A recent post received a lot of responses. It was a thought experiment where a lower rate of return could be chosen to prioritise looking after people or a higher return that cost 1000 people their jobs. I speculated that the most common decision was the higher return regardless of the adverse impact to a lot of unknown people.
As it struck a chord with lots of people, it made me wonder where you see decisions made that seem in favour of profit above other values?
Perhaps where a politically expedient option is chosen in order that influential people be happy, or not be upset.
Perhaps where the cost-effective choice is made instead of the “right” one to save money.
Perhaps where a short-term move of limited impact is adopted in order to demonstrate progress rather than a far more meaningful longer-term option that will look like not much is happening for a while. I know this makes people nervous because higher-ups seem to need to see continual progress and growth to believe that anything worthwhile is being done.
What examples do you know from your own experience? Feel free to anonymise them as you share, it is not my intention to cause waves, just to see whether this is only my experience.
To share from my own experience, I’m currently having a complaint run through my pension administrator over how my pension has been managed. I was wondering whether if I wrote an article for a newspaper I could persuade them to do the right thing. Then I imagined they would want me to sign an NDA and not publish the article. What would I do?
The right thing is to expose how poorly they have managed my account. I suspect they have done similar things to other people too, so it seems for the good of others to go public, but then they might delay sorting my issue out or even brand me a troublemaker and withhold settlement. Which would cost me personally. But the right thing is to support many people, not just me.
This seems to be at the core of these sorts of decisions: do I do what most benefits me, or do I do what is right?
They are often not the same thing.
I’m curious as to your own experience or views on this.
You can read the previous post here.
