Total quality management (TQM) is a management philosophy focused on continuously improving processes and meeting customer expectations. It involves management, employees, suppliers, and customers working together to meet quality standards. Key aspects of TQM include cross-functional teams, continuous process improvement, and participative management. TQM was pioneered by W. Edwards Deming and saw success when implemented in post-war Japanese industries. While initially slow to adopt it, American companies eventually embraced TQM principles to regain competitiveness in global markets.

1. Total quality management or TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously
[1]
improving the quality of products and processes.
TQM functions on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone
who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organization. In
other words, TQM capitalizes on the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and even
customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. Considering the practices of TQM as
discussed in six empirical studies, Cua, McKone, and Schroeder (2001) identified the nine common TQM
practices as cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management,
customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-
[2]
functional training, and employee involvement.
Total Quality Management (TQM) refers to management methods used to enhance quality and productivity in
organizations, particularly businesses. TQM is a comprehensive system approach that works horizontally across an
organization, involving all departments and employees and extending backward and forward to include both
suppliers and clients/customers.
TQM is only one of many acronyms used to label management systems that focus on quality. Other acronyms that
have been used to describe similar quality management philosophies and programs include CQI (continuous quality
improvement), SQC (statistical quality control), QFD (quality function deployment), QIDW (quality in daily
work), TQC (total quality control), etc. Like many of these other systems, TQM provides a framework for
implementing effective quality and productivity initiatives that can increase the profitability and competitiveness
of organizations.
Origins of Tqm
Although TQM techniques were adopted prior to World War II by a number of organizations, the creation of the
Total Quality Management philosophy is generally attributed to Dr. W. Edwards Deming. In the late 1920s, while
working as a summer employee at Western Electric Company in Chicago, he found worker motivation systems to
be degrading and economically unproductive; incentives were tied directly to quantity of output,
and inefficient post-production inspection systems were used to find flawed goods.
Deming teamed up in the 1930s with Walter A. Shewhart, a Bell Telephone Company statistician whose work
convinced Deming that statistical control techniques could be used to supplant traditional management methods.
Using Shewhart's theories, Deming devised a statistically controlled management process that provided managers
with a means of determining when to intervene in an industrial process and when to leave it alone. Deming got a
chance to put Shewhart's statistical-quality-control techniques, as well as his own management philosophies, to
the test during World War II. Government managers found that his techniques could be easily taught to engineers
and workers, and then quickly implemented in over-burdened war production plants.
One of Deming's clients, the U.S. State Department, sent him to Japan in 1947 as part of a national effort
to revitalize the war-devastated Japanese economy. It was in Japan that Deming found an enthusiastic reception
for his management ideas. Deming introduced his statistical process control, or statistical quality control,
programs into Japan's ailing manufacturing sector. Those techniques are credited with instillinga dedication to
quality and productivity in the Japanese industrial and service sectors that allowed the country to become a
dominant force in the global economy by the 1980s.
While Japan's industrial sector embarked on a quality initiative during the middle 1900s, most American companies
continued to produce mass quantities of goods using traditional management techniques. America prospered as
war-ravaged European countries looked to the United States for manufactured goods. In addition, a domestic
population boom resulted in surging U.S. markets. But by the 1970s some American industries had come to be
regarded as inferior to their Asian and European competitors. As a result of increasing economic globalization
during the 1980s, made possible in part by advanced information technologies, the U.S. manufacturing sector fell
prey to more competitive producers, particularly in Japan.
In response to massive market share gains achieved by Japanese companies during the late 1970s and 1980s, U.S.
producers scrambled to adopt quality and productivity techniques that might restore their competitiveness.
Indeed, Deming's philosophies and systems were finally recognized in the United States, and Deming himself
became a highly-sought-after lecturer and author. The "Deming Management Method" became the model for many
American corporations eager to improve. And Total Quality Management, the phrase applied to quality initiatives
proffered by Deming and other management gurus, became a staple of American enterprise by the late 1980s. By
the early 1990s, the U.S. manufacturing sector had achieved marked gains in quality and productivity.
Tqm Principles
Specifics related to the framework and implementation of TQM vary between different management professionals
and TQM program facilitators, and the passage of time has inevitably brought changes in TQM emphases and
language. But all TQM philosophies share common threads that emphasize quality, teamwork,
and proactive philosophies of management and process improvement. As Howard Weiss and Mark Gershon observed
in Production and Operations Management, "the terms quality management, quality control, and quality assurance
often are used interchangeably. Regardless of the term used within any business, this function is directly
responsible for the continual evaluation of the effectiveness of the total quality system." They go on
to delineate the basic elements of total quality management as expounded by the American Society for Quality
Control: 1) policy, planning, and administration; 2) product design and design change control; 3) control of
purchased material; 4) production quality control; 5) user contact and field performance; 6) corrective action; and
7) employee selection, training, and motivation.

2. For his part, Deming pointed to all of these factors as cornerstones of his total quality philosophies. In his book Out
of the Crisis, he contended that companies needed to create an overarching business environment that
emphasized improvement of products and services over short-term financial goals. He argued that if such a
philosophy was adhered to, various aspects of business—ranging from training to system improvement to manager-
worker relationships—would become far more healthy and, ultimately, profitable. But while Deming
was contemptuous of companies that based their business decisions on statistics that emphasized quantity over
quality, he firmly believed that a well-conceived system of statistical process control could be an invaluable TQM
tool. Only through the use of statistics, Deming argued, can managers know exactly what their problems are, learn
how to fix them, and gauge the company's progress in achieving quality and organizational objectives.
Making Tqm Work
Joseph Jablonski, author of Implementing TQM, identified three characteristics necessary for TQM to succeed
within an organization: participative management; continuous process improvement; and the utilization of teams.
Participative management refers to the intimate involvement of all members of a company in the management
process, thus de-emphasizing traditional top-down management methods. In other words, managers set policies
and make key decisions only with the input and guidance of the subordinates that will have to implement and
adhere to the directives. This technique improves upper management's grasp of operations and, more importantly,
is an important motivator for workers who begin to feel like they have control and ownership of the process in
which they participate.
Continuous process improvement, the second characteristic, entails the recognition of small, incremental gains
toward the goal of total quality. Large gains are accomplished by small, sustainable improvements over a long
term. This concept necessitates a long-term approach by managers and the willingness to invest in the present for
benefits that manifest themselves in the future. A corollary of continuous improvement is that workers and
management develop an appreciation for, and confidence in, TQM over a period of time.
Teamwork, the third necessary ingredient for the success of TQM, involves the organization of cross-functional
teams within the company. This multidisciplinary team approach helps workers to share knowledge, identify
problems and opportunities, derive a comprehensive understanding of their role in the over-all process, and align
their work goals with those of the organization.
Jablonski also identified six attributes of successful TQM programs:
Customer focus (includes internal customers such as other departments and coworkers as well as external
customers)
Process focus
Prevention versus inspection (development of a process that incorporates quality during production,
rather than a process that attempts to achieve quality through inspection after resources have already
been consumed to produce the good or service)
Employee empowerment and compensation
Fact-based decision making
Receptiveness to feedback.
Implementing Tqm
Jablonski offers a five-phase guideline for implementing total quality management: preparation, planning,
assessment, implementation, and diversification. Each phase is designed to be executed as part of a long-term
goal of continually increasing quality and productivity. Jablonski's approach is one of many that has been applied
to achieve TQM, but contains the key elements commonly associated with other popular total quality systems.
Preparation—During preparation, management decides whether or not to pursue a TQM program. They
undergo initial training, identify needs for outside consultants, develop a specific vision and goals, draft a
corporate policy, commit the necessary resources, and communicate the goals throughout the
organization.
Planning—In the planning stage, a detailed plan of implementation is drafted (including budget and
schedule), the infrastructure that will support the program is established, and the resources necessary to
begin the plan are earmarked and secured.
Assessment—This stage emphasizes a thorough self-assessment—with input from customers/clients—of the
qualities and characteristics of individuals in the company, as well as the company as a whole.
Implementation—At this point, the organization can already begin to determine its return on its
investment in TQM. It is during this phase that support personnel are chosen and trained, and managers
and the work force are trained. Training entails raising workers' awareness of exactly what TQM involves
and how it can help them and the company. It also explains each worker's role in the program and
explains what is expected of all the workers.
Diversification—In this stage, managers utilize their TQM experiences and successes to bring groups
outside the organization (suppliers, distributors, and other companies have impact the business's overall
health) into the quality process. Diversification activities include training, rewarding, supporting, and
partnering with groups that are embraced by the organization's TQM initiatives.
Further Reading:
Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1982.
Hiam, Alexander. Closing the Quality Gap: Lessons from America's Leading Companies. Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992.
Hunt, V. Daniel. Quality in America: How to Implement a Competitive Quality Program. Business One Irwin, 1992.

