Whether it was the comments made by David Falk, Spygate, steroids in baseball or the hubub surrounding OJ Mayo - the topic of unethical behavior in sports has come to dominate sports media.
The news barrage surrounding Mayo began with the Kelly Naqi feature on ESPN and has been the subject of an unending stream of reports, opinion and judgement. As denials and "new information" continue to come out, now's as good a time as any to give my thoughts. Rather than pile on to the thoroughly researched reports (including the oracle Gregg Doyle), well thought out commentary of Marc Isenberg of Money Players, Henry Abbot of TrueHoop, Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! and a timely update from the NBPA agent seminar by Jonathan Givony of Draft Express - I finally get to finally talk about an interesting working paper that I came across earlier in the year.
See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People's Unethical Behavior ,by Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore and Max H Bazerman, explores the circumstances in which people "see no evil in others' unethical behavior". Seems like an appropriate topic for discussion considering the current coverage of the world of sports.
The working paper specifically explores the tendency to: 1) overlook unethical behavior when we recognize the behavior would harm us, 2) ignore all but clear, immediate and direct unethical behavior; 3) ignore unethical behavior when ethicality erodes slowly over time, and 4) assess unethical behaviors only after the unethical behavior has resulted in a bad outcome, but not during the decision process. If you have any interest in this area, the paper is a fairly quick read and I would recommend it. I've pulled a couple of quotes that I though were relevant to the current discussions and comment briefly:
"When does it become easier for us to overlook others' unethical behavior? When that behavior serves our own interests."
This isn't quite a revelation and is a typical response to how MLB, union leaders and others dealt with the the steroid issue, a topic discussed in the paper. Not content with a single sports reference, the authors also reference the Spygate, specifically in reference to how the situation was handled by the Kraft family.
The authors also highlight why it even matters that people condone others' unethical behavior by pointing out that had the leaders and employees of Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen and others taken note of the unethical behavior rather than overlooking it the related scandals may not have occurred.
"Cases such as these [Enron, etc] shed light on an an important weakness of the current auditing system in the United States: it allows motivated blindness to thrive."
Hmmm. What if we replaced "auditing system" in the quote above with "college recruiting process", "sports agent recruiting process", "illegal performance enhancing drug detection system"...you get it. If the industry leaders, employees, athletes and others took notice - might some of these scandals not have been scandals. There will likely always be some cheaters, but might better enforcement go a long way to improving the systems. This is where the finger pointing usually starts - blaming the league, union, players, media, etc - but I'm actually suggesting a bit of self regulation at the lowest of levels - as individuals.
"[T]he public and press fail to condemn people and firms that use an intermediary to do their dirty work."
The authors point out that unethical behavior is routinely delegated to others. Hmmm. Sounds a bit like runners, boosters, and others doesn't it? Usually the intermediary is the one who gets most of the attention whether by design or not.
"People too often judge the ethicality of actions based on whether harm follows, rather than of the ethicality of the choice itself."
The paper gets into some fairly interesting studies on how people judge the ethicality of others based on the outcome. In the sports world this is common - no harm, no foul.
"Too often, we let problematic decisions slide before they produce bad outcomes, even if bad outcomes are completely predictable."
The authors indicate that it is important to recognize that"even good people sometimes will act unethically without their own awareness." However recognizing this the authors conclude See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People's Unethical Behavior with their belief that executives "should be held responsible for the harms that their organizations predictably create, with or without intentionality or awareness."
And there's the rub - despite a seemingly universal acceptance/acknowledgement that 1) there is a problem and 2) something must be done about it, there isn't a lot of agreement on what to do to fix things. That is where more attention needs to be paid - what is the solution, where should/can it start and who will lead the charge?
1 comments:
For some time now I have been working with elite athletes and their coaches on mind management and performance psychology. The more I delve into their world the more I see the systemic growth of poor sportsman-like behaviour as being an accepted part of their Professional sporting and social lives.
Not only is it something that appears to be on the increase, it is becoming more and more accepted by the clubs that employ them, their coaches and unfortunately their fans. Whether we do it overtly or covertly it doesn’t really matter we are allowing it to become an in-ground part of the sport by not speaking out against it.
I recently worked with a sprinter, now it isn’t the first sport that springs to mind when you discuss poor social behaviour but I was alarmed at the apparent encouragement by his coach and agent to verbally abuse a fan, this was under the guise of good ‘publicity’ and what the fans expect.
The young fan was mortified by his idols behaviour and subsequently walked away crushed. Who knows what long term impact that will have on that child and the countless others who have been subjected to the same behaviour?
When I spoke to the sprinters agent he informed me the athlete had a ‘bad boy’ reputation and it was good for increasing his appearance fees when he misbehaved in public.
I later spoke to the athlete himself, it was clear to me he could see nothing wrong in the way he had conducted himself and began to laugh as he relayed an encounter that week that had earned him an extra AUD$500.00 because it attracted the TV cameras. A commission incentive that is built into his contract.
Where do we as these athletes targeted customers draw the line? Do we actively or passively encourage their behaviour, do we fuel their antics as a means to our own reality sport TV?
If this behaviour only affected the athlete then maybe I could say ‘more fool them’ but it clearly affects the fans, the image of the sport and our social attraction to healthy involvement in sport. Who wants to put their children into a sport if they know they will be subjected to and expected to misbehave in order to become more financially marketable.
We have all seen images on the TV of the Australian NRL players fighting on the pitch and the Ice-hockey teams punching their way around the ice and the commentators encouraging their behaviour. Sure as an adult I can make sense of their behaviour and I know the social repercussions of acting out the same behaviour but do our children? What part of their development enables them to say ‘No that isn’t acceptable behaviour’ when they see it plastered all over the TV, news papers and our parents and role-models actively encouraging it.
There has to be some accountability to their behaviour over and above a slap on the wrist and possible financial penalty. Because lets face it they may lose one games money but pocket 3 x as much in publicity and marketing! Where is the incentive there?
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