in terms of content and in terms of importance, as I will expound below.

To begin the next section, I will discuss the reasoning behind the first postulate. Postulates 2 and 3 will be treated explicitly in Chapter 6.

2. Why will ethical and interethical competence be needed more than ever before in the global business environment?

Whilst the following list of answers to this question is not intended to be exhaustive, it hopefully addresses some of the most compelling arguments. These arguments will be expounded in Chapter Five of this paper where Christoph Brünner and I examine concrete examples of the everyday ethical challenges and dilemmas faced by business executives and supervisory boards.

At the time of beginning to write this paper in the Spring of 2011, we observe hundreds of thousands people in the Middle East protesting for greater democracy and, in some cases, overthrowing their regimes. Many outsider observers interpret this development as signifying a global movement towards a single understanding of democracy. Others see it as the nascence of new and diverse societal forms, each form based on a certain understanding of ethical and non-ethical behaviour. Some see the world turning into a global village and embrace the notion that the world has arrived at the end of its socio-political, ideological development – see Fukuyama, ‘The End of History’. ² Others see cultural diversity not only to be expanding, but also to be a precondition for sustainability – see Nancy, ‘Dis-Enclosure’; Saul, ‘Collapse of Globalism’; Watson, ‘A Terrible Beauty’. ³

Such divergences concerning the way in which the world around us is perceived will necessarily pervade the remainder of this paper. In fact, it is not merely the undeniable presence, but also the increasing vociferousness of this multiplicity of world-views and ethics – and the conflicts which arise between them – which creates the need for adequate levels of interethical competence in numerous walks of life, including business and politics. Just as with the phenomenon of culture, the issue of ethics becomes relevant when ethical differences manifest themselves in such a way that they cannot be ignored. Otherwise, ethics is neither manifest nor relevant. It is a result of the fact that we are confronted with a multiplicity of non-ignorable ethical standpoints that ethics has become a major topic in today’s world.

[The word manager will generally be used in the remainder of this paper to refer to people in positions of key responsibility in profit-oriented and not-for-profit organisations of all types. This includes not only executive, but also supervisory and advisory functions.]

2.1. Increasing exposure to ethically-loaded challenges, conflicts and dilemmas.

Both in local and global geographical contexts, the sharply increasing levels of transparency and individualised accountability in most sectors of life mean that very many of the decisions made by managers will, sooner or later, be subject to third-party and even public ethical scrutiny – the problem being that it is extremely difficult for them to predict which ones will be scrutinised, by whom and from which ethical perspective.

At the individual and micro-level, such managers have learned through watching the fates of their peers that they need to reflect ethically before deciding to claim certain personal expenses, accept certain fringe benefits or enter into certain private relationships – if, that is, they want to avoid possible moral and ethical embarrassment and even judicial proceedings later. Personal credibility is becoming increasingly synonymous with ethical authenticity, for reasons which I will explain below.

At the macro-level, managers recognize the increasing need to reflect on the possible consequences which their organisations and their environments will have to suffer if they themselves do not, for example,

1. fully eradicate corruption, nepotism, discrimination,
2. proactively prevent the exploitation of women and minors and/or
3. take adequate steps to prevent economic, social and ecological disasters.

It is not just what these ethically-exposable individuals do, but increasingly what they fail to do – what they overlook and what they underestimate – which becomes subject to scrutiny. The ethical factors and communities which need to be anticipated and integrated into decision-making processes have become so numerous and interwoven that they require ever-increasing levels of

1. well-deliberated, mono-ethical conviction and/or
2. interethical competence.

One of the reasons for this development lies in the fact that senior managers in the Western world in general have become less and less protected by their hierarchical positions and the corporate structures in which they operate. As organisational structures have become leaner and corporate cultures have become hierarchically flatter, individual responsibility has become accentuated. As a result, the potential material and moral fallibility of a manager’s decisions has increased dramatically – and this applies not only to current decisions, but also to ones in the past. Many a manager has been forced to regret a decision which he/she made many years ago under very different circumstances of accountability and transparency.

Another reason lies in the increased respect for and emancipation of cultural and ideological minorities, a development which is linked to increased free-speech and the technological facilitation of global thought-exchange created by the internet. Blogging, for example, permits anyone’s actions to be exposed and commented on by people from immensely diverging ideological standpoints – regardless of time-zones, geographical position and mobility.

Consequently, managers are left with the choice of either ignoring or anticipating the potential exposure of decisions which they make, or have already made, and which could fall victim to discrepancies between

1. their personal ethics and the ethics of the stakeholders,
2. the different ethical standpoints of different stakeholders,
3. the ethical standpoints of others – or even themselves – which might change in their significance or content over time.

Whilst the ignoring strategy can possibly be triggered by a manager’s strong convictions concerning a given mono-ethical standpoint, the success of the anticipatory strategy will nevertheless depend on his/her ability to access as many ethical standpoints as possible. In the case of decisions still to be made, managers ideally need to be able to integrate the various potentially relevant ethical views into their decision-making processes and/or pre-empt the potential criticisms from different ethical camps at least in their rhetorical planning.

When Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, faced questions at the Iraq Inquiry in January 2010, he said that Saddam Hussein was a “monster and I believe he threatened not just the region, but the world.” In justification of the military intervention, he commented: “I do genuinely believe the world is a safer place as a result.” In this instance, Tony Blair appealed with his use of the term believe to a mono-ethical conviction in order to justify the ethics of his decisions. He did so in a way which potentially – and possibly intentionally – moves the discussion to a meta-ethical level, leaving his numerous ideologically and ethically diverse critics with the ethical dilemma of whether they have the right to question his belief-system, or not.

To a significantly greater extent than is the case for politicians, the task of being a CEO involves mastering the challenges of a multi-ethical environment within an overall context of accountability for the economic profitability of the organisation which he/she manages. In the mindsets of many managers, the moral dimension of decision-making is subordinate to the overriding fiat of ensuring short-term profitability and adequate shareholder returns. The sort of cultural conditioning which creates such mindsets has led many a senior manager to make decisions which he/she has had later to regret from an ethical and very often also from a material point of view.

Viewed holistically, the ethical dimension of decision-making lies not in some academic sphere of ideology or philosophy, nor merely in doing ethical business in an ethical fashion, but very essentially includes the ethics of work itself, i.e. the ethics of assuming one’s responsibility to create and secure financial profit. It is in relation to this ‘whole ethical package’ that the Western manager has become personally accountable and runs the constant risk of being denounced and fired.

Confronted with this whole ethical package and a potentially very critical and multi-ethical outside world, managers are animated to question their own ethical position and that of their organisations. The pressure can also come, of course, from the inside of an organisation since the multi-ethicality of the outside world is often mirrored to a certain extent in the multiple ethical standpoints of its employees; differing internal ethical positions increasingly make themselves heard prior to, during and also following decision-making processes.

2.2 Modernism, the widespread death of ‘god-given ethics’ and the proportional expansion of ‘human-made ethics’

A code of ethics is a set of values which prescribes how people should behave. In god-fearing communities, it is generally the god or gods who are believed to ultimately represent, dictate and judge how people should behave, i.e. what is ethical and non-ethical behaviour. As more and more people around the world implicitly and/or explicitly assert non-god-fearing attitudes to life and death, belief at a metaphysical level in one community is matched by an expectation at a human level in another. Individuals in human-created positions of influence – be they political leaders or business managers – are expected to be ethical role-models, i.e. people who are able to display correct ethical behaviour to the rest of the community. In such communities, human-beings exercise their right

1. not only to live according to their own ethics
2. but also to question and judge the behaviour of others according to their respective ethical standpoints.

As a consequence of the increased prevalence of the exercising of this right, societies becomes increasingly sensitised to:

1. the potential fallibility of human behaviour,
2. the potential fallibility in the content of any and all human-made, human-held ethical standpoints,
3. the potential misuse by humans of their self-made ethical standpoints and
4. the potential flaws of ethical integrity in the behaviour of their role-models and superiors.

For people in exposed functions and positions, living up to a community’s ethical expectations can prove to be very challenging.

2.3 The hypocrisy trap

One type of ethical challenge manifests itself in the form of personal dilemmas within the individual. As I have argued in previous papers ⁴, cultural and ethical conflicts can exist both outside and also inside the individual. Not only do people live in a multi-ethical outside world, many of them also live in a multi-ethical inside world. The source of the true ethical dilemma for the individual lies in the fact that

1. he/she has internalised more than one value-system, i.e. more than one set of values and/or prioritisations of those values which in turn impact on his/her behaviour;
2. the differing value-systems have entered into serious competition with each other.

The latter is also the source of what the self-professed moral or ethical purist would label as hypocritical behaviour, i.e. when a person’s actual behaviour is influenced by a different value-system than the one which they are expected to represent to the outside world by virtue of their function and public standing.

Professing to adhere to a single code of ethics can very easily run the danger of being criticised as hypocritical. In a televised debate with Bill Clinton in June 1998, Jiang Zemin made veiled, but unambiguous allusions to double standards, i.e. hypocrisy, in the USA in relation to its observance of human rights, thus countering Bill Clinton’s efforts to preach ethics to his peer. The fact that Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives later the same year for perjury and obstruction of justice concerning his extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky highlights the inherent vulnerability of mono-ethical preaching.

Vast segments of society have been shocked time and time again by reports of physical and psychological abuse perpetrated by individuals and institutions purporting, believed and/or expected to be ideological role-models. Not only journalists, but also vying political and ideological factions avidly pick up on possible moral and ethical transgressions such as misappropriation of funds, public-health scandals, plagiarism, sexual exploitation of minors etc. and turn the ethical spotlight on their target suspects. Many a revered political, religious or business figure has been irreversibly toppled from power by revelations of unethical and immoral behaviour, in a way which is reminiscent of the pulling down of the statues of Lenin after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Once fallen, it is impossible for such figures to stand upright again.