3. Jablonski, Joseph R. Implementing TQM. 2nd ed. Technical Management Consortium, Inc., 1992.
McManus, Kevin. "Is Quality Dead?" IIE Solutions. July 1999.
Roberts, Harry V., and Bernard F. Sergesketter. Quality Is Personal: A Foundation for Total Quality
Management. The Free Press, 1993.
Weiss, Howard J., and Mark E. Gershon. Production and Operations Management. Allyn and Bacon, 1989.
Youngless, Jay."Total Quality Misconception." Quality in Manufacturing. January 2000.
See also: ISO 9000; Quality Control
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/tqm#ixzz1fcmorDT3
A performance appraisal, employee appraisal, performance review, or (career) development discussion[1] is a
method by which the job performance of an employee is evaluated (generally in terms of quality, quantity, cost,
and time) typically by the corresponding manager or supervisor.[2] A performance appraisal is a part of guiding and
managing career development. It is the process of obtaining, analyzing, and recording information about the
relative worth of an employee to the organization. Performance appraisal is an analysis of an employee's recent
successes and failures, personal strengths and weaknesses, and suitability for promotion or further training. It is
also the judgement of an employee's performance in a job based on considerations other than productivity alone.
Aims
Generally, the aims of a performance appraisal are to:
Give employees feedback on performance
Identify employee training needs
Document criteria used to allocate organizational rewards
Form a basis for personnel decisions: salary increases, promotions, disciplinary actions, bonuses, etc.
Provide the opportunity for organizational diagnosis and development
Facilitate communication between employee and employer
Validate selection techniques and human resource policies to meet federal Equal Employment
Opportunity requirements.
To improve performance through counseling, coaching and development.
Methods
A common approach to assessing performance is to use a numerical or scalar rating system whereby managers are
asked to score an individual against a number of objectives/attributes. In some companies, employees receive
assessments from their manager, peers, subordinates, and customers, while also performing a self assessmentThis
is known as a 360-degree appraisal and forms good communication patterns.
The most popular methods used in the performance appraisal process include the following:
Management by objectives
360-degree appraisal
Behavioral observation scale
Behaviorally anchored rating scales
Trait-based systems, which rely on factors such as integrity and conscientiousness, are also used by businesses but
have been replaced primarily by more objective and results-oriented methods. The scientific literature on the
subject provides evidence that assessing employees on factors such as these should be avoided. The reasons for
this are twofold:
1) Trait-based systems are by definition based on personality traits and as such may not be related directly to
successful job performance. In addition, personality dimensions tend to be static, and while an employee can
change a behavior they cannot change their personality. For example, a person who lacks integrity may stop lying
to a manager because they have been caught, but they still have low integrity and are likely to lie again when the
threat of being caught is gone.
2) Trait-based systems, because they are vague, are more easily influenced by office politics, causing them to be
less reliable as a source of information on an employee's true performance. The vagueness of these instruments
allows managers to assess the employee based upon subjective feelings instead of objective observations about
how the employee has performed his or her specific duties. These systems are also more likely to leave a company
open to discrimination claims because a manager can make biased decisions without having to back them up with
specific behavioral information.
See also

4. Employment integrity testing
Team Composition
References
1. ^ MIT Human Resources
2. ^ "Creating an Effective Employee Performance Management System". Retrieved 22 December 2009.
Sources
Thomas F. Patterson (1987). Refining Performance Appraisal. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
Terrence H. Murphy (2004-03-24) (PDF). Performance Appraisals. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
1998, Archer North &Associatiates, Introduction to Performance Appraisal, http://www.performance-
appraisal.com/intro.htm
U.S. Department of the Interior, Performance Appraisal Handbook
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/performance-appraisal#ixzz1fcnoy3hf
Slippery slope
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the logical argument. For the novel, see The Slippery Slope.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding
citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)
In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope (also known as thin edge of the wedge, or the camel's nose) is a
classic form of argument, arguably an informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small
first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect, much like an object given a
small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom.[1]The strength of such an argument
depends on the warrant,[disambiguation needed ]
i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process which leads to
the significant effect. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum
fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to
category B. Modern usage avoids the fallacy by acknowledging the possibility of this middle ground.
Contents
[hide]
1 Description
o 1.1 Examples
2 As a fallacy
3 Supporting analogies
o 3.1 Momentum or frictional
o 3.2 Induction
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links
[edit]Description
The argument takes on one of various semantical forms:

5.  In the classical form, the arguer suggests that making a move in a particular direction starts something on
a path down a "slippery slope". Having started down the metaphorical slope, it will continue to slide in the
same direction (the arguer usually sees the direction as a negative direction, hence the "sliding
downwards" metaphor).
 Modern usage includes a logically valid form, in which a minor action causes a significant impact through
a long chain of logical relationships. Note that establishing this chain of logical implication (or quantifying
the relevant probabilities) makes this form logically valid. The slippery slope argument remains a fallacy if
such a chain is not established.
[edit]Examples
Eugene Volokh's Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope (PDF version) analyzes various types of such slippage.
Volokh uses the example "gun registration may lead to gun confiscation" to describe six types of slippage:
1. Cost-lowering: Once all gun owners have registered their firearms, the government will know exactly
from whom to confiscate them. Gun-control opponents argue against limits on the sale of "assault
weapons" because the confiscation of sportsmen's shotguns will soon follow. Meanwhile, government
officials defend their inflexible enforcement of a regulation, even in circumstances that some see as
unfair, because allowing an exception would open the floodgates.
2. Legal rule combination: Previously the government might need to search every house to confiscate
guns, and such a search would violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Registration would eliminate that problem.
3. Attitude altering: People may begin to think of gun ownership as a privilege rather than a right, and
thus regard gun confiscation less seriously.
4. Small change tolerance, colloquially referred to as the "boiling frog": People may ignore gun
registration because it constitutes just a small change, but when combined with other small changes,
it could lead to the equivalent of confiscation.
5. Political power: The hassle of registration may reduce the number of gun owners, and thus the political
power of the gun-ownership bloc.
6. Political momentum: Once the government has passed this gun law it becomes easier to pass other
gun laws, including laws like confiscation.
Slippery slope can also be used as a retort to the establishment of arbitrary boundaries or limitations. For
example, one might argue that rent prices must be kept to $1,000 or less a month to be affordable to tenants in
an area of a city. A retort invoking the slippery slope could go in two different directions:
 Once such price ceilings become accepted, they could be slowly lowered, eventually driving out the
landlords and worsening the problem.
 If a $1,000 monthly rent is affordable, why isn't $1,025 or $1,050? By lumping the tenants into one abstract
entity, the argument renders itself vulnerable to a slippery slope argument. A more careful argument in
favor of price ceilings would statistically characterize the number of tenants who can afford housing at
various levels based on income and choose a ceiling that achieves a specific goal, such as housing 80% of
the working families in the area.
Sometimes a single action does indeed induce similar latter action. For example, judiciary decisions may
set legal precedents.
[edit]As a fallacy
The heart of the slippery slope fallacy lies in abusing the intuitively appreciable transitivity of implication,
claiming that A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D and so on, until one finally claims that A leads to Z. While
this is formally valid when the premises are taken as a given, each of those contingencies needs to be factually

6. established before the relevant conclusion can be drawn. Slippery slope fallacies occur when this is not done—
an argument that supports the relevant premises is not fallacious and thus isn't a slippery slope fallacy.
Often proponents of a "slippery slope" contention propose a long series of intermediate events as the
mechanism of connection leading from A to B. The "camel's nose" provides one example of this: once a camel
has managed to place its nose within a tent, the rest of the camel will inevitably follow. In this sense the
slippery slope resembles the genetic fallacy, but in reverse.
As an example of how an appealing slippery slope argument can be unsound, suppose that whenever a tree
falls down, it has a 95% chance of knocking over another tree. We might conclude that soon, a great amount of
trees would fall; however this is not the case. There is a 5% chance that no more trees will fall, a 4.75% chance
that exactly one more tree will fall (and thus a 9.75% chance of 1 or fewer additional trees falling), and so on.
There is a 92.3% chance that 50 or fewer additional trees will fall. The expected value of trees that will fall is
20. In the absence of some momentum factor that makes later trees more likely to fall than earlier ones, this
"domino effect" approaches zero probability.
This form of argument often provides evaluative judgments on social change: once an exception is made to
some rule, nothing will hold back further, more egregious exceptions to that rule.
Note that these arguments may indeed have validity, but they require some independent justification of the
connection between their terms: otherwise the argument (as a logical tool) remains fallacious.
The "slippery slope" approach may also relate to the conjunction fallacy: with a long string of steps leading to
an undesirable conclusion, the chance of all the steps actually occurring in sequence is less than the chance of
any one of the individual steps occurring alone.
[edit]Supporting analogies
Several common analogies support slippery slope arguments. Among these are analogies to physical
momentum, to frictional forces and to mathematical induction.
[edit]Momentum or frictional
In the momentum analogy, the occurrence of event A will initiate a process which will lead inevitably to
occurrence of event B. The process may involve causal relationships between intermediate events, but in any
case the slippery slope schema depends for its soundness on the validity of some analogue for the physical
principle of momentum. This may take the form of a domino theory orcontagion formulation. The domino theory
principle may indeed explain why a chain of dominos collapses, but an independent argument is necessary to
explain why a similar principle would hold in other circumstances.
An analogy similar to the momentum analogy is based on friction. In physics, the static co-efficient of friction is
always greater than the kinetic co-efficient, meaning that it takes more force to make an object start sliding than
to keep it sliding. Arguments that use this analogy assume that people's habits or inhibitions act in the same
way. If a particular rule A is considered inviolable, some force akin to static friction is regarded as maintaining
the status quo, preventing movement in the direction of abrogating A. If, on the other hand, an exception is
made to A, the countervailing resistive force is akin to the weaker kinetic frictional force. Validity of this analogy
requires an argument showing that the initial changes actually make further change in the direction of
abrogating A easier.
[edit]Induction
Another analogy resembles mathematical induction. Consider the context of evaluating each one of a class of
events A1, A2, A3,..., An (for example, is the occurrence of the event harmful or not?). We assume that for
each k, the event Ak is similar to Ak+1, so that Ak has the same evaluation as Ak+1.
Therefore every An has the same evaluation as A1.
For example, the following arguments fit the slippery slope scheme with the inductive interpretation

