Golden Rule to Solve Conflict Situations

Golden Rule to Solve Conflict Situations

Golden Rule 1: Choose the lesser evil

Of two necessary evils, choose the leaser one. That seems obvious enough except for the fact that it is not always easy to decide which of the two or more evils concerned is the “lesser” one. Sometimes it is fairly easy to make you choice.

 For instance you are a pilot and, for some reason or the other plane is going to crash very soon. You have just two choices to crash the plane into either a maternity hospital or an old age home. For most of us, it would be clear enough: crash into the old age home.

In the maternity hospital, however, there would be scores of babies who deserve to be given a chance to live and know the world: or again, if my brakes don’t work and may car is hurtling down a narrow on my right (no other choice!), obviously I should turn left because, that way, I’d kill one less person. However, let us not forget than in such moments of confusion and split-second decisions making one can hardly be expected to function reasonably and weigh up all the consequences. One could hardly hold it against the poor pilot (or driver) if, in his confusion he turned the wrong way!

Golden Rule 2: Choose the Greater Good

This is the obvious principles to invoke when choosing between two goods. Most of the time, however, it is not clear what is the greater good. In that case, one could employ St Augustine’s practical dictum to this regard, ama et fac quod vis: love and do what you like or, to put it more clearly, choose either, but do it from a perspective of love.

In his Existentialism and Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre gives us an interesting case, where a young lad, early in World War II, when France was about to fall to the advancing Nazi hordes, had to make a difficult decision: should he signs up to fight off the invaders or stay at home to take care of his invalid mother? Applying the principle given above, the choice is the boy’s. No ne can tell him objectively what the greater good is. Let he decide for himself.

Golden Rule 3: The Double Effect

This concerns the controversial – and conflict – situation where one and the same act produces two effects, one good and the other evil. Under what conditions it would be morally justified to allow such an act?

Authors generally list four such conditions. They are as follows, accord to the scholastic Celestine Bittle, in his Man and Morals, Milwaukee, The Bruce Publishing Company, 1950 (pp.44-46). First, “the action directly intended must be good in itself or at least morally indifferent.” The reason for this is that morality is a matter of intention. If Mr X do wrong unintentionally (e.g. injure someone in a game of football), he cannot be held to blame for it – unless, of course, he acted recklessly, in which case my fault would be reckless behavior, not having injured someone. Morality is not a mere matter of externals. Even a good action may be rendered less worthy if it is done for a unworthy motive: for instance, a person makes a big donation to the poor, not because he cares for them, but because he wants to win votes.

Secondly, “the good effect must follow from the action at least as immediately as the evil effect; or the evil effect may follow from the good effect.” However, “it is never morally right for the good effect to be produced through the evil effect.” This follows from the above. Remember, good or evil is primarily in the intention.

 We must always intend directly what is good or indifferent; if we intend what is evil directly, we are doing something evil. This would involve claiming that the end justifies the means.

The above-presented figures should make it clear why Case (I) and Case (II) are permissible and Case (III) is not: it is the only one where evil is directly intended. In this last case, moral evil makes an entry into the intention of the agent. 

Thirdly, the foreseen evil may not be intended or approved, but merely ‘permitted’ to occur.” The reason for this is obvious enough and also follows from the first condition. In Bittle’s words, “If the evil effect were intended or, when it occurred, approved, then the will itself thereby would become evil in its inclination, and the action would be morally wrong.”

Finally, “there must be proportionate and sufficient reason for permitting the evil effect to occur while performing the good action.” Obviously, one could hardly justify an action which produced a minor good effect and a proportionately high bad effect

Vishnu's case would  belong to the Case (III) if he allows the students to continue the photocopy as the immediate evil effect would be violation of copy rights. Thus in no way he should allow the students to go for the photocopy.

Casestudy2/2015

Ravi is a committed doctor and works in a local government mental hospital. He is very well aware of the fact that the doctors should not disclose the secret information of their patients to anyone. Disclosing the information and ailment history of patient without her/his permission is against the professional ethics of any doctor.

One day a women visit him for the check up. After regular check up Ravi came to the conclusion that she suffers from traumatic mugging which require her adjustment in the medication she is prescribed to control anxiety and mood swings. In certain severe conditions she can even harm others physically and mentally.  In the worst situation she can be a threat to the lives of others as well. On further inquiry she told that she works is the nearby school. Ravi was surprised to know that she is a teacher in the same school where his 8 year old daughter is enrolled.

