Temple law school conference examines bullying across the lifespan

Workplace bullying panelists: (l to r) Prof. Kerri Stone, Prof. Susan Harthill, and DY

I was fortunate to participate over the weekend in “Bullying: Redefining Boundaries, Responsibility, and Harm,” an excellent conference sponsored by the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first American conference devoted to examining the legal implications of bullying behaviors across the lifespan.

From children to seniors

The conference brought together academics, practitioners, and advocates from across the country who have been addressing the legal and policy aspects of bullying in different social and institutional settings.

The program took a chronological approach, starting with bullying among school kids, moving on to higher education settings, then to the workplace, and finally to seniors. The final panel examined best practices across that span. It was a great decision to organize the day that way.

The proceedings also featured a keynote address by Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones (2013), which examines the culture of bullying among teens in the Internet and social media age. Bazelon’s book has generated considerable media interest, and her address filled the room.

For a full list of speakers and their bios, go here.

Workplace bullying panel

Pictured above are panelists for the workplace bullying panel, Prof. Kerri Stone (Florida International University College of Law), Prof. Susan Harthill (Florida Coastal School of Law), and yours truly. Our panel was ably moderated by Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

• I opened the panel by discussing the concept of workplace bullying generally, then quickly summarized existing legal protections for targets before examining the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill and responses to it.
• Prof. Harthill discussed her work on applying the Occupational Safety and Health Act to bullying situations and summarized the growing list of legal responses to workplace bullying in other nations.
• Prof. Stone discussed her work on the gender implications of workplace bullying and then examined how the National Labor Relations Board’s decisions on social media might affect employers’ ability to address bullying.

Susan and Kerri have made important contributions to the body of legal scholarship on workplace bullying, and I have great respect for their work. It was very nice that the three of us finally could be on a panel together.

More to come

Podcasts, PowerPoint slides, and other materials from the conference will be made freely available to the public via the conference website. (I will post an update on this blog.) In addition, the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review will publish proceedings and essays emerging from the conference in a volume scheduled to appear over the summer. I will be contributing a piece on the emergence of the legal movement against workplace bullying.

Many thanks

Our Temple hosts put together a superb program and topped it off with a ton of hospitality. The conference attracted over 140 registrants, including a lot of Temple law students.

I’d especially like to thank Prof. Nancy Knauer, conference organizer, and law student Naveed Hassan, symposium editor for the journal, for their work on this conference. Their devotion to making this a worthwhile experience for everyone resulted in a memorable exchange of information and ideas.

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4/2/13 update: I’ve posted a draft of my law review essay, “Emerging American Legal Responses to Workplace Bullying,” to my Social Science Research Network page. It can be downloaded without charge, here.

Dignity work

December 2012 workshop participants (photo: Anna Strout)

Dignity work. In a blog about work, that’s the best way I can tag the array of projects, initiatives, and passions that drew people from around the world to the annual Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, sponsored by the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Network (HumanDHS) and hosted by Columbia University, Teachers College, in New York.  This year’s workshop ran last Thursday and Friday.

About HumanDHS

HumanDHS is a unique association. Here’s a self-description from the website:

We are a global transdisciplinary network and fellowship of concerned academics and practitioners. We wish to stimulate systemic change, globally and locally, to open space for dignity and mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow, thus ending humiliating practices and breaking cycles of humiliation throughout the world.

We suggest that a frame of cooperation and shared humility is necessary – not a mindset of humiliation – if we wish to build a better world, a world of equal dignity for all.

Untypical

In other words, HumanDHS is not your typical academic assemblage. For example, in the Round Table in which I participated, we heard presentations about sojourns to the Amazon rainforest, conflict resolution on large and small scales, America’s aging population base, and the criminal justice system. Theory, research, and action all play important roles at this gathering and often come together in individual talks.

A group ethic of respectful exchange frames the event. On topics as difficult as, say, the impact of required English education on the preservation of traditional languages in Africa, emotions can run strong. It may take an effort, at times, to keep certain expressions in check and to listen to others amid earnest discussion. Nevertheless, such attempts are far preferable to imposing a cloak of superficial dialogue that dodges hard topics, or allowing exchanges to disintegrate into angry barbs tossed back and forth.