7.  If we grant a building permit to build a religious structure in our community, then there will be no bound on
the number of building permits we will have to grant for religious structures and the nature of this city will
change. This argument instantiates the slippery slope scheme as follows: Ak is the situation in
which k building permits are issued. One first argues that the situation of k permits is not significantly
different from the one with k + 1 permits. Moreover, issuing permits to build 1000 religious structures in a
city of 300,000 will clearly change the nature of the community.
In most real-world applications such as the one above, the naïve inductive analogy is flawed because each
building permit will not be evaluated the same way (for example, the more religious structures in a community,
the less likely a permit will be granted for another).
Slippery slope
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the logical argument. For the novel, see The Slippery Slope.
In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope (also known as thin edge of the wedge, or the camel's nose) is a
classic form of argument, arguably an informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small
first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect, much like an object given a
small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom.[1]The strength of such an argument
depends on the warrant,[disambiguation needed ]
i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process which leads to
the significant effect. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum
fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to
category B. Modern usage avoids the fallacy by acknowledging the possibility of this middle ground.
Description
The argument takes on one of various semantical forms:
 In the classical form, the arguer suggests that making a move in a particular direction starts something on
a path down a "slippery slope". Having started down the metaphorical slope, it will continue to slide in the
same direction (the arguer usually sees the direction as a negative direction, hence the "sliding
downwards" metaphor).
 Modern usage includes a logically valid form, in which a minor action causes a significant impact through
a long chain of logical relationships. Note that establishing this chain of logical implication (or quantifying
the relevant probabilities) makes this form logically valid. The slippery slope argument remains a fallacy if
such a chain is not established.
Examples
Eugene Volokh's Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope (PDF version) analyzes various types of such slippage.
Volokh uses the example "gun registration may lead to gun confiscation" to describe six types of slippage:
1. Cost-lowering: Once all gun owners have registered their firearms, the government will know exactly
from whom to confiscate them. Gun-control opponents argue against limits on the sale of "assault
weapons" because the confiscation of sportsmen's shotguns will soon follow. Meanwhile, government
officials defend their inflexible enforcement of a regulation, even in circumstances that some see as
unfair, because allowing an exception would open the floodgates.
2. Legal rule combination: Previously the government might need to search every house to confiscate
guns, and such a search would violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Registration would eliminate that problem.

8. 3. Attitude altering: People may begin to think of gun ownership as a privilege rather than a right, and
thus regard gun confiscation less seriously.
4. Small change tolerance, colloquially referred to as the "boiling frog": People may ignore gun
registration because it constitutes just a small change, but when combined with other small changes,
it could lead to the equivalent of confiscation.
5. Political power: The hassle of registration may reduce the number of gun owners, and thus the political
power of the gun-ownership bloc.
6. Political momentum: Once the government has passed this gun law it becomes easier to pass other
gun laws, including laws like confiscation.
Slippery slope can also be used as a retort to the establishment of arbitrary boundaries or limitations. For
example, one might argue that rent prices must be kept to $1,000 or less a month to be affordable to tenants in
an area of a city. A retort invoking the slippery slope could go in two different directions:
 Once such price ceilings become accepted, they could be slowly lowered, eventually driving out the
landlords and worsening the problem.
 If a $1,000 monthly rent is affordable, why isn't $1,025 or $1,050? By lumping the tenants into one abstract
entity, the argument renders itself vulnerable to a slippery slope argument. A more careful argument in
favor of price ceilings would statistically characterize the number of tenants who can afford housing at
various levels based on income and choose a ceiling that achieves a specific goal, such as housing 80% of
the working families in the area.
Sometimes a single action does indeed induce similar latter action. For example, judiciary decisions may
set legal precedents.
As a fallacy
The heart of the slippery slope fallacy lies in abusing the intuitively appreciable transitivity of implication,
claiming that A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D and so on, until one finally claims that A leads to Z. While
this is formally valid when the premises are taken as a given, each of those contingencies needs to be factually
established before the relevant conclusion can be drawn. Slippery slope fallacies occur when this is not done—
an argument that supports the relevant premises is not fallacious and thus isn't a slippery slope fallacy.
Often proponents of a "slippery slope" contention propose a long series of intermediate events as the
mechanism of connection leading from A to B. The "camel's nose" provides one example of this: once a camel
has managed to place its nose within a tent, the rest of the camel will inevitably follow. In this sense the
slippery slope resembles the genetic fallacy, but in reverse.
As an example of how an appealing slippery slope argument can be unsound, suppose that whenever a tree
falls down, it has a 95% chance of knocking over another tree. We might conclude that soon, a great amount of
trees would fall; however this is not the case. There is a 5% chance that no more trees will fall, a 4.75% chance
that exactly one more tree will fall (and thus a 9.75% chance of 1 or fewer additional trees falling), and so on.
There is a 92.3% chance that 50 or fewer additional trees will fall. The expected value of trees that will fall is
20. In the absence of some momentum factor that makes later trees more likely to fall than earlier ones, this
"domino effect" approaches zero probability.
This form of argument often provides evaluative judgments on social change: once an exception is made to
some rule, nothing will hold back further, more egregious exceptions to that rule.
Note that these arguments may indeed have validity, but they require some independent justification of the
connection between their terms: otherwise the argument (as a logical tool) remains fallacious.

9. The "slippery slope" approach may also relate to the conjunction fallacy: with a long string of steps leading to
an undesirable conclusion, the chance of all the steps actually occurring in sequence is less than the chance of
any one of the individual steps occurring alone.
Supporting analogies
Several common analogies support slippery slope arguments. Among these are analogies to physical
momentum, to frictional forces and to mathematical induction.
Momentum or frictional
In the momentum analogy, the occurrence of event A will initiate a process which will lead inevitably to
occurrence of event B. The process may involve causal relationships between intermediate events, but in any
case the slippery slope schema depends for its soundness on the validity of some analogue for the physical
principle of momentum. This may take the form of a domino theory orcontagion formulation. The domino theory
principle may indeed explain why a chain of dominos collapses, but an independent argument is necessary to
explain why a similar principle would hold in other circumstances.
An analogy similar to the momentum analogy is based on friction. In physics, the static co-efficient of friction is
always greater than the kinetic co-efficient, meaning that it takes more force to make an object start sliding than
to keep it sliding. Arguments that use this analogy assume that people's habits or inhibitions act in the same
way. If a particular rule A is considered inviolable, some force akin to static friction is regarded as maintaining
the status quo, preventing movement in the direction of abrogating A. If, on the other hand, an exception is
made to A, the countervailing resistive force is akin to the weaker kinetic frictional force. Validity of this analogy
requires an argument showing that the initial changes actually make further change in the direction of
abrogating A easier.
Induction
Another analogy resembles mathematical induction. Consider the context of evaluating each one of a class of
events A1, A2, A3,..., An (for example, is the occurrence of the event harmful or not?). We assume that for
each k, the event Ak is similar to Ak+1, so that Ak has the same evaluation as Ak+1.
Therefore every An has the same evaluation as A1.
For example, the following arguments fit the slippery slope scheme with the inductive interpretation
 If we grant a building permit to build a religious structure in our community, then there will be no bound on
the number of building permits we will have to grant for religious structures and the nature of this city will
change. This argument instantiates the slippery slope scheme as follows: Ak is the situation in
which k building permits are issued. One first argues that the situation of k permits is not significantly
different from the one with k + 1 permits. Moreover, issuing permits to build 1000 religious structures in a
city of 300,000 will clearly change the nature of the community.
In most real-world applications such as the one above, the naïve inductive analogy is flawed because each
building permit will not be evaluated the same way (for example, the more religious structures in a community,
the less likely a permit will be granted for another).
The "Slippery Slope" Argument
Rick Garlikov
The "slippery slope" argument format (also known as the "camel's nose in the tent," the "give an
inch," the "crack in the foundation", and other names) is essentially that if you make any
exceptions to a rule, or if you make rules that depend on fine distinctions, pretty soon people will
be ignoring the rule or rules entirely because they won't accept the difference between the
exception and everything else. "If you allow exceptions to a rule, it creates a slope away from the
absoluteness of the rule, down which people will slide further and further until they will not obey
the rule at all." "If you give people an inch, they will take a mile" or "If you let the camel put its