After she leaves, Ravi immediately calls her daughter and asks the names of teachers that are teaching her. He gets disturb to know that lady that came for the check up is the class teacher of his daughter.

Ravi’s daughter seems very happy in her school and he cannot violate patient confidentiality by informing the school of a teacher’s mental illness but he is not comfortable with a potentially unstable person in a position of influence and supervision over his eight year old daughter and other students.

What should Ravi do?

case studies 1/2015

In a meeting, an employee makes a derogatory or harassing comment about another employee. You are his manager. You know him that he is humorous person. But the comment made by him was not to be taken as casual.
What would you do? Would you take any immediate step in the meeting itself or would you discuss it later on? What would be impact of your decision in each case?

ethics sample paper of upsc

PAPER V - ETHICS, INTEGRITY AND APTITUDE
Candidates may please note that the sample questions
below are indicative but not exhaustive. The range and
depth of questions that would be asked may differ.


SAMPLE QUESTION NO. 1
What do you understand by ‘ Ethical Human Conduct’? In what way is
it important to be ethical along with being professionally competent?

SAMPLE QUESTION NO. 2
What do you understand by the following terms ? Point out their
specific relevance in public service;
(i) Intellectual integrity
(ii) Empathy
(iii) Perseverance
(iv) Spirit of service
(v) Commitment
Indicate two more attributes which you consider very important for
public servants. Justify your answer.
SAMPLE QUESTION NO. 3
Which great Indian personality has inspired you the most as a role
model and how have you been able to benefit in your own life
by such an inspiration ?
SAMPLE QUESTION NO. 4 ( CASE STUDY )
You have been working with your team for almost a year. One of your
subordinates Mr. A is very effective and hard working, he takes
responsibility and gets things done. However, you have heard that Mr. A
makes loose comments about women. Mrs X who is working under A,
comes to you, she is visibly disturbed. She tells you that Mr. A has been
making undue advances towards her and has even asked her to go
out for dinner with him. She wants to give a written complaint seeking
action against Mr. A. what would you do and why ?
Contd..  -2-

SAMPLE QUESTION NO. 5 ( CASE STUDY )
You have grown up with X, who has been your best friend since
childhood. You have shared your joys and sorrows and have been each
other`s confidante. Both of you are in your final year graduation and
writing your final exams. In the exam you notice that your friend is
copying and cheating a lot. What would you do and why?
SAMPLE QUESTION NO. 6 (CASE STUDY)
You are posted as the Medical Superintendant of a District level Govt
Hospital which caters to the need of poor patients from surrounding
rural areas along with the local people from the district town.
As such the hospital has very good infrastructure and adequate
equipment to cater to this need. It also receives sufficient funds to
meet the recurring expenditure. Inspite of this there have been repeated
complaints particularly from the patients which include the following
(i) Very poor maintenance and un-hygienic conditions in hospital
premises.
(ii) The hospital staff frequently demanding bribes from the patients for
the services rendered.
(iii) The negligent attitude of the Doctors resulting in times of
casualties.
(iv) Siphoning of a substantial stock of medicine by the staff and
selling it out.
(v) Strong nexus between the senior Doctors of the hospital and the
owners of local private nursing homes and testing labs as a result of
which the patients are strongly misled and dissuaded from availing
the hospital facilities and rather compelled to purchase costly
medicines from market and get medical tests and even operations
done from private medical houses.
(vi) There also exist a notorious employee union which puts undue
pressure and resents any reformative step by the administration.
Ponder over the situation and suggest effective ways to tackle each of
the above mentioned problem. 

Building a balanced team

Making everyone good at everything is a fool's errand. Concentrate on competencies in which your people stand the best chance of getting better and align it with your business strategy

A joint analysis from Egon Zehnder and McKinsey concluded that high-growth companies had executives with higher ratings in all eight key leadership competencies we analysed, on an average - strategic orientation, market insight, results orientation, customer impact, collaboration and influencing, developing organisational capability, team leadership and change leadership. However, there were some interesting subtleties in the findings: First, there was one skill that seemed more important than the rest in driving performance: customer impact. In companies that ranked in the top quartile for revenue growth, at least 40 percent of the senior executives scored 5 or above in this competency.

