Even granted that Warren isn’t exactly one of America’s
largest cities, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone could get elected to be
mayor of anything and not grasp that people would be offended by the
comparison. It’s also hard to imagine what harm the atheists could possibly do
anybody in the first place. Faith by definition is not susceptible to arguments
of logic or reason; that’s kind of the point. Any true believer in any faith
would be no more likely to give it up in favor of atheism than they would to
adopt any other religion, and possibly much less so considering that the
atheists are effectively trying to prove a negative. But it does raise the
issue of what we are supposed to do as managers when two or more people of
incompatible belief systems fall under our jurisdiction…
Traditionally, most managers have dealt with this situation
by telling all of the true believers in their company, department or work group
to just leave it outside of work. This does not give any favor to any one faith
or discriminate against any other; it also has the advantage of getting the
employees to stop spending their work days trying to prosthelytize each other
and go back to work. Increasingly, however, we have seen push-back from people
who insist that not being able to display religious iconography wherever and
whenever they want to is a violation of their First Amendment rights, and
demand to be allowed to turn their personal workspace into a shrine of whatever
their faith happens to be. But as bad as that is, the recent fighting between
the atheists and the religious groups is taking the whole problem to a new
level…
Regardless of what your personal beliefs might be, it’s easy
to understand how you might be angered by a demonstrator who is proclaiming
that your beliefs are only held by simpleminded, gullible fools – or by people
who are comparable to the KKK or the Nazis, depending on which side of this
conflict you happen to be. In a very real sense, any form of atheist propaganda
is a vicious attack on the beliefs of any person of faith who has to look at
them. And increasingly, any overt attempt to prosthelytize someone about your
faith, or even display it openly, is becoming just as harsh an attack on the
atheists. The question isn’t so much where this is going to end, since that is
out of our hands; the question is what we as managers can be expected to do
about it…
Which brings me to the question: Do we, as managers, have an
ethical responsibility to allow anyone who works for us to practice all aspects
of their faith at all times, including the ones that would prevent them from
doing their jobs in the first place? Do we have a responsibility to allow
people to display iconography, celebrate holidays, or attempt to convert their
coworkers if their personal faith demands such things of them? No one wants to
be the Grinch who forbids the employees from putting up cut-outs of Christmas
trees or pastel eggs, but do we have an obligation to allow such rituals? Or
does our responsibility to the owners of the company, the stakeholders in our
enterprise, and ultimately the community itself outweigh our responsibility for
our employees’ personal happiness and religious fulfillment, and require us to
go on telling everybody to keep it out of the workplace?
It’s worth thinking about…
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