The broad occurrence and media coverage of such ethical and moral transgressions leads to a level of sensitisation which causes several fundamental questions to be raised, such as:

1. Why has ethics become such a regularly discussed topic in the Western world?
2. What are the constellations of premises which underlie commonly-held concepts like liberal, utilitarian and other forms of ethics?
3. How can such constellations of premises apparently allow people to behave in ways which create inner dilemmas, often in retrospect, and which – to the outside world – contradict the value-systems which they profess to possess.

Whilst answers to such questions are not the focus of this paper – see Bielefeldt, ‘Philosophie der Menschenrechte’; Chappel ‘Ethics and Experience, Life Beyond Moral Theory’; Guthrie, ‘Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative’; Lukes, ‘Moral Relativism’; Amartya, ‘The Idea of Justice’ and Wiggins ‘Ethics, Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality’ ⁵ – the fact that increasing numbers of human-beings feel legitimised to question the ethical behaviour and the ethical systems of others indicates that there is an inherent negotiability in human-made ethics, even though people are conditioned to deny it.

2.4 Cultural and ethical conditioning

So many Western managers have been conditioned to adopt a universalistic, mono-cultural, mono-ethical approach, so few have been trained to recognise and reconcile the premises behind differing ethical standpoints, that the choice mentioned above between a mono-ethical and a multi-ethical approach to the management of multinational operations remains a largely theoretical one.

A talk entitled ‘Ein Plädoyer für Neutralität’ given by the German journalist and Middle-East expert, Ulrich Tilgner, at the University of Zürich on 29^th March, 2011, revealed itself to be nothing more than an oration in fundamental support of the spread of western-style democracy into Libya and neighbouring countries. There was no mention of a possible synthesis between local and western cultures or a partial absorption of western ethics. With respect to democracy, his thesis was undifferentiated and absolute. Accordingly, his talk portrayed contemporary events in the region through his personal mono-ethical lenses, i.e. without even explicitly declaring the nature of his vantage point.

A further symptomatic example of mono-cultural and mono-ethical conditioning is the use of the word multicultural in statements and discussions on corporate culture. Most managers of international organisations feel quite at ease with the word multicultural until they are asked a question like:

Ninety-nine percent of the managers whom we have talked to have never asked themselves such a question. Commonly, they point out that the word multicultural figures quite centrally in their organisation’s global corporate culture statement, but they are apparently quite unaware of the inherent paradox in using the word multicultural in a singular cultural statement, i.e. in a single cultural statement which is intended to apply to the whole organisation. Similarly, the top-managers of such supposedly multicultural organisations very often require their employees to adhere to a single code of conduct or code of ethics, regardless of the latter’s local cultures and ethics.

It is this same cultural conditioning which explains the lack of sensitivity towards the need for adequate intercultural competence in cross-border business ventures. Not only have millions of dollars been lost in such ventures, but also vast amounts of social capital and numerous professional careers have been severely jeopardised as a result of this fundamental oversight. Whilst some organisations have been through phases of trying to rectify the oversight by systematically developing the intercultural competence of their employees, the majority of those whom we have been able to observe have abandoned their efforts; the reasons lie not only in the sporadic changes of people occupying senior management positions, but at the more fundamental level of a marked drift towards mono-culturalism of a certain sort, i.e. towards a universalistic, individualistic and atomistic approach to organisational management, an approach which has hitherto dominated western-led globalisation – see Robinson ‘The Ethical Implications of Feedback’. ⁶

Cultural conditioning also leads people to build their relationships on a mono-cultural, mono-ethical understanding of trust. People trust their partners as long as the latter meet their expectations and do not disappoint them. Expectations are, of course, the product of a certain cultural and ethical conditioning and thus vary from one culture to another. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that serious frustrations occur at the core of cross-border business ventures due to conflicting sets of expectations and the fact that the parties had built their relationship on what they each were accustomed to define as trust. As soon as fundamental distrust sets in, projects turn into one-way tickets to disaster, as takes place in so many of the seventy percent of international ventures which fail – see Morosini, ‘The Importance of Cultural Fit in Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisition Deals’ and Robinson ‘Why Have 70% of All Joint Ventures Failed?’ ⁷.

In the world of politics, David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister felt it appropriate – after just a few weeks in office – to make the following declaration at a security conference in Munich on February 11^th 2011:

Many people are aware that these statements were made in the context of a historically tainted, geo-political backcloth which was illuminated by the statement on 17^th October 2010 by Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, that her country’s attempts to build a post-war multicultural society had “utterly failed”. What these two politicians are suggesting is that, within their respective countries, there exist thriving cultural communities whose ethical standpoints differ so significantly from one another that they fundamentally undermine the concept of an ethically unified state. Such reasoning indicates an inescapable mental conditioning to seek mono-ethical solutions.