At the same time, my colleagues noticed that some of the most effective leaders had 'spiky' ratings - extremely high in just two or three areas but barely average or even below average in others. Rather than trying to be the best at everything, they had focused on becoming truly brilliant in some competencies instead of trying to overcome their deficiencies in others.

Third, collective competency mattered more than individual stars. A small group of high-scoring executives - or a knock-it-out-of-the-park CEO - didn't drive business success. In fact, those exceptional people were quite rare: as I mentioned before, only 1 per cent of the more than 5,500 executives in the sample had an average competency score of 6 or 7 out of 7 and only 11 percent had an average score of 5 or higher. Instead, the best-performing companies had a critical mass of strong (if not outstanding) leaders.

Fourth, companies with different strategies excelled with different types of executives at different levels. Organic growth required a strong cadre of senior managers (i.e., not the top team) who shone at not only customer impact but also developing organizational capability, team leadership, and change leadership. Inorganic growth was, by contrast, driven primarily just by top teams who excelled at market insight, results orientation, and strategic orientation, in addition to customer impact.

What lessons should you take from all this? To be extremely focused in your development efforts. Surrounding yourself with the best involves (1) understanding and building on each person's spiky strengths (giving some additional weight to customer impact), (2) ensuring that team members have skills that complement each other, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and (3) training your leaders in competencies that match their career stage and your team, unit or organization's broader goals.

It might be tempting to try to make everyone good at everything once you've brought them in. But that's a fool's errand because it requires a huge amount of time and investment to help even one smart, hardworking person improve in just one area. In our firm's experience, high-potential executives who receive intensive coaching and development support from their employers can boost their appraisal scores (on a scale from 1 to 7) by no more than +2 in one competency, or +1 in two, in one year. And no one can repeat this kind of improvement year after year. So it's much more effective to concentrate on the competencies in which your people stand the best chance of getting better, and those that offer the greatest benefits to your team, depending on your strategy.

Consider these case studies of companies that carefully matched their executive training programs to their respective situations: a turnaround, organic growth, and M&A.

• After a near-bankruptcy in 2002, Swiss engineering firm ABB realized that its state-of-the-art products were not enough. To achieve profitable growth, the company would need to better understand customers' needs. So in 2004 it created a leadership development plan for thousands of senior managers that emphasized three competencies: customer impact,people development, and change leadership. Participants were assessed by supervisors, peers, and reports; given improvement goals; reviewed on their progress; and compensated accordingly. A similar program was then rolled out to middle managers. The company has since seen impressive growth,and its people pipeline is stronger than ever. Instead of having only 30 percent of vacancies in its top two hundred roles filled by internal candidates, the figure is now 85 percent.
• Confronted with heavy competition and global expansion goals, a major pharmaceutical company invited cohorts of forty managers at a time to participate in skill-building workshops and field projects focused on customer impact, team leadership, developing organizational capability, and change leadership. The work included a plan to relaunch a key product in emerging markets; proposals for diversifying into new services; and a recommendation to reshape the company's customer interaction model by cutting the sales force by 25 percent and reinvesting the savings in other marketing channels. This practical, focused leadership development had a big impact: within eighteen months, more than 90 percent of the participants had been promoted and the profits are on the rise.

Gyan Sangam's PSU 'reform

In my last piece, I had raised just a few of the many questions that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could have asked bankers at the "Gyan Sangam" - the Bankers' Retreat in Pune. What came out of the meeting? In a mishmash of hyperbole and management jargon, the prime minister announced that this was the "first step towards catalysing transformation … informal discussions helped achieve meeting of minds, which in turn enabled strategic goal-setting".

The prime minister then went on to praise the banks in successfully implementing Jan Dhan Yojana, which he curiously claimed "would help redefine goal-setting among banks, due to enhanced confidence levels following the success of the programme". After this follow two of the most important statements of the meet.

First, the government banks would be run professionally, and there would be no interference. But accountability was essential, said the prime minister. According to him, "the government had no vested interest, and public sector bankscan derive strength from this fact".

