Padgett and Self-Fragmentation

In looking again at the first paragraph of the last post, I realize I have galloped through Padgett without really unpacking what's going on in his book.  Padgett's main concern is the apparent lack of moral integrity among professionals.  To explain this lack, he identifies a gap between our personal sense of morality - our understanding of right and wrong that we were brought up with - and the demands made upon us by our professional life.  Quite often we are asked to do things in our work that we would immediately recognize as wrong if we were not at work and the usual pressures of work - performance, salary, promotion, peer pressure - were not in play.  The tension this creates within us Padgett calls "self-fragmentation."  We are divided within ourselves by the demands of our conscience versus the demands of our profession - and it is usually the demands of the profession that win out. 

But Padgett also notes that the tendency of Western society to focus on the various roles people play is also fragmenting.  We end up with different moralities for all the different roles we play: parent, child, professor, student, business professional, parishioner, tax payer.  So we end up acting according to what is "allowed" in one sector of our lives - which may be entirely at odds with the rules of the game in another sector.  We may think it's OK to cheat a little at our taxes but we would never do so in our church offering. 

This puts us in a "role morality" where our main concern becomes following the rules.  As long as we follow the rules, we're OK; we can't be blamed.  If something is legal - then surely it is moral.  And if something legal is immoral - well, then, fix the law.  This is what Padgett means by "compliance" and game-playing.  Compliance usually sounds to us like something good.  Surely what we want is for business to be compliant with regulations.  But the danger of "mere compliance" is that business and other professionals will use a checklist of rules complied with (There! I've played their little game and followed their petty rules!) rather than using their reason and intuition to decide for themselves what is morally appropriate and not in any given situation - as well as being compliant!

So what to do?  How can we form business and other professionals to be truly moral and not just rule-followers? 

Barry Padgett and the Moral Professional

The thesis I've been working on in these blogs has been how contemplative prayer nurtures moral integrity.  I started by considering Augustine's understanding of how the lover is changed as she or he gazes upon the beloved.  Now I'd like to consider some of the ideas in Barry Padgett's Professional Morality and Guilty Bystanding: Merton's Conjectures and the Value of Work.  Padgett draws on Merton to critique standard understandings of professional morality as "compliance," showing how compliance can be inauthentic game playing rather than true morality.  He uses Merton's categories of the false self and the true self to talk about the need for professionals to move through contemplation from the one to the other to be authentically moral.

Padgett sees the primary problem of professional morality (or lack thereof) as the conflict between our sense of personal morality and the demands made upon us by our professions.  This results in what he calls "a fragmentation of self."  On the one hand, we know intuitively what is right because we learned it at a very early age.  On the other hand, there may be duties we have as professionals that ask us to do things that - if we reflected for a moment - we would recognize as morally questionable if not outright wrong.  The antidote to this fragmentation is to find a unity of self in union with others.  Simple enough - but how to do this?  I'll look at unity of self in union with others in the next post.

Barry Padgett on "Blind Spots and Guilty Bystanding"

Well, I'm back - after 4 months of teaching two great courses and wonderful students.  The highlight of the semester was the annual "Lead from the Heart" professional ethics lecture sponsored by the Center for Organizational Ethics at Marian University.   Dr. Barry Padgett, James M. Medlin Chair of Business Ethics at Belmont University and author of Professional Morality and Guilty Bystanding: Merton's Conjectures and the Value of Work spoke on "Blind Spots and Guilty Bystanding: What College Sports and Corporate Ethics Have in Common."  Dr. Padgett also visited my two classes: Business Ethics and Personal and Professional Ethics.  It was a treat for the students to get to "talk back" to the author of a book they were reading.  To view a podcast of Dr. Padgett's lecture, click here and after iTunes downloads click on "Center for Orga. . . ."