Morality, Public and Private

Contemporary scholars such as Linda Treviño and Al Gini have studied the relationship between the private moral behavior of managers and their ability to satisfy their public moral responsibilities. On the one hand, it seems natural to hold that the moral standards used to [Page 1422]evaluate an individual's private behavior ought to be separated from the standards used to evaluate one's behavior in professional roles, representing organizations with public stakeholders. On the other hand, this tendency to separate private from public moral evaluations raises some problems associated with the ways in which private conduct can interfere with the satisfaction of public responsibilities.

There are two reasons that are cited to justify the separation of private moral standards from those that are public. First, it is sometimes said that private conduct should not affect our moral assessment of the actions of individuals in their public roles. This is so because what one does in private is not necessarily related to what one does at work or in professional life. Second, public standards of conduct are neither reducible to, nor expressive of, standards of private moral conduct. This reason is less practical and more conceptual; it maintains that the actual content of public moral standards is distinct from the content of private moral standards, which are more parochial and reflect individual choice or tradition.

Separating private from public standards of morality assumes that we can differentiate private roles from public ones. What one does at home, the nature of one's familial or personal relationships, and one's religious affiliation are matters relating to private moral choice. These choices not only represent an individual's sense of self but also reflect the norms that an individual has implicitly and explicitly endorsed. These norms, in turn, indicate an individual's attitudes toward conduct such as sexual relations, truth telling, child rearing, alcohol consumption, and charity. They also convey more comprehensive convictions regarding things such as religion and spirituality. One's public identity, in contrast, involves the roles and responsibilities one assumes in representing or working for organizations that serve a broad range of stakeholders with divergent interests. As a civil servant, elected representative, or a manager of a corporation, one inhabits a public sphere, composed of a plurality of individuals and groups with sometimes different private moral commitments.

The fact that the members of a public organization do not universally share private moral convictions provides advocates of the separation thesis with good reason to avoid using private moral norms to evaluate the conduct of individuals in public life. Private moral norms are controversial, subject to protracted disagreement, and either irrelevant or ineffectual in accomplishing the goals of public organizations. Moreover, what individuals do in private, as a matter of personal choice, often has little impact on their ability to serve the public in their professional lives. Thus, it is natural to advocate standards of public conduct that express broad-based, publicly acknowledged values, such as fairness, honesty, trustworthiness, autonomy, impartiality, and welfare, rather than more parochial moral norms that proscribe a range of behavior that is not always relevant to fulfilling the roles and responsibilities of a public figure. This way of distinguishing private from public moral norms also implies that public organizations should not require individuals to set aside or unduly sacrifice their private moral convictions in assuming public roles.

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