Second, while there will be no political interference, it will continue to mean political intervention, "in the interest of the people". After all, "India is a democracy" where the voice of the common man has to reach such institutions. According to Mr Modi, this can happen only through "political intervention". In these words lies Narendra Modi's approach to running the public sector enterprises. If this government puts out a white paper on PSU (public sector undertakings) reforms ever (most unlikely), I think it would contain the following subtext:

• The government is in absolutely no hurry to bring down its stake and relinquish control over the PSUs or to give them complete freedom to operate.
• The PSUs will be given day-to-day functional "autonomy" even though they will be firmly tied to the apron strings of their respective ministries.
• The PSUs are extended arms of the state. Hence, they will be pressed into service to implement government policies and programmes such as Jan Dhan Yojana and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
• They will be made accountable for government policies, and their performance - possibly in that order.

The Modi government came to power in May 2014. The first Budget, two months later, was a disaster, set against the high hopes generated by Mr Modi's pre-election slogans on governance. Instead, to the surprise of Mr Modi's supporters who wanted to see a rapid dismantling of state enterprises that illogically continue to run businesses like airlines and hotels, the government has continued with the same principle - of PSUs being extended arms of the state.

At the Gyan Sangam, Mr Modi asked banks to move to the second phase of Jan Dhan - promote financial literacy by encouraging competitions in schools, much like mock Parliament competitions. He also instructed the public sector banks to develop common strengths in software and advertising, help develop 20,000-25,000 "swachhta entrepreneurs" a bank, offer loans to students (despite huge bad loans on this account) and avoid "lazy banking" - whatever that means. The prime minister also told the bankers that "as part of corporate social responsibility, banks should take up one sector each year to play a positive role". In short, it is business as before, with politicians ordering managers in PSUs what to do with their business, no matter how ludicrous their instructions sound.

In the Budget last year, the government had provided for around ~60,000 crore of disinvestment. Eight months later, only one disinvestment has happened. This is a bogus case of disinvestment - a sale of five per cent stake in Steel Authority of India Ltd to Life Insurance Corporation, another government-owned organisation.

In all fairness, I have no doubt that the government means well. Mr Modi will not use the PSUs - and especially public sector banks - to push personal interests. There will be fewer phone calls to bankers to favour "x" or "y", as has happened with all regimes in the past. Indeed, the department of financial services promptly followed up on Mr Modi's promise and issued a release to bank and insurance chiefs assuring them of freedom, of non-interference in commercial decisions, transfers and postings, etc. It directed them to take decisions in the best interest of the organisation without any fear or favour. It even warned them they should use this freedom fairly and would be held accountable if they didn't. Possibly, the government will choose the right people to lead them. There may also be administrative moves to appoint better people to the boards.

But this is no reform. This is pushing for administrative and operational efficiency within the current structure, something that every leader from Indira Gandhi onwards has tried - and failed. This is not to say that Mr Modi will fail, too. Indeed he will succeed far more than previous prime ministers.

But Mr Modi's philosophy of governance was embodied in statements such as "minimum government, maximum governance" and "the government has no business to be in business". If Mr Modi has to live up to these words, he will have to make a radical departure from the past, not offer us mere operational efficiency while continuing to treat the PSUs as extended arms of the government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have asserted at various times that they will do whatever is in "the interest of the nation". This has been the favourite phrase of all sorts of leaders - fascist, communist, capitalist and benevolent dictators, believing in "democracy" - if run by a single party. Most thoughtful people will be unimpressed with such statements of intent from politicians. They will rather look for institutional reform of the PSUs based on sound economic principles that dictate the right kind of ownership, competition, incentives and exits. They will not find any of these principles being applied in India anytime soon.

Greek tragedy - Act II?

Developments in Europe have dominated the headlines over the past couple of weeks, and not in a good way. Before the attack on the office of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, the major story was the prospect of Greece exiting the euro zone after a new government takes office. This is hardly surprising, given the increasing difficulties that the country seems to be facing in executing its revival plan. But, surprise or not, the looming possibility of exit apparently frightened global financial markets enough to cause serious turbulence for a couple of days. As things stand, the nervousness seems to have abated, but we should under no circumstances assume that the story has ended. After provoking significant global turbulence in 2010, the Greek economic situation is back centre stage.