10. nose into the tent, pretty soon the whole camel will be in your tent." As I write this the most
recent application I have seen of the argument is that "if we allow embryonic stem cell research,
which sacrifices early-stage embryos, the next thing will be that infanticide and euthanasia of the
terminably ill will be permitted so that we can use their body parts for research or cures. If you
don't hold all life to be sacred, then no life will be held to be sacred."
The slippery slope argument is clearly invalid if it is meant to be a point of logic, for it does not
follow that "if b is an exception to A, then no part of A is true." Specific exceptions to a rule or
principle do not in any way logically imply that the rule is otherwise false or never justifiably
applicable in any cases. In fact, calling something an "exception" points out that only it is the
relevant act that the rule does not cover. If, for example, a pharmaceutical drug should be used
only by people who have asthma, that does not imply people should also take it for arthritis or
pregnancy. Permitting stem cell research on embryos does not logically imply that sacrificing
infants or terminally ill patients is acceptable.
It appears the argument is meant to be more an argument about people's psychology, and, spelled
out, it seems to be something more like "if you make any exceptions to a rule, particularly a
cherished or time-honored rule, people will think the rule arbitrary to begin with and will see no
reason to follow it at all." Hence, any exceptions undermine respect for a rule, and thus
eventually lead to the rule's not being followed at all. Or another intended argument might be
"people cannot generally make fine distinctions, so if you make an exception to a (time-honored)
rule, people will think you have shown the rule to be flawed and therefore unnecessary to
follow."
A slightly different, and more sophisticated version of the principle might be "if you make
exceptions to a rule, people will generalize the reasons for that exception and apply them to other
aspects of the rule to which those generalizations will also apply." In the embryo issue, the
argument would be that "if you allow embryonic stem cell research people will see that
defenseless human life has only instrumental value --value for helping others-- so nothing will
stop people from wanting to kill infants or people with terminal diseases to help others." Or it
might be phrased as "if you allow embryonic stem cell research because embryos are not viable
on their own, then you will end up allowing infanticide and termination of the lives of the
terminally ill because they are not viable on their own either." I will deal with this kind of
version of the slippery slope argument last.
The Flaws of the Slippery Slope Arguments
While there are people who do not follow rules or laws, it is not clear they need some sort of
exception to do so. If a prescription or an over-the-counter drug label says "take one capsule
every four hours", they might decide that two capsules every two hours will do them even more
good, even though most people know that might be a harmful dosage. There are people who rob,
cheat, embezzle, drive drunk, and murder; there are people who run red lights intentionally when
they think they can get by, drive slow in the fast lanes of freeways, drive 25 mph faster than the
speed limits, and people who walk on the grass or litter the roadside when signs clearly say not
to. But these people are not breaking rules because there is some sort of exception to them; they
are just breaking the rules because they think they do not need to follow rules they don't like.
They may or may not even have a reason they think justifies breaking the rule. If they do have a
reason, it is not likely to be because there is some exception to the rule so the rule shouldn't
count at all. I don't think speeders tend to go to court and argue that if it is okay for ambulances
to exceed the speed limit they should be allowed to also, or that if it is okay for NASCAR drivers
to go 200 mph on a track, they should be able to go as fast as they can on the highways.
Also there are people who break rules because they see other people get away with breaking
them, and think that it must be acceptable. This too has nothing to do with fine distinctions or
exceptions in rules.
Now, it is true that if there are no laws governing a certain kind of business practice, one
company's legal transgression of a "latent" ethical practice or social more will often encourage
other companies to do the same or go even "further." But that is a different kind of case. That is
a situation where (business) people tend to believe either or both of the following statements --
statements which are both actually false:
1) whatever is legal (i.e., whatever is not illegal) is moral and right to do.
2) if there is no stated (accepted) moral prohibition against something, it must be moral.

11. The second proposition is false because there can be, and often is, a difference between what is
moral and what is thought or said to be moral. This is similar to the difference between what
happened in the past and what gets put into history books; the two are not necessarily the same
thing. Another analogy is math: the correct answer to a math problem is not necessarily what
someone says or thinks it is, and there is a correct answer whether anyone knows it or not.
Morality is what ought to be the case, whether anyone knows it or not or has said it or not.
The first is false because laws tend to be made when legislators think there is some necessity for
them. Legislators do not try to put into law every moral or social principle or value they know.
If no one in a society has ever committed a particular act, and no one is ever even imagined to
possibly commit such an act, there is not likely to be a law proscribing the act. Even when there
are laws prohibiting certain general categories of acts, such as obscenity, it often requires a court
decision to declare whether a particular act falls into a given category or not.
Even though there are a great many laws, no one can reasonably think that laws are co-extensive
with morality or moral principles. For example, there is much concern with how the rapid pace
of technology outgrows settled law as totally unanticipated business practices (such as sharing
music online) become possible and put into use. Or fifty years ago, no one thought it was
necessary to make laws involving petri dish or test tube embryos or their parentage; and before
cloning became imagined and possible, no one thought to create laws prohibiting it. This applies
not only to technology but to services as well. Even if there were laws prohibiting the selling of
babies, would that mean it is not allowed for attorneys or adoption agencies to charge huge sums
to process the work involved in adopting children, or is that just a mere business opportunity?
Until the costs became substantial for adoption, legislatures and courts were not faced with
having to draw lines or get involved in this sort of issue. As new ways are invented essentially to
circumvent old laws, legislation is often passed to shore up the loopholes or prevent the
circumvention.
Moreover, we also do not tend to state even all the moral principles, or particularly their
implications, that we have. When parents tell their battling children to quit hitting each other,
they are not giving implicit permission for the kids then to start kicking or spitting at each other
or trying to stab each other with pencils or scissors. The general principle might be to "stop
trying to hurt each other" but even that needs modification so that some necessary hurts might be
permitted or necessitated -- as in putting a painful antiseptic on an open wound, or having to
make a tourniquet or an incision for a snake bite, etc. A parent might even permit certain forms
of retaliation for an unjustified and hurtful attack. We have a whole repertoire of moral
principles or moral ideas by which we make decisions without spelling them out even to
ourselves, unless we face some situation that requires us to try to articulate the rule by which we
are operating or making a decision. Even when we try to articulate our reasons, we often do not
cite the reason we actually use. For example people will often cite the Golden Rule for doing
something helpful for someone else, but the actual reason was that they wanted to help the other
person, not that they would want the other person to help them. When you give first aid to
someone, you don't ask whether you would want first aid; you simply see they are hurt and need
help that you know how to give and can give. Even if you try to reason through when to give
first aid and when not to try, it will end up being far more complex than just thinking about what
you would want to have happen if you were injured.
In general we often do not spell out all our moral principles but draw upon them or discover
them as we need to. The world was revolted by the Nazi genocides but until the Nazis did it, no
one thinking that a civilized country would do such a thing felt the need to say "genocide is
wrong" even though if anyone were asked, they would think it was. We just do not go around,
even as a society, stating all the principles or acts we can think of that would govern all possible
behavior.
There are many possible things that are immoral which are not illegal simply because no one
ever suspected they would be done and therefore thought it necessary to pass a law to prohibit.
And there are many immoral things which no one ever suspected need to be stated because no
one ever imagined anyone's doing them. It is simply false that everything is moral which does
not have a law against it; and it is also false that anything is moral which no one, or no culture or
group, ever said was not. New laws have to be, and get, initiated and passed all the time because
someone does something no one ever previously would have thought needed to be proscribed,
even though if they had imagined someone actually thinking of doing the act they would have
recognized immediately they thought it would be very wrong to do.

