The Ethics of Conformity

In our culture, by which I specifically mean the American popular culture in the 21st Century, we’re usually told that conformity is a bad thing; that it stifles creativity, prevents independent thought, and makes it possible for Them (whoever the speaker’s particular paranoid dreams conceive of “Them” as being) to indulge in whatever nefarious schemes one might image “Them” as being involved with. And all of this is true, to some extent; creativity is important, and a lot of people in positions of power over the past 300 years or so have had some fairly unpleasant ideas that would still have the force of law if somebody hadn’t refused to conform to those ideas. But people being people, there’s a definite tendency to take any idea to its logical extreme, and in this case the prevailing idea in America seems to be that if the Establishment (whatever that might be) is in favor of something, we shouldn’t be. But is that really the case?

In the study of Organizational Behavior (which I’m teaching this summer and will be studying in more detail over the next two semesters), normal behavior (or “norms”) is broken into two categories: pivotal and peripheral: things which are mandated or required, and things which are relatively discretionary. The general theory is that if people in an organization reject the pivotal norms (e.g. refuse to obey orders or take direction, violate regulations or safety rules, etc.) they are in a state of subversive rebellion, and if they reject all norms of both types they’re in open revolution, neither of which is good for the organization. However, the theory goes on to argue that complete conformity isn’t good for the organization either; what you’re looking for is the state where individuals reject peripheral norms while complying with pivotal ones; this is referred to as “creative individualism.” It’s also a condition that you will almost never see in practice, and will only rarely see promoted by management…

Most managers, for better or worse, tend to see their role as largely enforcing the pivotal norms – making sure that directions are followed, that corporate regulations are obeyed, and that the employees are doing what higher management wants them to be doing. Since most management jobs are evaluated on this basis (and most managers will be fired if they fail to keep the pivotal norms in use), it’s difficult to blame the managers for acting this way. The problem occurs when you have managers who can’t tell the difference between the pivotal and the peripheral; for whom every employee action is a mandated requirement of the job and you will by God conform to them all or else. These individual tend to be unpopular, and may in fact be hurting the organization through their actions. But it’s still hard to blame them for doing what appears to be necessary to keep their jobs…

So my question is this: If we, as managers, are being required to enforce non-pivotal norms – standard behaviors or actions that have no real importance to the jobs being done – do we have an ethical responsibility to reject those requirements? Should we, ourselves, adopt the position of creative individualism, or at least tell our personnel to adopt it, and attempt to comply only with those norms that benefit the company while trying to evolve better ones? Or do we, as officers of the company, have an ethical requirement to comply with our own orders, and do what the company’s executives have directed us to do, even though we know it will erode morale, lower job satisfaction, and eventually cause the company to stagnate and become obsolete?

It’s worth thinking about…