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Speech

Governing Speech

Hardly a day goes by without some story of a person facing consequences for what they said.  The stories that make the front pages are typically the ones that tap into partisan politics, creating a flurry of controversy that obscures a simple fact:  we hold people accountable for their speech all the time.  In most settings, from the board room to the classroom to the dining room, not governing speech would be far more remarkable than governing it.  In this post, I’ll use moral accounting to explain why and how.

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Diversity Equity Inclusion Psychology Speech

Why I Rarely Use Images

The DuckRabbit War
Images are Powerful & Unruly

It’s become pretty standard for blogs to start every post with a picture at the top.  I’ve decided to do that only rarely on this site (this post being my first exception).  The reason is quite simple–good images are typically too powerful and unruly for productive discussions of moral accounting.

Last week HBS Professor Mihir Desai led a workshop on his challenges teaching a case he has written, The Tulsa Massacre and the Call for Reparations.  It starts like this:

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Moral Accounting Engagements

Accountability Networks Point Up as Well as Down

Dear Editor,

Thank you for submitting your rejection editorial decision for our consideration. I asked my two co-authors (who are experts in the area) to review the reviewers’ comments, and I also gave them an independent read.

Unfortunately, my co-authors find several fatal flaws with the reviewers’ comments, and I’m afraid that I agree with their assessments. As a result, I regret to inform you that I cannot accept your editorial decision in its current form.

I can, however, envision a path forward that would make your editorial decision more acceptable, and so I invite you to revise and resubmit your editorial decision.

Thank you again for submitting your editorial decision for our consideration. I look forward to receiving your revision. Good luck in your future rejection efforts.

Corresponding Author

Dave Piercey shared this letter at his recent Cornell workshop.  Tongue-in-cheek, naturally, and kind of specific to academia journals.  But it’s not hard to imagine similar satires–students grading teachers, players berating coaches, citizens indicting prosecutors, and….but hold on. 

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Case Studies Moral Accounting Engagements

College Admissions as an Accountability System

In this post, which uses a highly critical take on college admissions as a case study in moral accounting, I ask:

  • Is college admissions an accountability system?  Why or why not?

Let me start with an emphatic YES, and explain a few more subtle points, all expanding on my monograph.

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Case Studies Moral Accounting Engagements

College Admissions Case Study

 

I read a fascinating article by Matt Feeney in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Abiding Scandal of College Admissions.  It’s paywalled, so I’ll quote some key snippets, which are enough for a simple case study.  Here are some questions to think about as you read:

  • Is college admissions an accountability system?  Why or why not?
  • Do the holistic and Coalition portfolio admissions processes fall short of any of the principles in the MAP?  Which ones, how and why?
  • Which is better from a MAP perspective:  to select randomly from the pool of qualified students, or to “launch an inquisition of their applicants’ souls”? Why or why not?
  • What changes would help these admissions processes live up to the MAP more completely?
  • What gaps or other weaknesses of moral accounting itself are revealed by this analysis?
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Moral Accounting Engagements Moral Philosophy What is Accounting

Introduction to the MAP

Central to moral accounting is a set of Moral Accountability Principles, which I call the MAP.  The MAP spells out seven rules for holding people accountable in a moral way.  You can read about them in detail here, but that’s for an audience of accountants.  If you are new to moral accounting, especially if you are a philosopher, you should probably start here first, but here’s the MAP in plain English:

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Cross-Cultural Diversity Equity Inclusion Moral Philosophy

Moral Accounting, The Prime Directive & The Borg

Star Trek and moral accounting have a natural affinity, because both are so aspirational.  Star Trek’s Federation expresses all sort of aspirations, from lauding knowledge and wisdom to eradicating poverty and war, but the Prime Directive overrides all of them–non-interference with outside cultures.  This makes the Borg Collective the perfect Star Trek villain, because their entire purpose to to assimilate all cultures into its own.

Moral accounting has its own version of the Prime Directive:  accountants are not permitted to impose their own morality on a society.  Instead, they must accept that society’s definition of morality, and then evaluate whether people are being held morally accountable in a moral way according to that definition.

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Cross-Cultural Research Opportunities

Is the MAP Falsifiable?

I’ve been working with Tamara Lambert and Marietta Peytcheva to kick off a cross-cultural study.  For data, we’re using Yale’s  Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), which has collected anthropological writings about a variety of human cultures. Our question:  Do cultures around the world, from the Artic to Africa to Micronesia, follow the 7 Moral Accountability Principles (The MAP)?

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Diversity Equity Inclusion Moral Philosophy

When is it appropriate to hold two people accountable differently because they are members of different groups?

[Note:  This post is targeted largely at moral philosophers and those interested in issues of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).  If you are new to moral accounting, take a look at this post first.]

When is it moral for a group of people, like “Apple, Inc.” to be held accountable for the group’s performance? When can one person be held accountable for the behavior of a group.  Can we hold Apple’s CEO accountable for what the company does?  What about the janitor working at an Apple store?  What about a group like “Everyone who owns an iPhone”? Can we hold one iPhone owner accountable for what another did?

When is it appropriate to hold two people accountable differently because they are members of different groups?  Here, instead of the feature “owns an iPhone”, let’s define the groups by something more personal–race, ethnicity, religion, sex, height, age, and so on.

Moral accounting offers a way of answering these questions, but as I’ll show in this post, the answers don’t sweep away all forms of discrimination–primarily because it requires accountants to defer to society on crucial matters, like who has which assets and obligations. 

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Moral Philosophy

Intro to Moral Accounting for Philosophers

Philosophers, especially moral philosophers, play a crucial role in moral accounting, so I’m hoping to find some who are willing to comment or collaborate.  In this post, I lay out what philosophers need to know about moral accounting (not too much!), as background for this and other posts that lay out specific questions and challenges.  Most of my points summarize or elaborate on my draft monograph,  The MAP:  Moral Accounting Principles for Moral Accounting Engagements.

So you know where we are headed, here is my first question for moral philosophers:

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