Numerous authors and social commentators have proposed – based on their respective views of the events of world history – that the hegemonial assertion of a single set of ideological tenets by a given regime has generally been based on the pursuit of material self-interest and not been sustainable. Just as in politics, the universalistic assertion of a single code of ethics in business also runs several sustainability risks. If a company asserts the universalistic validity of a certain code of conduct or compliance for competitive, protectionist reasons, then the ethics behind that assertion – i.e. the ethics of the ethics – are likely one-day to be exposed. Being the first to put a national flag on the Moon or the Antarctic no longer means that the rest of the world will accept a go-it-alone strategy of self-interest. Similarly, being the first in a certain branch of industry to attain accredited ethical certification and thereby disqualify the competition from bidding for contracts raises ethical questions about the use or misuse of ethics for reasons of material self-interest.

In historical terms, there are numerous examples of endeavours by humans to assert what they believed and/or purported to be god-made forms of ethics around the world. The same is true of man-made forms of ethics such as ISO 26’000, ISAS Ethics 2010 or the UK Bribery Act 2011.

Not all the targeted countries and communities have succumbed to such endeavours. In many of them, resistance has either arisen immediately or manifested itself at a later date. With respect to recent events in Libya, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, commented on March 21^st, 2011 that the UN resolution which authorised military action against the Ghaddafi regime resembled “mediaeval calls for crusades”. In making such a statement, Putin appealed very consciously to the centuries-old resistance in the Arab world against ideological colonialism from the West. As the United States marked the 150^th anniversary of its Civil War, John Blake writing for CNN on April 11^th 2011 quoted various historians in arguing how that same civil war is still being fought today. There are plentiful examples of human beings – individually or collectively – defending their cultural and ethical identity when confronted with what they perceive to be ideological oppression.

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan, and thereby on the cultural values and policies which it represents, was portrayed by some as an opportunity for the USA and other western cultures to reflect on the effects of their attempts to ideologically and materially dominate the rest of the world, i.e. as a chance for those societies which have been conditioned to want to assert their own ethical standpoints over others

1. to reflect on the fact that they themselves have
   1. developed over time and
   2. changed their understanding of what is ethical, and what is not ethical, in accordance with their own social and material development;
2. to reflect on what the underlying premises are which might lead them to deny other societies the right and the opportunity to develop their own ethics over time as well;
3. to reflect on how the universalistic assertion of premises such as parity, fairness and free-will might narrow their understanding of ethical and non-ethical behaviour – see Robinson ‘The Value of Neutrality’ (op. cit).

As discussed above in Section 2.1, one alternative to a mono-ethical approach is a multi-ethical one. This requires managers to not only escape the confines of their cultural and ethical conditioning, but also to develop a truly multi-ethical mind and a significant level of interethical competence. The fact that adequate levels of interethical competence are widely missing is, of course, one of the main motives behind writing the current paper, as laid out above in Postulate Three.

In Chapters 3 and 4, I will attempt to outline my understanding of the concept of interethical competence and how it can be developed and experienced.

In Chapter 5, Christoph Brunner and I will describe how intercultural competence can be applied to significantly reduce the stress and risks which are inherent in decision-making processes and conflict situations. Critical for the success of resolving interethical conflicts is the manner in which they are perceived and addressed, as will be expounded using examples from real life. Very often, the resolution of interethical conflicts is hindered by premise-circularity, i.e. when people employ the same premises to resolve a conflict as were engaged in the contributions to its creation. In the examples, we will show how interethical competence can create an environment of ethical space, where people have the opportunity to reflect on their ethical standpoints and explore fundamentally new possible solutions to their ethical conflicts.

3. What is meant by the term interethical competence?

3.1 Introduction

Behind this relatively simplistic and somewhat obvious definition lie a number of premises which warrant adequate clarification. For example, the definition begs the following questions:

1. What qualifies as an ethical standpoint?
2. Who decides what behaviour is ethically appropriate?
3. What is the difference between interethical competence and intercultural competence?
4. What is the difference between ethical competence, multi-ethical competence and inter-ethical competence?

I will first address Questions 1, 3 and 4 and then return to Question 2 at the end of this Section.

3.2 What qualifies as an ethical standpoint?

Again, I offer certain definitions, as follows:

Thus, like personal or cultural identity, ethical standpoints attain relevance by virtue of the perceived coexistence of one or more different, but comparable entities.

An ethical standpoint can be held by an individual and/ or an ethical community.

A person can hold one or more ethical standpoints at the same time – as long as these are distinguishable from one another.

Ethical standpoints can be expressed implicitly and/or explicitly in the words and actions of their holders.

The holders of ethical standpoints can understand them to apply

1. to themselves only or
2. to themselves and the other members of the same ethical community only or
3. to themselves and larger societal groups including, for example, the whole of humanity

The holders of ethical standpoints can understand them to apply

1. rigorously at all times or
2. situationally and, for example, with differing degrees of rigour.

It follows that there may be perceivable discrepancies between the actual actions and the uttered words of the proponents of ethical standpoints.