Group hug

Yes, there’s a group hug at the end, but we shouldn’t dismiss this as a standard-brand “feel good” event. Not, for example, when a participant shares a personal story of childhood sexual abuse. You see, the founders of HumanDHS included the word humiliation in the group’s name for a reason: You can’t affirm human dignity without facing what’s uncomfortable and painful.

And yet it does feel good to be a part of this group. These gatherings are life-affirming in a world where the embrace of human dignity remains too rare an event.

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Notes

Evelin Linder, Linda Hartling, Tonya Hammer, and a crew of other dedicated volunteers deserve our thanks for making the workshop such a meaningful gathering.

Congratulations to friend and colleague Michael Perlin (New York Law School), who received the HumanDHS Lifetime Achievement Award at the workshop. Michael is a leading authority on mental disability law and is among a core group of law professors who extended a warm welcome to me when I became involved with the therapeutic jurisprudence movement.

For more photos of the event by the ever present (but never intrusive) camera of Anna Strout, go here and scroll down to the links.

Working Notes: Business Week on workplace bullying, a “New World” concept paper, and a blog facelift

Some items of note:

1. Business Week on “Taming the Workplace Bully” – Adam Piore’s article examines the topic from a business standpoint — it’s even filed under the heading of “Competition” on the magazine’s website —  and closes with an anecdote about a bullying target befriending her aggressor. Still, it covers a lot of ground and presents a variety of perspectives, including the legal aspects on which Gary Namie and I were interviewed.

Here’s a snippet:

For decades researchers have used questionnaires known as Machiavellianism (or Mach) scales to measure an individual’s capacity to engage in the manipulative, amoral, and deceitful behaviors espoused by the 15th century ends-justify-the-means diplomat. Recently psychologists found that those who score high on the 100-point Mach scale are also among those likeliest to engage in office bullying.

2. Evelin Lindner’s 2008 concept paper on societal transformation — In December 2008, Dr. Evelin Lindner, social scientist and founder of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) Network, presented a terrific think piece paper, The Need for a New World, that calls for a global society grounded in sustainability and human dignity. Here’s the lede from her concluding section (p. 25):

The problem of our time is that the emperor has no clothes, that we, humankind, are the emperor, and that almost nobody dared, until recently, to admit to our nakedness. It needed an economic meltdown to expose this nakedness in shocking ways. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said that he was “in a state of shocked disbelief” and had been wrong in thinking that relying on banks to use their self-interest would be enough to protect shareholders and their equity. Still, many don’t see the emperor’s nakedness even now.

Evelin gave this paper just months after the economy imploded, at the annual HumanDHS workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict at Columbia University in New York. Four years later, with so many people still hoping that things will return to some form of “back to normal,” it remains a very relevant piece of commentary. Evelin will be talking about her book, A Dignity Economy, at an open program offered as part of this year’s workshop, on Thursday, December 6, at 5:00-8:00 p.m (flyer here).

3. A new look for the blog — I gave the blog a quick facelift. WordPress.com offers a variety of themes for its blogs, and I found this one, titled “Elemin,” and thought it would provide a crisp and appealing new look. I hope you enjoy it.

Dignity, where art thou?

Our goal-oriented society is full of political platforms, strategic plans, long-range plans, position papers, white papers, proposals, action memos, and self-study reports.

How many of them feature human dignity as a framing theme and objective?

Oh sure, we talk plenty about growth, outcomes, opportunities, profits, “measurables,” and the like.

But as for “dignity”? Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us.

In the workplace, a “markets and management” framework that embraces unregulated industries and unfettered management control continues to hold sway. It spills into our political realm, where trickle-down economic theories and practices dominate our domestic and international policy debates. It has been this way for at least the past 30 years.

I don’t know why we’re so afraid to embrace the concept and practice of dignity. Does it make us uncomfortable? Do we see it as an impossibility? Is it too threatening to the centers of profit and power?

***

Related posts

Donna Hicks on dignity (2012)

Building a global society that embraces human dignity (2011)

George Lakoff, Frameworks, and Dignity at Work (2010)

Human Dignity and American Employment Law (2009)

Websites of the Week: Dignity, Humiliation, and Rankism (2008)

Auld Lang Syne: The importance of organizational history and memory

Memory was a key theme appearing on this blog several times during the year. In other words, what events and persons do organizations and institutions choose to remember, and which ones do they opt to forget?

