Editorial

Editorial

Navigating the way

Over the summer, I found the time to read two classics texts from the beginning of Western literature: Homer’s Odyssey and Aristotle’s Ethics. In part, both are concerned with how we treat other people.

In the Odyssey, for example, a key theme is how to treat guests and strangers. At one extreme, the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus wants to eat the homesick hero Odysseus – not the best of welcomes. At the other, the goddess-nymph Calypso intends to keep Odysseus for her own pleasure for the rest of eternity by making him immortal. All the while, suitors are eating Odysseus’ wife Penelope out of house and home because she refuses to marry one of them.

As Odysseus is buffeted from one trial to another, the book seeks to discuss the right balance between being rude and being open and hospitable – but because circumstances and local customs vary so much, there can be no definitive answer.

In a more analytic vein, Aristotle reaches a similar conclusion. He discusses the various personal attributes a good person ought to display – courage, generosity and so on. For example, too much courage ends up turning into rashness; not enough, into cowardice. He likens finding the middle way to attempting to locate the exact centre of a circle without proper measuring tools – in ethics such technologies do not exist.

It is better to aim at developing diversity goals and navigate the difficulties rather than wallow in a metaphorical cave

These problems have not gone away, despite attempts to put the analysis of behaviour and culture on a more scientific footing. People are complex – the interactions between them unpredictable.

Sometimes, in risk management, doing the right thing can mean acting without sufficient empirical evidence to support your views. Sarah Christman in this issue – “Everybody gets to play” – argues that while studies are thin on the ground which support the view that diversity in organisations enhances performance, this should not be a cause of inaction.

It is better to aim at developing diversity goals and navigate the difficulties rather than wallow in a metaphorical cave. Only by achieving the indirect, ethical goal of treating people fairly will organisations have the opportunity to learn the value of diversity.

Aristotle would have perhaps been happy with this approach. For him, being ethical was something you could only become good at by practice and habit. It involves trial and error, but most of all continuous effort – wishing for the best, deliberating how to achieve those ends, then voluntarily choosing those actions most likely to succeed.

Arthur Piper Editor