3.3 What is the difference between ethical competence, multi-ethical competence and inter-ethical competence?

In order to make a meaningful distinction between these three terms and to leave the definition offered above in Section 3.2 intact, the first two can be defined as follows:

Following on from these definitions, we can argue that

1. ethical or multi-ethical competence in a person does not preclude that person from being interethically competent and
2. a person may develop his/her multi-ethical competence into interethical competence, but the former is not necessarily a prerequisite for the latter.

It follows that a person with multi-ethical competence is not necessarily inter-ethically competent. In other words, the ability to behave appropriately at the interface between different ethical standpoints can be meaningfully regarded as being different from the ability to act appropriately within one or more given ethical frameworks or communities. It is here that the question of the beholder becomes relevant, a point which I will return to in Section 3.5.

3.4 What is the difference between interethical competence and intercultural competence?

According to current usage in literature and contemporary dictionary definitions, the terms morality, ethics and culture can be used interchangeably in many contexts.

The meaning of morality is sometimes associated with that of normative ethics, in the sense that rules are established and applied concerning what is good or bad in terms of human behaviour. Normative ethics is distinguished from descriptive ethics in that the latter is non-judgemental in character.

The word culture has a variety of meanings, one of which overlaps with ethics and morality when what is meant is a common set of mores, values, behavioural patterns which the members of a certain community possess.

The fact that the terms ethics and ethical are often used – at least in the Western world – in a normative fashion would allow a distinction to be drawn between ethics as being normative and culture as being descriptive, or non-judgemental.

In the case of discussing or acting at a conflictual interface between individuals or communities who hold differing ethical standpoints or belong to differing cultures, it becomes less easy to draw a meaningful distinction between ethics and culture: the conflict parties quite simply possess differing value-systems. As soon as one recognizes that some cultures are more normative than others, then the distinction between the two terms becomes difficult to uphold. Accordingly, the terms interethical competence and intercultural competence are indeed very closely related. Perhaps the most significant insight lies exactly in the fact that the topic of ethics appears most prevalently in contexts where at least one of the parties involved holds a strongly normative standpoint which it is seeking to assert and apply with a high level of rigour.

It is here that a question arises as to why an individual or a community should seek to assert a certain ethical standpoint with normative rigour.

1. Is the party which is able to establish the ethical norms and assert their universal validity first, the one who will ultimately prevail? In other words, is ethics, or the use of ethical standards, just another form of survival of the fittest?
2. Is ethics used by some as a form of economic or even ideological protectionism, just as some parties make use of the penal system – e.g. by accusing others of crimes like extortion during a negotiation process – in order to protect what is nothing other than their own civil and economic interests?

In other words, there may be a level of motives behind the assertion of an ethical standpoint which is, in itself, the expression of a particular set or system of cultural values. This covert level of motives behind the assertion of ethical standpoints can add significant challenges to the task of interethical conciliation, as we will discuss using examples in Chapter 5. Interethical competence can help to discern among other things to what extent the motives behind, for example, the altruistically formulated ethical assertions of a given party are in truth ultimately self-serving and not altruistic at all.

3.5 Who decides what behaviour is and ethically appropriate?

In the case of ethical or multi-ethical competence, it is the members of the respective ethical communities who are able to discern whether a person’s behaviour is appropriate or not. Of course, any acting individual also has the possibility to evaluate his/her own behaviour as being appropriate according to his/her own ethical standpoint, a point to which I will return in Section 4.2.

In the case of interethical competence, on the other hand, it is arguable that the members of the ethical communities involved in a given situation, e.g. in an ethical conflict, would all need to perceive the behaviour of a person positioned between them as being appropriate. In order for this to be the case, the ethical communities may – depending on the cultural and situational circumstances – need to be able to perceive the behaviour of the person in-question as being ethically neutral and/or ethically empathetic. In the following, I will firstly focus the discussion on the topic of ethical neutrality and then discuss ethical empathy in Section 4.5.

4 Developing and experiencing ethical neutrality

4.1 Introduction

In my own current understanding of the above terms, ethical neutrality – rather like cultural neutrality – should not be confused with the concept of neutrality as it is commonly used in Europe or North America. Neutrality, as applied for example in Western forms of mediation, is generally associated with a role-understanding of impartiality in relation to parties between whom a relationship of fundamental parity pertains and which thereby warrants the search for a consensual solution with the help of the mediator (for a more detailed treatment of the distinction between neutrality and cultural neutrality, see Robinson “The Value of Neutrality” op. cit.). Western mindsets are typically pre-programmed to understand the concept of ethical neutrality as implying that all ethical standpoints are to be regarded as being equal in status. This is why cultural and ethical neutrality are often equated with cultural and ethical relativism respectively. But does being ethically neutral mean that one is an ethical relativist? In accordance with my usage of these terms in this paper, I draw the following distinction:

The term ethical relativism is often used in the sense that whoever holds the quality of ethical relativism – or purports to hold it – recognizes

1. that there is a plurality of ethical standpoints,
2. that all ethical standpoints are relative to each other and therefore equivalent in status and
3. that consequently no judgement can be made about the superiority or inferiority of any individual’s or group’s ethical behaviour.