12. Moreover, there are even laws from time to time that people argue are immoral and need to be
amended or abolished. Often the moral argument will win out, and the laws will be changed or
abolished because they will have been seen to be immoral. The law, and conventional practices,
do not always reflect at any given time what considered moral analysis might show to be right
and wrong. What is merely legal is not always, nor necessarily, moral.
In short, business practices that cross ethical boundaries often do so for reasons other than that
laws are passed which have exceptions or which depend on reasonable distinctions. There are,
of course, laws which make distinctions that are either unreasonable or that only a specializing
attorney would likely know, and such laws may easily be transgressed by unsuspecting people
who do not realize they are violating a law. And there are laws that get transgressed by good
people who think they are bad laws that do not deserve to be obeyed. But again, these case have
nothing to do with supposed slippery slope behavior or slippery slope arguments.
Slippery slope reasoning is, by itself, in fact, almost never feared. If it were, we would have to
worry about large segments of the populations always running red traffic lights, since they are
just like green traffic lights except for their color, and if you can go through green lights, why not
red ones. Or we would have to worry about wholesale adultery since if being married allows
people to have consensual sex, why should it matter who it is with. And, if people really used
slippery slope reasoning, they would have no regard for property rights, since if owners can do
with their property as they wish, why not everyone else! Slippery slope advocates would have to
argue: Once we start on the slippery slope of allowing men to have sex with one woman (their
wife), it is just one more step down the slippery slope till they will be having sex with all women
or any woman. Once we let someone do what they want with their own property, it will be just a
matter of time before they start doing what they want with other people's property. Once we let
people go through a green light, it is just another step on the slippery slope till they are going
through red lights en masse.
But the fact is that normally we neither use slippery slope reasoning nor fear its being used.
Normal people and the courts are generally perfectly capable of making distinctions between one
kind of case and another, especially when relevant differences are pointed out to them. In
important social issues, it is highly unlikely that one kind of case will be treated like another just
because they are alike in a few ways, particularly a few trivial or superficial ways. If they are
treated alike at all, it will because they are considered to be similar in morally relevantways or
because they each have their own (different) rationales that justify the same treatment. That does
preclude mistakes in such reasoning from being made. But there are far more likely and
prevalent errors that lead to such mistakes than mere slippery slope ones.
At this point I wish to consider the more subtle version of the slippery slope argument -- that if
you make exceptions to a rule, people will generalize the reasons for that exception and apply
them to other aspects of the rule to which those generalizations will also apply. I gave two
examples above.
The problem here is not the practice of generalizing from the reasons for an exception; the
problem is generalizing from the wrong reasons for the exception, or generalizing from reasons
or principles that should not have been the rationale used or given for the exception in the first
place, assuming, for argument's sake here that the exception is a justified exception. This kind of
situation arises either (1) when a faulty justification is given for the exception that is permitted
and people accept that as the actual justification, or (2) when people incorrectly infer what the
justification for the exception is. In the above embryo research case, neither of the two rationales
stated (and commonly inferred by opponents of stem cell research) is the actual or best rationale
given for permitting embryonic stem cell research. The actual argument probably would be
something more along the lines that have to do with lack of sufficient cell differentiation for the
embryo to have ever attained anything like personhood, self-awareness, or any level of
consciousness -- in short, with nothing of the sort yet having been formed that makes life in any
way worthwhile or something to be clung to or desired by the cells in question -- that although
they have the potential to become a human being, they are not yet a human being, and that they
are closer in relevant ways to the egg and the sperm cells that were just mated, rather than to the
human being that they could become if implanted in a womb successfully. And since we do not
consider unfertilized eggs or sperm cells under normal conditions to be a loss if not turned into
living persons, we should not consider it a loss if embryonic cells are also not permitted to
become human beings or human persons, particularly since the point of the research is to help
already living humans who have put in some effort and work in life be able to reap a reasonable

13. amount of the benefits of that work. The embryos are not being created or destroyed for no
reason; there is an important benefit to be gained. That is quite different from saying that it is
okay to kill already formed humans who are no longer viable or who are defenseless.
Unfortunately in our society today, few full, rational explanations, justifications, or arguments
are ever spelled out in their entirety. Politicians and legislators do not do it; at most they repeat
their own side and ignore the opposition's and the opposition's objections, or treat them
superficially. The news media will normally not print long, detailed, intricate or involved
explanations if they were given. And even Supreme Court decisions, which contain rationales
fully available in print, give only partial arguments since dissenting opinions are published but
not taken into account, thus likely leaving flaws in many of the majority opinions. Sometimes it
is left to legal scholars to "flesh out" the likely fuller, or perhaps unrealized, arguments for, or
"standards implied" by the majority position. A complete rational argument must not only fully
explicate the reasons for a position but must also account for the problems with the opposing
view, not just ignore them.
It would be better, perhaps particularly for future generations whose circumstances may be
different, for there to be full explanations of exceptions and fine distinctions in making laws or
policy, so that inferences would not be necessary, and so that important distinctions could be
seen and not as likely discarded by error or lack of understanding.
Slippery Slope Arguments
by Douglas Walton
Studies in Critical Thinking and Informal Logic No. 4

14. From the Introduction, pp. 1-2
A SLIPPERY slope argument is a kind of argument that warns you if you take a first
step, you will find yourself involved in a sticky sequence of consequences from which you
will be unable to extricate yourself, and eventually you will wind up speeding faster and
faster towards some disastrous outcome. . . .
It is characteristic of all slippery slope arguments that a dangerous outcome of some
contemplated course of action is warned of. But the slippery slope argument is more than
just a warning. The dangerous outcome is put forward as a reason for not taking a first step
in the contemplated course of action. It is an argument put forward by a speaker to
persuade a hearer not to take this first step, on the grounds of the consequences that may
follow.
Many textbooks on informal logic and critical thinking have a section on the slippery
slope argument, where it is often treated as a fallacy. However, this book takes a case
study approach which concludes that in some cases, the slippery slope argument can be
used correctly as a reasonable type of argumentation to shift a burden of proof in a critical
discussion, while in other cases it is used incorrectly. Four types of slippery slope
argument are identified and analyzed in the four central chapters of the book. Each chapter
presents guidelines that show how each type of slippery slope argument can be used
correctly or incorrectly in a particular case.
One type of slippery slope argument warns that if some new step is taken, tried, or
allowed, it will function as a precedent, which will set another precedent, and then another,
until "all hell will break loose." This variant of the argument is also known as the (thin
edge of the) wedge argument, the camel’s nose in the tent argument, and the foot in the
door argument.
Another type of slippery slope argument consists in the use of the rejoinder "There is no
cutoff point," when an argument contains a key term that is vague, and the proponent of
the argument is having difficulty defining the term in a precise but non-arbitrary way. This
variant was known to the ancient Greeks as the "heap" argument (sorites) or "bald man"
argument), because it could be used to prove the non-existence of heaps or of bald men
(paradoxically). It has also been called the continuum argument, in recent times.
A third type of slippery slope argues that once some action is carried out, it will cause a
second event, that will in turn precipitate a causal sequence of worse and worse
consequences. This variant has been called the domino argument, or the "this could
snowball" argument (in colder climates). It has also been called the "genie in the bottle
argument," implying that a genie is an unkind force that will run out of control, causing
harm, and once it has been released from its bottle, there will be no way to get it back in.
Sometimes a full-scale slippery slope argument will combine all three of these variants
as subarguments to suggest that given a favorable climate of social acceptance, one first
step, if taken, will trigger a contagious sequence of steps, ultimately leading to a "parade of
horrors." A horror like "the police state" or "Nazi death squads" may be cited as the final
outcome.
From Chapter Two "The Sorites Slippery Slope Argument" on verbal disputes,
pp. 45-46
The sorites type of slippery slope argument is most commonly used in everyday
argumentation in situations where there is a problem, dispute, or conflict of opinions, and
the issue turns on a key term that is vague, with the result that there is a difficulty of
finding a fixed or single cutoff point along some contested continuum. Thus abortion and
euthanasia are two areas of ethical controversy that provide precisely this kind of situation.
With scientific and technical developments in life-support systems, problematic situations