I’m a big believer in continually re-examining history for the lessons it keeps yielding. When memories are sharp and true, we all can benefit, sometimes because they allow us to celebrate and commemorate, on other occasions so we can learn from mistakes or failings.

Here are three posts from this year that examined the implications of institutional amnesia:

How lousy organizations treat institutional history – Excerpt: “How do lousy organizations treat their own institutional history? In other words, how do they treat their past, recent or otherwise? . . . Bad organizations avoid accountability by labeling any unjust, unethical, illegal, or simply inept behavior as part of the past. Those who seek discussions of, or explanations for, such actions or behaviors are criticized for dwelling upon the past . . ..”

Erase and forget: “Unpersons” and institutional memory – Excerpt: “Bad organizations choose to ‘forget’ less flattering events of their institutional history, especially those that conflict with their self-generated mythologies. Sometimes that process requires them to create new unpersons out of individuals associated with those events.”

Harass and eliminate: Anti-labor forces go after professors and art – Excerpt: “Maine Governor Paul LePage, a Republican, recently ordered the removal of an 11-panel mural depicting various chapters in the history of the state’s workers from the offices of the Department of Labor. . . . There is an Orwellian quality to this action, a desire to create a category of unpersons . . ..”

Is our psychologically ill economy fueled by psychologically ill business leaders?

It’s not often when mental health experts and business management scholars start to sound alike, but a December workshop address by therapist Michael Britton and a recent business ethics article by marketing expert Clive Boddy seem to be very much on the same page. Both address the twisted psychological dynamics driving the current economic crisis.

Our manic economy

In the Don Klein Memorial Lecture at the annual workshop of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network held in December (blog post here), psychologist Michael Britton described our current economic condition in psychological terms.

Our economic system has taken on “bipolar” qualities, said Britton. Using terms and phrases such as “excited,” “frantic,” “crash and burn,” “disregard for reality,” and “disregard for empathy,” he described an economy grounded in constant consumption and concentrations of power.

Britton said that instead of worshipping at the altar of national GDP and high unemployment, we should “reduce resource stripping” and emphasize how everyone can contribute to society and live a “materially decent life.”

Corporate Psychopaths

Of course, if our economy is psychologically ill, then we should search out the root causes. Clive R. Boddy of the Nottingham Business School believes that the behaviors of corporate psychopaths have fueled the economic crisis.

He makes the case in a 2011 article in the Journal of Business Ethics, “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Business Crisis” (link here). Here are a few snippets:

Although they may look smooth, charming, sophisticated, and successful, Corporate Psychopaths should theoretically be almost wholly destructive to the organizations that they work for.

…Researchers report that such malevolent leaders are callously disregarding of the needs and wishes of others, prepared to lie, bully and cheat and to disregard or cause harm to the welfare of others….

***

The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that Corporate Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the crisis. . . . (T)he Corporate Psychopath’s single-minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement . . . has led to an abandonment of the old fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.

***

When presented to management academics in discussion, the Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is accepted as being plausible and highly relevant. . . .The message that psychopaths are to be found in corporations and other organisations may be important for the future longevity of capitalism and for corporate and social justice and even for world financial stability and longevity.

Felons vs. Bosses

These commentaries echo a 2005 study conducted by psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon comparing individuals housed in a British psychiatric hospital who had been convicted of serious crimes to managers and executives. As reported by George Monblot for the Guardian (link here):

On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for.

As 2012 approaches

During the three years I have hosted this blog, I’ve written a lot about the devastating effects that bullying bosses can have on individual psyches and careers. As these commentaries and studies show, many of these individuals also are wreaking havoc on our larger economic and social infrastructures.

Personally, I’ve got nothing against enterprise, entrepreneurship, and even a fair profit. And I’m not looking for a witch hunt of bad managers and executives. Instead, maybe it’s time we use the language of human resources and simply say that our “plans have changed” and that “we’ve decided to go in a different direction.”

Heaven knows it’s time we did so.