Given the presence of the premise of parity in this general understanding of the term ethical relativism, it makes sense to retain it under the condition that we reserve a different term for a state of mind which does not necessarily presuppose parity or any other ethically-relevant premise; in the case of this paper, I call this state of mind interethical competence. The latter is a precondition for being perceived by third-party beholders as ethically neutral, i.e. in the broad sense of the latter.
Among other things, interethical competence consequently recognizes the possibility of equivalence as well as non-equivalence between co-existing ethical standpoints. It is not the task of an interethical conciliator to necessarily – explicitly or implicitly – ensure that parity is observed in an interethical conflict-resolution process or to steer it in the direction of a consensus between parties as if they necessarily possess equal rights; on the other hand, parity may already pertain and thus be appropriately upheld though the contributions of an interethical conciliator in situations where all of the conflicting parties share the premise of equal rights in relation to their respective ethical standpoints.

In recognising the premises which lie beneath Western understandings of neutrality, one can begin to access a level of intercultural and interethical competence which takes no implicit, a priori stand on premises like parity, fairness or even responsibility – or on any others for that matter.

The fact that I have proposed that the element of being perceived to be ethically neutral can under certain cultural and situational circumstances be crucial to the concept of interethical competence indicates that, in my use of the term in this paper so far, ethical neutrality is essentially a perception on the part of the beholder(s). Accordingly, if a person is not perceived to be ethically neutral, then he/she de facto is not. One of the many challenges for people who possess many of the inner prerequisites for interethical competence is that some of the beholders of their contributions may not be sensitised or inclined in such a way that allows them to actually perceive ethical neutrality when confronted with it – or even to conceive of ethical neutrality as being appropriate. I will return to this rather central issue in the sections below.

4.2 To what extent can a person exercise and ethical neutrality in relation to his/her own ethical standpoint(s)?

This question relocates the position of the beholder from that of an external third-party to that of the same person as the one who holds one or more specific ethical standpoints. In order to exercise ethical neutrality in relation to his/her own ethical tenets, this person would need to be both willing and able to sense and question the situational and/or contextual appropriateness of the various ethical tenets. I propose that this process of sensing and questioning could take place consciously and/or subconsciously; in other words, it need not necessarily be a conscious process – see Robinson, ‘The Value of Neutrality’ (op. cit). In order to enter into a state of ethical neutrality, the person concerned would need to be able to distance him/herself from any and all inner ethical standpoints, as the case may require. In other words, this person would need:

1. to be able not only to sense ethical dissonance in the outside world, but also to sense it between their own inside world and the outside world (and, in the case of multi-ethicality, to sense it within their own inside world) and
2. to be willing and able to relinquish personal adherence to any and all internalised ethical standpoints.

If the process of socialisation conditions people to internalising, and acting according to, an ethical standpoint which they then share with others in the same social/cultural/ethical community, then interethical competence on the part of genuinely socialised people must include the ability to neutralise ethical standpoints which they have internalised and which they can authentically assert in a given situation.

In other words, interethical competence must include the ability to

1. exercise interethical competence towards oneself and
2. perceive and experience oneself as being neutral towards the ethical standpoints which one can and does otherwise authentically assert.

The faculty of multi-ethical competence might appear similar in the sense that it allows a person to genuinely adopt and authentically assert differing ethical standpoints; however, it differs quite crucially from interethical competence in that the latter pre-requires one to perceive and experience oneself as being ethically neutral, whereas multi-ethical competence does not.

4.3 The crucial distinction between perceptions and perceiving

One of the elements which are central to ethical neutrality is the ability to sense or perceive. So far in this paper, I have defined ethical neutrality essentially as a perception on the part of the beholder – in analogous fashion to my earlier treatment of cultural neutrality (see Robinson, ‘The Value of Neutrality’ op. cit.). At this point, I am compelled to elucidate and modify my use of the term perception, not least because of the fact that I have been using the term as a noun.

In general, nouns are used to refer to identifiable items which exist in some ‘objective’ sense – cf. ‘signifiers,’ de Saussure ‘Cours de Linguistique Générale’. ⁸ Perceptions, however, crucially involve not objective, but subjective experience – which is why it is notoriously so difficult for human beings to veritably share each other’s perceptions.

In general usage, perceptions seem for the vast majority of people to be inextricably linked with concomitant judgements and/or opinions. Opinions arise as a result of integrating sensory information into a backcloth of individual and cultural values and ethics. This process allows people to arrive at what I would like to term their views or their evaluated perceptions. Views are objectivisable and thus can be talked about. Hence, the use of the word perception, in being a noun, captures quite appropriately what often takes place when people perceive and when they talk about what they have perceived.

The inner mental process of cultural and ethical neutrality, on the other hand, involves the faculty or predisposition of:

1. being open to perceiving beyond one’s own frame of reference and
2. not needing to evaluate sensory information in relation to some pre-determined value-system.