15. arise where "life" is revealed as a vague concept that could be defined to support either one
side or the other of a moral dilemma.
The sorites type of slippery slope typically centersaround the definition of a contested
term or concept. What launches it, or makes it an appropriate tactic of argumentation, is
the kind of situation where one party in an argumentative discussion tries to promote his
side of the argument by using a "friendly" definition that tends to support his side, and to
go against the other side. This can occur in negotiations, and other contexts of discussion,
but it very often occurs in a critical discussion about values—for example, an ethical
controversy about what is right or wrong in a morally problematic type of situation where
there is controversy and heated disagreement. What typically occurs is that the substantive
moral dispute turns to a verbal dispute on how a key term should be defined.
Some see such verbal disputes as trivial, as leading away from resolving the main or
"real" issue. But this is only sometimes an accurate criticism. In general, a participant in a
critical discussion should have the right to advance a definition of a vague term, even if it
tends to support his side of the case. But equally, the other party in the discussion should
have the right to challenge the proposed definition, or to offer an alternative definition that
he can give reasons for preferring.
Verbal disputes can be carried to excess, but in principle, they can be helpful in
working towards resolving the issue in a critical discussion. The basic reason is that all
natural-language argumentation involves the use of vague terms that are subject to
clarification and definition.
The sorites type of slippery slope argument is one technique of exploiting a verbal
dispute or problem of vagueness. The proponent uses it to ask the respondent where he can
draw the line. If he can’t draw the line, he can be pushed, by a slippery slope argument,
into having to answer how he can reject drawing it in a way that is inimical to his own
position.
Slippery slope arguments flourish where scientific or technical developments create
new situations not covered by traditional terms, especially controversial terms like "death,"
"life," and "person." New options for defining these terms then become open to
argumentation on issues of how the new technology should be used or limited. The
abortion issue seems to be the most common example of this kind of argumentation.
Leadership And The
Changing Role Of Ethics In Public Life
The Honorable James A. Joseph
Every day leaders make decisions that are shaped by their values. Some of them
are small, affecting a few people for a short time. Others are large, setting the
long-term direction of an organization or a community. And still others are
deeper and even more enduring, determining who they are as moral persons and
the shape of the world in which they and future generations will live. In looking
at ethical leadership for a changing world, we are left, therefore, to ponder the
question posed by Socrates, "What is a virtuous man, and what is a virtuous
society?" Of course, today we are more likely to ask "What is a virtuous man or
woman and is it possible to build a virtuous society?"
It is not my intention to try and answer that question in this one lecture, but I
want to speak instead about the changing role of ethics in public life and its
implication for leadership in the new millennium. I want to argue: 1) that a new
moral consciousness is dawning in which ordinary people who strive to live
morally are now insisting that their institutions do the same; 2) that while we

16. have often used ethics to humanize and domesticate power, we now live in an
era where ethics is power; and 3) that the private virtues which gave us our
moral strength at the dawning of independent nation states must now be
transformed into public values appropriate for an interdependent world that is
integrating and fragmenting at the same time.
Let me turn first to the idea that the focus on private virtues that saw the
emergence of a small, but noisy group of virtuecrats near the end of the last
century is likely to be matched in the new millennium by a focus on the public
values that drive our institutions and empower leaders. Francis Fukayama, who
burst into national attention a few years ago with a book entitled The End of
History, has written a new book in which he draws on the latest sociological data
and new theoretical models from fields as diverse as economics and biology to
argue that though the old order has broken apart, a new social order is already
taking shape. Western society, he contends, is weaving together a new fabric of
social and moral values appropriate to the changed realities of the postindustrial
world.
To re-state Fukayama's argument in my own language is to say that for more
than a decade now, we have been preoccupied with the micro-ethics of
individual behavior, the private virtues that build character. We must now give
as much attention to the macro-ethics of large institutions and systems, the
public values that build community. You may not agree with the tactics of some
of the demonstrators who gather at meetings of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, but it should not deflect from the reality that more
and more people are concerned about how large institutions of all sort impact on
their cultures, their communities and general well- being. They want to know
whether or not these institutions have a moral center.
I think I hear the same voices and see the same changes in the moral ecology of
the twenty first century that Fukayama is writing about. The need is not only for
perspective in our political and cultural life, but in our organizational and
institutional life as well. For some time, we have been romanticizing small local
units as faster, more focused, more flexible, more friendly and more fun - to
borrow the five Fs that have made the rounds of organizational theory.
According to this view, small units can best get close to the customer, the
member or the citizen. They can be less bureaucratic and more personal. Local
groups are, thus, the easy part. Their members tend to share a history and a
geographic tie. They can identify with their neighbors and they know each
other's faces.
We live, however, in an age of non-geographic communities and huge systems -
organized industrial production, global communications, organized
bureaucracies, organized benevolence and even organized crime. We will need
to balance the natural preference for the small and informal with an
understanding of when it is necessary to have organized systems, when it is
necessary to have a strong center in order to adequately and effectively service
the parts and what social values are appropriate for whatever options we choose.
Why this renewed preoccupation with values in public life? How should the new
national discourse take place? To ask these questions is to raise again the full
question posed by Socrates "What is a virtuous man and what is a virtuous
society which educates virtuous men" There are many voices urging the return
of the public intellectual who can speak sense both to colleagues in academia
and to fellow citizens in the larger society. Certainly, all of us on campus and in
the community need to help de-politicize the public discussion of values, to help

17. make it less partisan. It is all too often the case that those who speak most loudly
about promoting "good values" are those who want simply to argue that
someone else - Democrats, Republicans, poor people and others - has "bad
values." It is time for us to apply the concept of virtue in ways that uplift rather
than downgrade, heal rather than hurt, build rather than destroy.
What then should the next generation of moral habits encompass? William
Bennett found that writing about virtue could be lucrative when he identified ten
virtues that he considered essential to good character: self-discipline,
compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty,
loyalty and faith.
This is a good list, but we cannot permit the discussion of values to focus only
on the micro- ethics of individual behavior. We need to be equally concerned
with the macro-ethics of large social institutions, including government, business
and the institutions of civil society now playing such a major role in shaping
public policy and public priorities. Much has been made of the breakdown of
families and there is a lot of talk about family values, but except for the writings
of the largely academic communitarian thinkers, not enough attention has been
given to the breakdown of communities and how social virtues often serve as a
prerequisite to the development of individual virtues.
While there are those who would argue that it is difficult to separate public
values from private virtues, and they are largely correct, I am reminded of how
often Martin Luther King spoke of the need to link the individual's duty to
embrace the responsibilities of citizenship with the obligation to act in concert
with others to ensure citizenship rights. He sought to transform both individuals
and society.
So how would a lexicon of public values look. A few years ago, a public opinion
polling firm was asked by the Kettering Foundation to convene focus groups to
find out how Americans feel about multiculturalism and diversity. The first
question asked was what does it mean to be an American. The respondents did
not answer in terms of geography or genetics, ideology or theology, but in terms
of the commitment to a set of values. When the question was first asked, people
initially thought in terms of freedom - freedom of speech, religion, and the
freedom to better yourself economically. Of course, after listening to the
platitudes, one man said "We Americans have been arrogant since 1492." After
deliberating for a while, people tended to expand their notion of what it means to
be an American to include, in addition to freedom, an array of other values such
as tolerance, respect for others, and even the appreciation of diversity. The
pollsters concluded that bringing a diverse group together to deliberate makes
people more sensitive to diversity. AmataiEtzioni has called, therefore, for a
megalogue, society-wide dialogues that link community dialogues into one
national dialogue.
The only public dialogue we have had about values has really centeredaround
William Bennett's Book of Virtues that he wrote to emphasize the ten traits he
considered essential to good character. I have found it useful in my public life to
think in terms of ten public values essential to community. They require no
special moral training or theological literacy to be understood, for they are part
of the basic values necessary for the orderly functioning of community.
Bennett's private virtues constitute a good starting point for identifying
rudimentary forms of private morality, but while they are indispensable for
individuals, far more is needed for a complex community or an interdependent

18. society to thrive. The issues and problems of public life are greatly aggravated
by the fact that we are constantly dealing with people and systems with which
we have no direct personal relationship. Personal responsibility is in many ways
diluted. The directors of a business corporation are individual persons, for
example, but they are being asked to think as directors or shareholders. The
private virtues to which they are committed may help them assess and monitor
the private behavior of the chief executive, but where are they to find moral
guidance in deciding on dividends, the welfare of the workers or the obligation
to the community in which the company operates.
The decision about dividends, like the decision about profits and where to locate
a new plant, is likely to be regarded as morally neutral, but is it? If a decision
affects the welfare of people, it is likely to require moral judgment and can not
be neatly separated from moral choices. I do not have time to develop the
argument for the ten social values I would place along side William Bennett's ten
virtues, but I am delighted that Bennett included compassion on his list because
it has become an important part of our national discourse about leadership. Like
Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations, I would begin my own list of
public values with empathy, a prerequisite for compassion and fundamental to
building community. When Adam Smith set out to develop a basic theory about
how human beings could transact business with each other in an orderly and
predictable fashion, he set forth the principle of empathy, the ability to feel what
another person is feeling. Knowing what gives others joy because we know what
gives ourselves joy and pain became the unstated basis for his economic theory
in The Wealth of Nations.
Smith is remembered best for what he had to say about economics, but he was a
moral philosopher before he was an economist. He wrote A Theory of Moral
Sentiments before he wrote his better-known work on economics. His economic
theories were based on his ideas about moral community, especially the notion
that the individual has the moral duty to have regard for his fellow human
beings.
Like Smith, Fukayama ties social values to economic prosperity. In a second
book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, he argues that
there is a relationship between social values like trust and the prosperity of
nations. The greatness of this country, he maintains, was built not on the
imagined ethos of individualism but on the cohesiveness of its civil associations,
the strength of its communities and the moral bonds of social trust. He warns
that a radical departure from that tradition holds more peril for the future of
American prosperity than any competition from abroad. Both Adam Smith and
Francis Fukuyama are, thus, arguing that the affirmation and practice of certain
public values are not only a moral imperative but in our national interest.
We might have described this notion of trust and otherly regard in a more
innocent age as the associated virtues of love. But the "L" word love, once the
central imperative of social ethics, seems to have been banished from the public
discussion of values. We rarely ask in government, business or civil society,
"what is the most loving thing to do?" It may be useful to remember that in
Plato's inquiry into virtue he came to associate it with goodness. In one of his
dialogues, Socrates meets the eminent Sophist Protagoras, who explains that his
profession is the teaching of goodness. In the subsequent exchange, the
foundation of the moral imperatives that have come to undergird the notion of
civil society was laid. The emphasis is not simply on knowing the good, but
doing the good.