Building a global society that embraces human dignity

I’ve just had the privilege of participating in the annual workshop of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) Network, a global gathering of scholars and practitioners devoted to advancing dignity and ending humiliation in our society. The workshop was held on Thursday and Friday at Teachers College of Columbia University.

Here’s how HumanDHS describes its mission:

We are a global transdisciplinary network and fellowship of concerned academics and practitioners. We wish to stimulate systemic change, globally and locally, to open space for dignity and mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow, thus ending humiliating practices and breaking cycles of humiliation throughout the world.

We suggest that a frame of cooperation and shared humility is necessary – not a mindset of humiliation – if we wish to build a better world, a world of equal dignity for all.

It’s not easy for me to capture to breadth and depth of this gathering. In programmatic terms, it consists of several roundtable discussions, dialogue sessions, and lectures (plus a dash of live musical entertainment) — in other words, on the surface it may appear to be just another conference. But what happens during that time is very special, a sharing of experiences, research, ideas, and actions ranging from trauma and healing in Romania to cultural issues implicated by English language instruction in Zanzibar. You can look at the overall agenda here.

Leaders

The founding president of HumanDHS is Dr. Evelin Lindner, a physician, psychologist, and self-styled global citizen whose life mission is rooted in the displacement of her family during the ravages of the First and Second World Wars. Evelin speaks in visionary terms of what our society can become, and she’s ever conscious of how pain and trauma call upon us to embrace those ideals.

The director of HumanDHS is Dr. Linda Hartling, a psychologist and leading authority on relational-cultural theory who worked with renowned psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller. Linda’s work in identifying different types of workplace cultures is one of the most valuable framing concepts I’ve encountered in trying to grasp variations in organizational life.

Evelin and Linda would be quick to emphasize that HumanDHS is a large assemblage of people dedicated to both scholarship and action. Ideas, research, and theory are deeply respected. Concrete actions to advance positive individual and social change are celebrated.

World Dignity University

This year’s workshop also served as a sort of brainstorming session about a new HumanDHS initiative, the World Dignity University, described as follows:

The education branch of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) aims to increase our understanding of the negative consequences of humiliation and generate support of alternative approaches that promote human dignity. We have therefore begun in 2010 to form a World Dignity University.

We wish to disseminate the research findings related to dignity (with humiliation as its violation) to a wide variety of audiences. Thereby we wish to contribute to the capacity of people to build peaceful societies and be mindful of how humiliation may disrupt the social fabric and how social cohesion may be sustained by preventing humiliation from occurring.

Although still in the very early stages of development, World Dignity University will offer educational programs and a university press dedicated to addressing human dignity and humiliation. I’m tremendously excited about its potential. See the video clip above for more of Evelin’s and Linda’s ideas about this initiative.

Personal appreciation

My discovery of HumanDHS several years ago has been a genuine gift, made possible by the welcoming spirit of its pioneering core group. Today I serve on the HumanDHS global advisory board, at this year’s workshop I shared some of my work concerning workplace bullying and the practice of intellectual activism.

In addition, I join with New York Law School professor Michael Perlin — a leading authority on mental health law — in having strong connections to both the HumanDHS Network and the Therapeutic Jurisprudence movement, the latter of which has been a common topic on this blog.

Has tackling discrimination led to a more elitist society?

Has greater social equality fueled the creation of a more elitist society? Alexander Still, in a recent piece titled “The Paradox Of the New Elite” for the New York Times, raises this question:

IT’S a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.

At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.

Many of us will assert vigorously that the U.S. has hardly reached the promised land when it comes to equal opportunity. Nevertheless, it would be hard to argue that substantial progress hasn’t been made.

Concentrated wealth and opportunity

During this time of social progress, we’ve also witnessed a tremendous concentration of wealth and opportunity through what some might call the American meritocracy. As Still explains:

But with educational attainment going increasingly to the children of the affluent and educated, we appear to be developing a self-perpetuating elite that reaps a greater and greater share of financial rewards. It is a hard-working elite, and more diverse than the old white male Anglo-Saxon establishment — but nonetheless claims a larger share of the national income than was the case 50 years ago, when blacks, Jews and women were largely shut out of powerful institutions.