As mentioned above, it also entails:

3. the ability to sense ethical dissonance in the outside world, between the inside world and the outside world and also within the inside world and
4. the willingness and ability to relinquish personal adherence to any and all internalised ethical standpoints.

In contrast to the use of the word perception as a noun, the word perceiving suggests an on-going process. In grammatical terms, perceiving is a gerund and, as such, adopts a status somewhere in-between a noun and a verb. The word perceiving is arguably a more appropriate term for the process which lies at the core of inner ethical neutrality and interethical competence. The gerund implies a non-terminated, i.e. an open and on-going processing of sensory information.

The distinction between the noun perception as an objectivisable view and perceiving as subjective and open-ended, non-evaluative, non-judgemental processing of sensory information sheds explanatory light on the frequently articulated opinion that there is “no such thing as neutrality”. Based on the premise that the quality of inner neutralness can per definitionem not be objectivised or judged, the statement that there is no such thing as neutrality is validated.

For people in the process of developing their intercultural and interethical competence, it may in fact be a helpful first step to realise that neutrality isn’t. A further helpful insight may be to realise that the roots of the use and understanding of concepts like neutrality and empathy are steeped in Western culture and history. Through recognizing the cultural roots of the use of concepts like neutrality and empathy, one can

1. develop a significantly broader cultural understanding of them and
2. become aware that, for some ethical communities and situations, such concepts are not appropriate.

4.4 Experiencing ethical neutrality as a third-party beholder

Whilst the inner mental prerequisites which are conducive for being perceived as ethically neutral may be challenging to develop, third-party beholders are indeed able to experience another person as being neutral, or non-neutral, in a given situation.

Beholders who have been conditioned by democratic values, for example, are generally able to detect if another person, e.g. a mediator, is genuinely impartial in relation to issues or people in a certain context, or if that mediator is interacting in a biased way. Whilst the sense for – and the sensitivity to – impartiality is a natural product of those societies which embrace inter-human parity, it is important to realise that impartiality is only one form of being (perceived as) neutral. The cultural roots of the Western mediator who works on the principle of impartiality will be readily noticed by people from divergent cultures, if he/she applies this principle for example in a conflict situation. In such situations, the mediator will not be perceived as being culturally neutral by at least one of the conflict parties.

In other words, cultural and other forms of conditioning bear a very strong, if not a determining influence on how people perceive, define and place value on neutrality – and if they place any relevance or value on it at all. It is for this reason that I have been arguing that neutrality is a beholder’s perception or perceiving.

Assuming that the application of inner ethical neutrality, as the term is being defined here, is indeed appropriate for at least some ethical communities, the latter would require of an interethical conciliator that he/she can

1. sense the presence and appropriateness of differing premises and the values attached to them and
2. be observed to act accordingly and thus to act appropriately.

A person’s inner ethical neutrality or non-neutrality can reveal itself to third-party beholders not only in the premises contained within that person’s verbal acts, but also in the fluctuations in his/her facial expressions, general body language and energetic presence. Even if the words which a person uses in a given situation might be interpretable as being ethically neutral, the concomitant body language, eye language and facial expressions will reveal to what extent that person’s inner mental and emotional state is consonant or dissonant with the words which he/she is using.

If a person were to apply ethical neutrality in non-appropriate situations, or indeed permanently, this too would be very quickly picked up by third-party beholders. Most human beings have to socialise at certain points in their daily lives and, in so doing, align their behaviour and opinions in various ways with those of others. The permanent or inappropriate application of inner ethical neutrality can be socially unsettling. People do not always want to hear that there are multiple ways of look at a situation, i.e. from differing ethical standpoints.

4.5 Ethical empathy

I will now outline my current understanding of the term ethical empathy and how it relates to interethical competence.

In Chapter 3, I proposed that interethical competence entails an open-minded process of non-evaluative, non-judgemental perceiving. Ethical empathy allows one to access any given ethical standpoint with relative ease and consequently to absorb it into one’s mind relatively fast. Feeling one’s way into any ethical standpoint through ethical empathy avoids grappling with the mental and emotional processes of evaluation or comparison. In fact, there needs to be no distinction between ethical empathy and other forms of empathy if the term empathy is understood to entail feeling one’s way non-self-referentially and non-judgementally into the idiosyncrasies of other people’s mental and emotional states.

By internalising the premise that it is not possible to think or feel in an identical way to other people and that – as an interethical conciliator – it is prudent not to make assumptions, expectations or judgements about others, one can get much closer to the uniqueness of other people’s inner worlds than otherwise – very simply because there are fewer self-created mental or emotional barriers to overcome. Even the question: “Do I want to get close to this person’s inner world?” does not raise itself in such an understanding of empathy. Nor do empathy-destroying thought-processes like the following arise: “I know exactly how this person feels. I have been there before myself.”