19. It is, thus, not surprising that in the Republic, the concern with virtue comes to
focus on justice and kindness. Without a commitment to the promise of justice
and the practice of kindness, virtue remains a concept with little context. Yet,
today's virtuecrats rarely mention justice. Like the "L" word love, the "J" word
justice seems to be missing in action. Love thy neighbor as one loves thyself is
still good advice. But an abstract value void of committed action does little to
establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility or promote the general welfare. The
most often repeated example of compassion is the story of the Good Samaritan
in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. A traveler comes upon a man on
the side of the road who had been badly beaten. He stops and provides aid and
comfort. But suppose this same man traveled the same road for a week and each
day he discovered in the same spot someone badly beaten. Wouldn't he be
compelled to ask who has responsibility for policing the road? His initial act of
compassion must inevitably lead to public policy. It is this progression from
private compassion to public action that is often missing in our discussion of
private virtue. Genuine compassion requires that we not only ameliorate
consequences, but we also seek to eliminate causes.
We come next to my second point about the changing role of ethics in public
life. It is the assertion that while ethics has been used to domesticate and
humanize power, we now live in a world where ethics is power. Many speak of
the United States as a marriage of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. They argue,
quite correctly, that the strength of America has been its moral strength.
According to Gertrude Himmelfarb, long before the founding of the American
republic," those concerned with morality explained that "Virtue is the distinctive
characteristic of a republic, as honor is of monarchy, and moderation of an
aristocracy." I would now say much the same thing about values. We cannot
long preserve the public ethos of America's founding without the simple
understanding that while we used ethics in much of the twentieth century to
domesticate and humanize power, in the twenty first century ethics is power.
We hear much these days about American military strength and American
economic power, but there is very little discussion of the many ways the
international system is changing and the implications for American power and
influence. Many foreign policy analysts are appalled by the lack of realism in the
allocation of our national budget and the lack of emphasis in our national
security strategy on what is increasingly called soft power. In a July 1999 article
in the Foreign Affairs journal, Professor Joseph Nye, who heads the Kennedy
School at Harvard, made an important distinction between "hard power" and
"soft power." Hard power refers to the use of military might or economic muscle
to influence and even coerce. Soft power refers to the ability to attract and
influence through the flow of information and the appeal of social, cultural and
moral messages. Hard power is the ability to get others to do what we want. Soft
power is the ability to get others to want what we do. The former is based on
coercion while the latter is based on attraction.
Military power in the world is unipolar, with the United States outstripping all
others states. Economic power is multipolar, with the United States, Japan and
Europe accounting for two- thirds of the world's production. Soft power is more
widely dispersed. It crosses borders and is not dependent on military or
economic power. A compelling message from a disaster area, a gross human
rights violation, a military conflict or a story of hope and healing conveyed by
the Internet or television can easily catapult new priorities into a nation's foreign
policy. And that is why values may be the most fundamental and the most
significant source of soft power.

20. The power that comes from being a "city on the hill" does not provide the
coercive capability with which presidential candidates and most Americans
identify, but in the new age of national security it can sometimes be the most
influential. While greater pluralism in the mobilization and use of soft power
may diminish the ability of the United States to impose its will through the use
of hard power, the attractiveness of our institutions, the openness of our society
and the values we espouse should continue to give us an edge in the new world
of soft power; providing our people and our leaders recognize that while
American military and economic advantages are great, they are neither
unqualified nor permanent.
I saw the impact of soft power first hand during my tenure as United Sates
Ambassador to South Africa; for Nelson Mandela represented the epitome of
soft power. His moral standing and political stature in the world went far beyond
that suggested by the size of the military or the Gross Domestic Product of South
Africa. His influence came from the power of his humanity and the elegance of
his spirit. His influence came from his message of reconciliation and the moral
instinct embodied in his spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. He is the
prototype of the leader whose influence comes not from military or economic
might, but from the power of ideals and the ability to capture the minds and
hearts of people in all corners and colors of the universe. Among the many
lessons we should have learned from the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela is
the fact that diplomacy increasingly depends on a moral ecology that can not be
found in military or economic power.
It is not only governments that must come to understand that ethics is power.
The same is true of multinational business. The Reverend Leon Sullivan, who
authored the principles used in South Africa by those American corporations
operating under the apartheid system, has been conferring with international
organizations and businesses to come up with a global set of principles. He has
been in conversation with multinational corporations from three continents,
business associations, non-governmental organizations and national
governments.
While several hundred companies have signed on, there are those who reject this
exercise as fruitless or an attempt at self-aggrandizement or publicity, but there
are others who feel strongly that signing and affirming these principles is not
only right but in their company's self-interest. Many of these groups have
pledged to develop and implement policies, procedures, training and internal
reporting structures to ensure integrity and responsibility in the operation of
business corporations. Here's what they are asking their colleagues in business to
do:
1. Express support for universal human rights and, particularly, those of their
employees, the communities in which they operate, and the parties with whom
they do business.
2. Promote equal opportunity for their employees at all levels of the company
with respect to issues such as color, race, gender, age, ethnicity or religious
beliefs, and operate without unacceptable worker treatment such as the
exploitation of children, physical punishment, female abuse, involuntary
servitude, or other forms of abuse.
3. Express support for the voluntary freedom of association of their employees.
4. Compensate employees at a level that enables them to meet at least their basic
needs and provide the opportunity to improve their skill and capability in order
to raise their social and economic opportunities.
5. Provide a safe and healthy workplace; protect human health and the

21. environment; and promote sustainable development.
6. Promote fair competition including respect for intellectual and other property
rights, and not offer, pay or accept bribes.
7. Work with communities in which they do business to improve the quality of
life in those communities - their educational, cultural, economic and social well
being - and seek to provide training and opportunities for workers from
disadvantaged backgrounds.
8. Promote the application of those principles by those with whom they do
business.
These are voluntary principles without any enforcement mechanisms except for
the positive images enjoyed by those who sign them. Why, it might be asked,
should a company bother? Given my own experience in international business
and my service as an advocate for American business abroad, I am convinced
that a sound set of principles can have an affect on the bottom line in at least five
ways:
1. They build trust within the company and within the community. That trust
translates into loyalty, consistency and greater productivity.
2. They demonstrate that companies are only as good as its people and its
policies. A company is what it rewards. It is not so much what it says in its
mission statement or code of conduct as it is what it rewards its people for being.
The performance review and reward system must reflect the values the company
affirms.
3. Customers and consumers increasingly take note of company values. They
like to know that they are doing business with a company that not only produces
an excellent product or provides excellent service, but it is committed to fairness,
honesty, integrity and the larger community. As international competition
increases, companies that do things ethically, and are seen doing them, may have
a competitive edge in some countries.
4. More and more shareholders also care about company values. The socially
responsible movement, once laughed at and dismissed as a minor nuisance, is
now a $650 billion movement and growing. According to Rush Kidder of the
Global Ethics Institute, socially conscious investments now account for some ten
percent of invested funds in the United States.
5. Self-regulation can make government regulation unnecessary. As President of
the Council on Foundations, I frequently had to testify before Congressional
committees on proposed legislation to regulate foundations. I often found a more
sympathetic hearing when I could show that foundations were not only
concerned about the matter under discussion, but also engaged in self-regulation.
Does responsible behavior affect the bottom line? I am convinced that it does
and I believe that in the years ahead you will see increasing evidence that
principles affect profits and have a powerful, practical and immediate impact on
the bottom line.
We come now to my third point about the changing role of ethics in public life.
Social ethics at the dawning of the nation-state helped us understand the
obligations of the citizen to the state. We now need public values that will help
us cope with an interdependent world that is integrating and fragmenting at the
same time. A major contribution of social ethics at the birth of the nation state
was to help citizens understand the implication of freedom from tyranny,
particularly the social obligation of citizenship and the limits of freedom.
Consider for a moment, the evolving vision of citizenship. The earliest vision of
democracy was that the people have the power. The evolving vision is that the