So…Still raises a provocative question: Are the two trends — less discrimination and the rise of a supposed meritocracy — related or coincidental?

Class struggle, if not warfare

In a recent post, I wrote about Chief Justice Warren Burger’s 1971 judicial opinion in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), where the Supreme Court struck down two job requirements — a high school diploma and passing scores on two aptitude tests — that had the effect of excluding most African American job applicants from consideration for higher paying jobs in the company. In addition to holding that the company’s hiring policy had discriminatory impact, the Court found that the company could not prove that the requirements were closely related to skills and abilities necessary for the jobs in question.

Here’s the relevant piece of Justice Burger’s opinion:

The facts of this case demonstrate the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability. History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the common sense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.

In that one paragraph, the Chief Justice brilliantly anticipated the craziness to come: High-stakes educational testing at multiple levels. The U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges, universities, and graduate programs. Out-of-control anxieties over college admissions. Employer love affairs with graduates of elite institutions. Higher and higher settings of the credential bar to enter professions and obtain opportunities.

Higher education as an example

Don’t get me wrong: Discrimination still exists. Definitely.

But over the past decade I’ve seen these class-based patterns gaining a stronghold in my world of higher education. New (or resurgent) barriers of class and privilege are nudging aside the old ones of race, gender, and sexual orientation, especially when it comes to faculty recruitment. As our faculties are becoming somewhat more diverse in terms of “check-the-box” demographic categories, they are becoming even more homogeneous in terms of socio-economic and professional backgrounds, with heavy emphasis placed on holding higher degrees from a very small number of elite universities.

The implications for teaching and scholarship are enormous. Knowledge sharing and creation increasingly are being funneled through very narrow bands of life experiences and perspectives. It’s a problem that transcends standard-brand categories of diversity and political ideology, which may be one reason why it isn’t receiving much attention from within the academy.

What does ABC’s “Revenge” teach us about workplace injustice?

I’ve never been a fan of soap operas, but a very soapy new primetime drama, ABC’s “Revenge,” has been a lock on my DVR this fall.

About “Revenge”

“Revenge” is the title, philosophy, and practice of this weekly guilty pleasure. The story features a young woman, Emily Thorne (played by Emily VanCamp), who mysteriously appears in the Hamptons, New York’s refuge for the ultra wealthy.

Emily is not who she says she is. She’s really Amanda Clarke, and years ago, when Amanda was still a girl, her rich, cutthroat neighbors framed her father for a horrific act of terrorism and essentially destroyed their lives. Emily/Amanda now has returned home to exact revenge on them, in brutally cool and calculated ways. (“Revenge” is said to be loosely patterned after Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, but believe me, you don’t have to be familiar with the book to get into the show!)

Each new episode features intrigue, manipulation, and carefully planned acts of payback. It also highlights an ongoing cat fight, nay, death battle of the tigresses, between Emily and leading Hamptons socialite Victoria Grayson (played by Madeleine Stowe), a key operative in her father’s disgrace and demise.

This could be a giant recipe for an early series cancellation but for the pitch perfect performances by the lead actresses. VanCamp is the ideal cold-blooded avenger masquerading as the sharp, pretty, sweetheart-next-door. Stowe pulls off her Ice Queen of the Hamptons role — one that easily could become a caricature in the hands of a less-gifted performer — with just the right touch. And when Emily and Victoria are in the same room, well, if looks could kill…

Revenge vs. schadenfreude

Are fans of “Revenge” frustrated avengers pining for a chance to inflict payback on those who have hurt them? If so, then there are millions of us waiting in the wings.

Fortunately, I don’t think this is the case. It boils down to the difference between exacting revenge — i.e., taking an active part in the retribution — and experiencing schadenfreude, the German loanword defined as deriving joy or satisfaction from another’s misfortune. The former involves planning and participation, while the latter represents an emotional response.

For some, a successful act of revenge can result in schadenfreude. For others, schadenfreude is more comfortably experienced as the result of a misfortune visited upon someone by another party or initiative.

I believe that most viewers enjoy “Revenge” because it allows us to revel in a fictional version of the latter variety. After all, cutting through the soap, “Revenge” reminds us that plotting real-life payback easily becomes an all-consuming and blackhearted passion. It often requires the same overheated emotion as the act that inspired it, not to mention a heckuva lot of care and attention to detail if one does not want to get caught.

