In an era where mud sticks like glue, corporate tolerance has waned to such a degree that the need to keep hard-fought reputations is outweighing respect for human fallibility. 

Careers and hard-won professional reputations built over many decades can come tumbling down overnight after off-the cuff-comments or even private messages sent to a colleague are made public, overshadowing years of hard work.  

And the corporations they work for often seek to condemn, seek a resignation and shuffle talent out the door than chalk it up as an error of judgment, forgive and move on.   

Tasmanian Attorney-General Elise Archer was forced to resign after one leaked message to the media appeared to be an exasperated reference to victim-survivors of child sexual abuse. Archer was not given the opportunity to challenge the claims made against her and is adamant that the messages were taken out of context.  

Another study found 312 news articles about people who had been fired due to a social media post. These included teachers fired after coming out as bisexual on Instagram, and a retail employee let go over a racist post on Facebook.  

While racism was the most common reason workers were fired in these news stories, other forms of discriminatory behaviour included posts about workplace conflict, bad jokes, insensitive posts, acts of violence and even political content. Of course, there’s no doubt of dozens more cases that aren’t even made public.  

Are companies too quick to condemn?

The blurred lines between knowingly behaving unethically at work and comments shared without our permission raises the question of whether corporations are too quick to condemn indiscretions in favour of their reputation. While public trust in elected officials is critical, it’s also important to remember that these officials are also human beings. 

As workplaces are prioritising accountability and ethical standards to ensure safe and productive environments, too often we are seeing errors of judgement costing hard-working professionals their reputation, not to mention their future earning potential after they are ousted from their job.  

It begs the question: What ever happened to an individuals’ right to make a mistake and for the rest of society not to leave them out in the cold forever? Have we come to a point where our inner thoughts and feelings shared in private are indicative of our ability to do our job?  

Where we draw the line

Despite private messages being made public costing people their jobs and reputations, career coach Renata Bernarde believes that private messages should remain private and usually aren’t a true reflection of our ability to do our job.  

“When leaked, we can see that private messages can offer glimpses into someone’s personal thoughts and feelings, which might be expressed without the filter they would use in a professional setting. That said, if private messages reveal behaviours or beliefs that directly contradict the values and responsibilities of their public role, it’s a valid concern. For instance, a diversity and inclusion leader advocating for equality should not have private messages showcasing prejudice.”  

However, Bernarde urges corporations to avoid blanket penalties, saying we need to be cautious about using isolated messages out of context to vilify individuals. “It’s essential to consider the entirety of the person’s character and contributions,” she says.  

The art of corporate forgiveness

There are occasional cases of corporate forgiveness. Western Australian man Cameron Waugh was charged with six counts of insider trading and was released on bail. He has since appointed the interim CEO of a company that’s obviously deemed his skills more valuable.   

While forgiveness and the opportunity to secure a new job after misconduct is complex and multifaceted, human resources and emotional resilience expert Shane Warren says that it’s important that workplaces acknowledge that making a mistake pertains to the psychological and emotional harm caused by actions that violate one’s deeply held moral beliefs. 

“Any doctrine of faith reminds us that human fallibility is an inherent part of our nature, and the capacity to make mistakes is universal. The idea that an individual who has ‘stuffed up’ should not be punished indefinitely for errors resonates with our core principles of fairness and modern desire to embrace personal growth.”    

However, Warren admits that balancing the need for accountability with the recognition of our humanity can be challenging. Nevertheless, fostering a culture of learning, growth and restorative justice can help strike a more equitable balance between accountability and compassion in any workplace, he says. 

The process of forgiveness and reintegration into the workforce should ideally involve steps such as acknowledging wrongdoing, seeking rehabilitation or counselling, demonstrating genuine remorse and showing a sustained commitment to personal growth and ethical behaviour. The timing for a new job may vary depending on individual circumstances and the severity of the misconduct, he says.  

“Perhaps instead, society needs to bear in mind that everyone is fallible. If indiscretions or mistakes happen, when addressed and an apology is allowed to be given, it can lead to greater resilience, better understanding and personal and professional development.”  

Corporate Australia is having a rough time in 2023.

PwC made headlines for selling out Australian citizens by flogging details of the government’s tax avoidance schemes to potential corporate tax avoiders. Qantas has been raked over the coals for, amongst other things, lying to customers and illegally sacking workers. Elsewhere corporations are pilloried for scandalously excessive executive pay, Dickensian industrial relations standards, wilfully aggressive tax avoidance, and heartless profiteering.  