To put these concerns into perspective, let's look at the performance of the Greek economy over the past few years. It has operated for a part of this period under the plan formulated by the troika - the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 5.4 per cent in 2010, 8.9 per cent in 2011, 6.6 per cent in 2012 and 3.3 per cent in 2013. 2014 is likely to have seen no change in GDP, which may actually reflect an improvement, given the relentless decline over the past four years. Does this mean the revival is underway? Perhaps, but when you take into account the fact that GDP is now almost 25 per cent less than it was in 2009, any disenchantment on the part of Greek citizens with their economic condition and prospects is entirely understandable.

The fragility of the economy is further reflected in other parameters. The unemployment rate is almost 26 per cent. Youth unemployment is almost 50 per cent. About 20 per cent of the workforce is classified as being in long-term unemployment, having been out of work for over a year. The fiscal deficit is over 12 per cent of GDP, with the debt-GDP ratio at 175 per cent. From the Greek citizens' perspective, this looks like a situation from which any tangible improvements in standards of living, let alone a return to the pre-2010 levels, are going to be slow, uncertain and unevenly distributed. The commitment to the current economic framework, then, has to be very weak. The counterfactual claim - that things could become even worse in the alternative scenario of an exit from the euro zone - presumably does not carry much weight.

How does one compare the two alternative trajectories? Predicting outcomes and time frames is hazardous even with the help of sophisticated models, but broad patterns can be visualised. The key to staying on in the euro arrangement is the ability to get sovereign debt under control, that is, achieve a sustained reduction in the debt-GDP ratio. A well-known requirement for this, to put it simply, is that the growth rate of GDP must be higher than the real interest rate.

Over the past few years, with interest rates at close to zero and the rate of inflation at around a negative one per cent, with the growth rates indicated earlier, this condition was far from being satisfied. However, in 2014, with the inflation and interest rate scenario remaining more or less the same, growth seems to have accelerated; even zero growth is a significant improvement over the record of the past four years! If this situation persists, with the expected inflation and monetary policy trajectory for Europe, it should rein in the sovereign-debt burden.

However, this turnaround may not mean much in terms of the standard of living. The consequent benefits that the economy can obtain in terms of staving off a severe public expenditure compression may allow some government services to be maintained, but certainly not enough to restore them to pre-crisis levels. In other words, a positive macroeconomic development may not be enough to generate political support for the status quo in and of itself.

As regards the exit option, the most significant benefit to Greece will be from the sharp depreciation of the new national currency vis-à-vis the euro. As has often been pointed out, the entry into a currency union brings with it the risk of a misalignment between domestic macroeconomic conditions and the exchange rate. Greece, as well as other euro-zone economies, have struggled with this misalignment for the last few years. In contrast, economies like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which are part of the European customs union but not the monetary one, have done relatively well in the post-crisis years; an important reason for this is because their currencies float with respect to the euro.

A sharp depreciation of the Greek exchange rate will clearly have significant expansionary effects, as Greek exports, including tourism, will suddenly become much more attractive. The impact may, of course, be diluted by the relatively weak demand conditions in the rest of Europe, which, under any circumstances, will remain Greece's largest trading partner. However, a depreciated exchange rate is not an unambiguous benefit. Obviously, imports will become more expensive, contributing to an acceleration in inflation, which will neutralise some of the benefits of a more competitive exchange rate over time.

From a structural perspective, four or more years of decline, with very little new investment may constrain domestic producers from exploiting opportunities provided by exchange rate movements. In this case, the costs will be borne immediately, while the benefits are neither certain nor quick.

The bottom line is that Greek citizens have no obvious choice in front of them. The upheaval in global financial markets caused by the prospect of an exit was perhaps more reflective of a fear of the unknown than any visible consensus about the tangible impact of an exit. The fact that things stabilised quite quickly reinforces this perception of indecisiveness. Persistent market instability can have significant adverse impacts on trade and investment, but, compared with 2008, conditions in both financial and commodity markets suggest far less vulnerability to such spillovers.

Ultimately, the Greeks will have to make the choice that they collectively believe is in their best interests. Going by the experience of the three largest Eastern European economies, the best arrangement for Greece, as well as some others, could be the customs union. This could also be the least disruptive outcome globally.