In terms of self-development, the greater the number of human idiosyncrasies which one has been able to access through interethical competence, the greater one’s chances will be of being perceived as authentically ethically neutral.

Such an understanding of ethical empathy differs, of course, from ethical sympathy and ethical antipathy in that the latter both entail value judgements, whilst ethical empathy does not. Nor does ethical empathy mean that one endorses, condones, is interested in or is fascinated by any ethical standpoint; instead it entails accepting the existence of ethical standpoints as a fact of human life, but this form of acceptance does not incur a personal agreement or involvement with them.

It follows that ethical empathy is a concomitant of inner ethical neutrality and therefore of interethical competence.

At this juncture, I would like to stress that ethical empathy, ethical neutrality and interethical competence emanate from a state of mind which is able to accommodate among other things:

1. relational asymmetry as well as parity, whether in terms of gender, of generation, or positional standing;
2. a structured, anticipatory-preventive way of ordering the world as well as a present or a past-time orientation;
3. individualistic as well as collectivistic premises;
4. the values of achieving and progressing as well as the values of being at one with nature and the world as it is;
5. dualistic-atomistic as well as holistic premises;
6. universalistic as well as particularistic premises – see Hampden-Turner, ‘Corporate Culture’. ⁹

4.6 Creating and experiencing ethical space

As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, interethical competence can create an environment of ethical space, where people have the opportunity to

1. reflect on and develop their respective ethical standpoints and/or
2. explore possible solutions to their ethical dilemmas and conflicts.

Not seldom, the resolution of cultural and ethical conflicts mostly involves what I in previous articles have called identity management – see Robinson, ‘The Value of Neutrality’ (op. cit) and also Faure & Rubin, ‘Culture and Negotiation’. ¹⁰

The fact that one’s cultural and ethical values constitute a core element of one’s personal and collective identity means that ethical conflicts are often impossible to resolve unless cultural or ethical development takes place among the parties involved. Such development can be facilitated through providing the parties with ethical space for reflection.

Not only in the case of individuals, but also in the case of groups and organisations, it can also be helpful to allow an ethical profile to be drawn up and discussed. People tend to be more open to such a possibility if they know that the creation of their ethical profile will take place in a non-judgemental, ethically neutral environment. If this opportunity is taken by all the conflict-parties prior to the resolution process, the latter can be significantly shortened and also take place at a far more fundamental level, which in turn will impact on the sustainability of the attained solution.

As I have stated in other articles, there are very few conflicts which from my perspective do not have cultural or ethical dimensions, since it is values which lie at the source of most inter-human conflicts and which hinder their resolution. It follows that nearly all conflict resolution processes can benefit from being conducted in an environment where – with or without the help of interethically competent conciliators – the appropriate levels of ethical space are created for individual reflection and collective development.

5. Examples of the ethical challenges faced by people in positions of key responsibility and of the application of interethical competence in such situations.

In our treatment of the following examples, we first outline the case itself. Then we identify and discuss the pertaining conflicting ethical standpoints. Finally we examine the role of interethical competence and the possibility of providing ethical space in order to facilitate ethical development and conciliation.

The information given in the anonymised case descriptions is necessarily detailed in order to capture the major facets of the different ethical conflicts as adequately as possible. It goes without saying that ethical conflicts are complex phenomena and that the faculty of interethical competence includes the ability to handle complexity not only at the content and the relational level, but also at the level of the underlying premises.

As an overriding remark, the reader should be cognizant of the fact that the descriptions and discussions are necessarily formulated in such a way as to make them as comprehensible as possible, particularly for Western mindsets. Also, we, the authors, are compelled by the written medium and by describing the various situations to use perceptions and views as opposed to perceiving. It follows that the formulations cannot adequately represent the thought processes of many of the parties involved and thus fail to capture the totality of the issues at-stake.

In an attempt to reduce the volume of information and the complexity, each of the case-descriptions focuses on the dilemmas facing one particular party and on how these are resolved. Further, the information has had to be reduced and simplified for reasons of sheer volume and readability. In the first and the third case descriptions, in particular, the names and the locations been anonymised; also certain contents have been deliberately changed in order to protect the identity of those involved.

In Case No. 1, we look at a manager who initially finds it easier to deal with the ethical dilemmas at his workplace than to address the ethical dilemmas in his private life. As the mental and emotional pressures increase, he seeks third-party help. The ethical space which he then receives allows him

1. to recognize and address the full spectrum of his dilemmas,
2. to develop his interethical competence and
3. to find – in his own mind – long-term solutions with which he can identify himself.

The case will also show that various factors lie outside the manager’s personal influence and that he cannot control all later developments.

In Case No. 2, we examine ethical differences in the handling of the deportation of renitent migrants from Switzerland. In particular, we discuss how the Swiss Red Cross found itself in various ethical dilemmas after it was asked if it would adopt a monitoring role during the physical deportation process.

This case highlights the differences between cultural, ethical and other forms of neutrality and delineates the potential of ethical neutrality and ethical space.

Case No. 1: Challenging Decisions