Furthermore, the vast majority recognize that carrying an unyielding need for vengeance can be a dark, heavy, and unhealthy burden. Even if we struggle to forgive our trespassers, we nevertheless understand the personal costs of devoting ourselves to visiting retribution upon them.

And yet, “Revenge” may satisfy some inner craving for schadenfreude, which allows us to eat our cake but not have to answer for the calories. When one of Emily’s brilliantly designed acts of payback succeeds, it’s hard not to say, hah hah, gotcha!

Workplace revenge fantasies

No doubt that when some viewers are relishing Emily’s latest success, they’re thinking about specific bosses or co-workers who treated them poorly or unfairly.

Indeed, some of the “bad boss” books that I’ve paged through over the years are full of revenge fantasies, imagined and realized. People construct, and occasionally act out, these fantasies because they lack the power to use organizational resources to make things right. And when institutions do not embrace fairness and accountability, those on the receiving end of perceived injustices are left to their own devices and coping skills.

These are no trifling concerns, as I hope this blog has demonstrated. Perceptions of organizational justice impact productivity and individual well-being. Careers, livelihoods, and paychecks are at stake, not to mention personal health and dignity.

“Revenge” doesn’t get into the institutional ripple effects; it’s all personal, either in-your-face or behind-your-back. Ultimately, it isn’t psychologically deep enough to teach us anything more profound than the costs of being obsessed with retribution. But that in itself is a valuable lesson, and it’s delivered in marvelously entertaining fashion to boot.

***

Go here to watch full episodes of “Revenge.”

Penn State’s football program and university leadership: Signs of ethical collapse?

It’s a hard story to miss, but if somehow you did: A grand jury has charged Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky with 40 counts of sexual assault against minors — in essence, alleging that he used the prominence of the football program and his non-profit organization to lure young boys into situations where he could abuse them.

Leading Penn State administrators and coaches — including now dismissed head coach and football legend Joe Paterno — are alleged to have played various roles in seeing that these abuses would not be brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities.

Obviously this is a story that will continue to attract abundant news coverage for months and years to come. (For representative coverage and commentary, see the current issue of Sports Illustrated, here.) However, we know enough to examine this from a standpoint of organizational ethics and integrity:

Signs of ethical collapse

In The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse: How to Spot Moral Meltdowns in Companies…Before It’s Too Late (2006), business ethics & law professor Marianne Jennings identifies a cluster of factors indicative of an ethical meltdown:

• Pressure to maintain numbers
• Fear and silence
• Larger than life CEO
• Weak board of directors
• Conflicts of interest
• Innovation trumping any other priority, such as ethics
• Belief that goodness in some areas atones for wrongdoing in others

How does Penn State stack up against these indicators?

At least four of these factors appear to be implicated:

“Pressure to maintain numbers” translates into football-ese as pressure to turn out nationally ranked teams year after year. On-the-field success in big-time college sports is a money maker for universities and a huge boon to their admissions offices.

We don’t know how much fear played into the alleged cover-up, but we sure know about the silence. As the facts unfold, it is clear that a number of people in significant leadership positions could’ve acted more decisively, but chose not to do so.

The firing of a “larger-than-life” coach in Joe Paterno certainly accounts for student riots at State College in the immediate aftermath of the decision, as well as the thousands of fans at the team’s last home game who brought signs in support of their ousted hero.

Some of these fans apparently believe that the success and fame of their football team on the field atone for the unfolding scandal of alleged child sex abuse and subsequent cover-ups. One also has to wonder if complicit university officials felt the same way.

The Penn State football website

Meanwhile, it’s all about the game on the Penn State official football website. When I looked at the front page earlier this week, I saw a cryptic reference to an “emotional week” and a preview of a touted matchup against Big Ten rival Ohio State.

The list of press releases was completely sanitized; you’ll find no mention of Paterno’s firing (much less the reason), just an announcement of a new head coach.

So, in Penn State’s corner of football cyberspace, it’s business as usual. A scandal involving cover-ups of alleged child sexual abuse can’t even be acknowledged. After all, the game must go on.