The Strange Ethics of the Organization Man

Extract

The moral sensibilities of Americans have received many shocks in recent years on disclosures of misbehaviour in the worlds of entertainment, labour, and government. The discovery that ethical practices were no better in some of the most highly regarded of the large corporations gave public opinion a far heavier jolt. In February 1961 Judge Ganey, in the Federal court at Philadelphia, pronounced sentence on the leading corporations in the electrical manufacturing industry and their executives found guilty of violating the antitrust laws. He imposed fines totalling $1,924,500 and handed down seven jail sentences and twenty-four suspended jail sentences. Never before had so many highly placed business executives been marched off to jail. By the usual standards they were good men, most of them family men, pillars of church and community, who had won success by years of hard work. Among those who went to jail was George Burens, father of a family of four children, whose career to this point had been another Horatio Alger story. He had risen to a vice presidency in the General Electric Company with annual compensation of $127,000 from his first position with the company at age fifteen as a stockroom boy paid 33 cents an hour.

Corporate failure, though less dramatic than individual failure, was perhaps more unexpected. Just a few months before the grand jury began its investigations, the chairman of the board of General Electric had testified before the Kefauver subcommittee that his company was pursuing a vigorous policy of compliance with the laws and quoted a distinguished jurist who ranked General Electric as the No.