The Ethics of Mediocrity

The subject of motivational theory came up at lunch the other day, when the comment was floated just before the entrees arrived that perhaps the reason so many people appear to be just barely passable at their jobs is that most people will only put forth the minimum effort necessary to avoid being fired, and no more than that. This led almost immediately to a brisk discussion of just what, exactly, that minimum level would be, and how you would determine it across the huge range of job and performance requirements in the workplace. This is going to vary quite a bit, depending on which employees we are discussing and what their job actually requires of them.

For example, a CEO’s job is technically to maximize stockholder value, and anything less than that will probably get him or her fired – except that what, exactly, the maximum possible value of a given stock actually is at any given time is a matter than can be (and usually is) endlessly debated by everyone who monitors the stock market, shareholder or not. By the same token, the hostess running the front desk at a restaurant has only one job function: greet incoming customers, make them feel welcome, and get them a table or other place to sit. What exactly constitutes “feeling welcome” will vary a bit, but if the hostess is scowling and unfriendly (like the one who had “greeted” us at lunch that day), she’s clearly not doing the only job function she has.

My question is this: suppose that you have completed all of the tasks assigned to you, and met every performance target your superiors wanted you to meet. Do you, at that point, have any ethical responsibility to work even harder, accomplish more tasks and exceed those performance targets? Some employers, as is so amply parodied in the Dilbert comic strip, believe that the employees owe them every waking second (and sometimes the contents of their dreams at night, as well), to the point that even having a personal life is like “stealing from the company.” Such organizations would be appalled at the very idea of an employee not working to the absolute utmost edge of their ability, punish anyone they feel is not in fact doing so, and thereby almost guarantee that everyone working for them will slack off whenever possible.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are companies where working more than you are assigned to work is frowned upon, because it makes everyone else look bad, rather like the legendary Post Office branches where coming back from your assigned 4-hour delivery route in less than four hours is considered at sin, even if your route only involved delivering two envelopes and a mail-order catalog. Such companies are unlikely to suffer heavy turnover, but they’re not likely to experience much growth, either. Some organizations will offer performance incentives, such as bonuses for doing more work, or else base raises and promotions on performance targets, but this doesn’t really apply to the question I’m asking; working more in order to get paid more isn’t a matter of ethics, just common sense.

Suppose your pay will be the same if you do 100% of your work, or 110% of the workload assigned, or 250% of your workload. Let us further assume that you can accomplish the extra work without unbalancing the rest of your life (working nights and never seeing your family, for example) or other extreme measures, and that no financial incentives will ever be offered and promotion will not come this side of the grave. Do you have a purely ethical responsibility to give your employer more than they have asked for? Or at least inform them that you are seriously underemployed? And if not, are you in any way to blame if the organization as a whole fails to meet its performance goals?

It’s worth thinking about…