Research by the market researchers at Roy Morgan recently revealed that the level of trust Australians have in corporations is at the lowest it has ever been since they started measuring it. The downward trend started with COVID but has been in free fall since the middle of 2022. Roy Morgan CEO Michelle Levine describes what is going on as the result of ‘moral blindness’ of corporations.  

There is an apparent irony in play. Today’s corporations are accused of this moral blindness, while many publicly embrace ethics by taking increasingly active roles in important matters of public purpose and social impact. Corporations are weighing in on a variety of crucial political issues, such as the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, LGBTQIA+ rights, and the climate crisis. 

Business as a force for good?

In the era of ‘woke capitalism’ the business world seems to feel little cognitive dissonance, let alone hypocrisy, about parading their ethical credentials in public while acting like ruthless and exploitative profiteers in the market. Being economically exploitative and socially progressive is the name of the game for many corporations.

The socially progressive position regards businesses as having the potential to be a ‘force for good’, especially by adopting progressive positions on social and environmental causes. Think of Qantas’ ‘pride flights’, PwC’s commitment to social impact, or the broad adoption of diversity and climate change initiatives by businesses of all kinds.  

Many regard corporate engagement with political causes as being genuinely motivated by ethical care for their ‘stakeholders’. This view is not universal. Others see corporate activism as comprising of shallow, inauthentic and self-interested grandstanding. Between green-washing, woke-washing and virtue-signalling, corporations have been accused of using ethics to feather their own nests.  

Yet others see corporate social and environmental engagement as incontrovertible evidence that CEOs have been held captive by radical left-wing activists. By this account weak-willed executives are being exploited by nefarious militants trying to use corporations as a Trojan Horse to infiltrate mainstream society.  

The ‘vile maxim’ of corporate selfishness

Whichever position you might be aligned with, so-called ‘woke’ practices are in apparent contrast to the exploitative and ruthless competitive behaviours of companies like Qantas and PwC that have contributed to the demise of trust in corporations. When it comes to business, the ethical principle at play is akin to what, many years ago, economist Adam Smith condemned as the ‘vile maxim’. As he wrote in The Wealth of Nations back in 1776: 

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.” 

It is clear that many people running businesses today are enthusiastic followers of this vile maxim. To suggest this is ‘moral blindness’ can be misleading because (no matter how vile) there is an ethics at play here, and one that is widely accepted. Ayn Rand notoriously championed such an ethics as being beholden to ‘the virtue of selfishness’. By Rand’s account, pursuing self-interest is a valid, if not desirable, moral position. She stood against sacrifice as being a moral principle, instead seeing merit in “concern with one’s own interests”.  

Free market capitalism was, for Rand, an ideal manifestation of her ethics. This all suggests that selfishness is not moral blindness, it is part of an ethical system that drives much business behaviour. It is also the ethics that is at the heart of Australia’s lack of confidence in the corporate world.  

How to build trust

Between the twin poles of ‘woke capitalism’ and the ‘vile maxim’ we have something of a corporate identity crisis. Increasingly selfish profit-seeking in the economic sphere is matched with attestations to the pursuit of public good in the social sphere. That is not to say that all companies are vile or woke, clearly many are not. It is a fair call that enough of them are that it has led to a breakdown of public confidence in corporate Australia.  

What does this all mean for how Australian corporations can build public trust? One answer is resolving their identity crisis by truly embracing and communicating the role of business in a liberal-democratic society. While businesses are responsible for returns on capital investment, that is neither their sole nor primary purpose. Neither is supporting progressive social positions without concern for the economy. 

In its present condition Australian corporate capitalism is characterised by skyrocketing economic inequality, excessive executive pay, inflation fuelled by profiteering, and increasingly precarious employment. That Australian citizens do not trust corporations is an entirely rational assessment.  

Corporate Australia’s challenge is to actively recognise and pursue its real social purpose. This purpose is about driving innovation and economic growth for shared prosperity, providing meaningful and secure jobs with decent pay, paying taxes that fund public services, as well as ensuring investors get a reasonable return.

Rebuilding trust is simple. What remains to be seen is which of Australia’s fallen corporations will have the courage to abandon their attachment to the vile maxim.