22. people have the vote, which is no longer the same as having the power. The
awakening of the sense of citizenship as obligation to a larger community came
with the French and American revolution when the word signified in theory, but
not in practice, the equal participation of everyone in a social contract. The
notion of citizen is still evolving, but we can draw lessons for enlarging the
meaning of citizenship from the almost unknown civic traditions of some of the
groups that are transforming our national life.
Long before Alexis deTocqueville became the most quoted (and probably the
least read) authority on American civic life, Benjamin Franklin had become so
enamored with the political and civic culture of the Native Americans he met in
Pennsylvania that he advised delegates to the 1754 Albany Congress to emulate
the civic habits of the Iroquois. Long before Martin Luther King wrote his Letter
From A Birmingham Jail, African American's had come to believe that the
primary passion of the patriot should be the passion for justice, and that justice is
often a precondition to order - where a people feel a stake in a community they
are more likely to work for order and value tranquility. Long before Robert
Bellah wrote Habits of the Heart, Neo- Confucians in the Chinese community
were teaching their children that a community without benevolence invites its
own destruction.
All of these traditions now join our evolving vision of public values, but
understanding our obligations as citizens also requires an understanding of what
it means to be members of a public. We need to keep in mind that instead of a
well-defined, distinct public, many publics exist, and the idea of public good
frequently depends on which public is defining the good. It is only in the
broadest sense that we are able to speak of a mass public. In the recent
presidential campaign, we were reminded often that there is a voting public,
which is all too often only a small fraction of the mass public and there are issue
publics who hold strong opinions and are often seeking influence.
We need students, graduates and faculty who are willing to be a voice for those
publics who are poor, weak or marginalized; all those whom someone powerful
might deem inconvenient or outside the circle of care. We need politicians who
are willing to seek power to disperse it rather than simply concentrate it. We
need community leaders who can, by example, convey the message that doing
something for someone else - making the condition of others our own - is a
powerful force in building community. When you experience the problem of the
poor or troubled, when you help someone to understand the human condition
through theater or dance, when you help someone to find meaning in a museum
or creative expression in a painting, when you help someone to find housing or
regain his health, you are far more likely to connect on a deeper level, and you
are likely to gain a sense of self-worth in the process.
Robert Putnam, who writes about the declining role of social capital in a
democracy, AmitaiEtzioni, who argues that shared values are essential for social
solidarity and community and Robert Bellah, who wrote about his fears of a
democracy without citizens, are all pointing to the importance of what Alexis
deTocqueville once described as the habits of the heart of the American people;
the tendency to form voluntary groups to meet social needs and to solve social
problems. We now know that when neighbors help neighbors and even when
strangers help strangers both those who help and those who are helped are
transformed. When that which was "their" problem becomes "our" problem, a
new relationship is established and new forms of community are possible.
And here we can learn a lot from the South African people about building

23. community. Their emphasis on reconciliation may be at the heart of our search
for public values appropriate for a world that is integrating and fragmenting at
the same time. To live together in community is to be constantly engaged in
connecting or re-connecting with those who differ not simply in race or religion,
but tradition and theology as well as politics and philosophy. Where there is
diversity, there is likely to be alienation and separation. Conflicts are inevitable
and social relationships are constantly threatened and broken.
Reconciliation, thus, becomes as highly prized a value in the age of
interdependence as freedom was in the scramble for independence.
Reconciliation has to do with re-establishing or sustaining a connection to a
wider community. There is an implicit notion of brokenness, a relationship that
needs to be built or rebuilt. But the estrangement individuals and communities
face can be moral as well as social and political. In South Africa, reconciliation
is both a public value and a public process. It is fused into the political culture of
those who govern, the theology of those who claim a new moral authority and
the ancestral tradition of those who now have the lead in building a new society.
The commitment to a reconciling society has deep roots in the African
experience. In the worse days of apartheid, the African National Congress wrote
into its charter that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. These words also
found their way into the new constitution.
There is among black South Africans a traditional concept of community called
ubuntu. It assumes that all of humanity is bound together into a relationship that
is bigger than any individual or group. This notion of community is best
expressed in the Xhosi proverb Archbishop Tutu likes to quote, "People are
people through other people." It follows that to deny the dignity or seek to
diminish the humanity of another person is to destroy one's own. This is the
message so badly needed in a world where the more interdependent we become
the more people are turning inward to smaller communities of meaning and
memory. This may, at first glance, appear to be reason for anxiety and even
despair, but I am increasingly convinced as I travel around the world that the
search for beginnings, the focus on remembering and re- grouping, may simply
be a necessary and natural stage of the search for common ground. People are
demanding respect for their primary community of history and heritage before
they can more fully embrace a larger community of function and formality.
With so much happening in so many places, with so many pressing needs within
the American borders and beyond, and with so many conflicts still to be
resolved, many Americans still feel the tug of separateness, of ultimate loyalties
devoted exclusively to their own group. Yet, while it is only natural to feel an
affinity with those whom we share a special heritage and a special history, it is
time that we learn to see ourselves and our group, not through the haze of
parochial emotions, but against the backdrop of a larger vision and as part of a
larger community.
So let me conclude by suggesting that we can not understand nor appreciate the
changing role of ethics in public life without trying to understand the many
voices urging a return of respect for the spiritual dimension, without trying to
understand why religion is playing such a large role in public life. Many people,
whether they are Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jew or some other expression of a
spiritual connection, are coming to believe that we are not here alone, that we do
not exist for ourselves alone, that we are a part of something bigger and more
mysterious than ourselves.
It is not yet clear what role religion will play in the search for either common

24. ground or public values, but there are many reasons to believe that the search for
a higher level of being is a reflection of the human condition. And it may be that
it is the common search, rather than our different answers, that will provide the
basis of our unity. And that is why I am so pleased to have been given this
opportunity to address the subject of the changing role of ethics in public life.
As we look to the future, it is clear that the ethical issues with which
policymakers now struggle are tame compared to some of the issues on the
horizon. It is now reliably predicted, for example, that within five years either a
U.S. government agency or a private corporation (perhaps both) will have in a
desktop computer the entire human gene decoded. Policy analysts and ethicists
will then be arguing over the implications of extending the human life span for
Americans beyond 150 years, at the same time that the AIDS virus and other
infectious diseases devastate populations in Africa and elsewhere. I hope that the
emerging community of leadership educators, the institutes they develop and the
students they teach, will be prepared to handle the new generation of public
policy issues as well as the old.
But even more fundamentally, I hope the new leadership industry is prepared to
handle the diversity that will characterize leadership in the new millennium.
Although the present leadership climate may appear at first glance to be a
leadership vacuum, it is more likely that we have simply been looking in the
wrong places for leadership. If we have learned anything from those who are
building new societies in Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and Central America,
it is that the next generation of leaders is not likely to fit the traditional mold, nor
are those leaders likely to be found in traditional places.
The days of looking for leaders with the right endorsements and the right
credentials as defined by an established elite are hopefully nearing an end. The
leaders of the future are not likely to come riding out of the sunset on white
charges - heroes without heroism. Many will instead be ordinary people with
extraordinary commitments. Their styles will be different. Their accents will be
different and so will their color and complexion. We do not yet know much
about these emerging leaders, but we know enough about the changing role of
ethics in public life to suggest at least these four conclusions:
1. The demographic changes are creating a demand for a new group of leaders
who seek power in order to disperse it rather than simply hold it. The demand
is for leaders who understand what it means to share power rather than simply
dominate it. Those who seek power to concentrate it may ultimately lose it to
those who seek it only to diffuse it.
2. Tomorrow's leaders must be able to use their values not simply to affirm
absolutes but also to cope with ambiguities. During times of rapid change,
there is always a revival of religion. Zealots emerge claiming one truth and one
theology. As people search for something to hang on to, they tend to respond
to those who provide answers rather than those who point to ambiguities. No
religion, however, offers absolute clarity and self- evident truth; hence no
vision of the present - let alone the future - can be accepted as final; no
institution can be accepted as complete; no ideology can be accepted as closed.
In matters of faith and morals, the right question is usually more important
than the right answer to the wrong question.
3. It is imperative that leaders develop the capacity for humility. Our world

25. desperately needs leaders who are open to the possibility of error in
themselves and human wisdom in unlikely places. I remember my early days in
a new administration in Washington. The euphoria of victory after long months
of struggle produced a climate in which it was easy to believe that the rascals
had been thrown out and intelligence and foresight had finally come to
government. In fact, some rascals had probably been thrown out, but in every
group of people there are likely to be a few who share a commitment to the
same goals. The challenge of leadership is to identify them and make them
allies rather than adversaries.
4. It is the involvement with the needs of others that provides the social
cement that binds people together in community. Much attention has been
given to individualism and "lone ranger" leadership in American history. It
remains a major theme of historical analysis and self-understanding. But
leadership scholars and educators may need to acknowledge and affirm
another tradition that goes back to John Winthrop's notion of a city on a hill.
Those who seek "to make the condition of others their own" will find that the
effect of doing something for some else is powerful. When by trying to help you
experience the problems of those economically disadvantaged or politically
disenfranchised, you are far more likely to find common ground. And you are
likely to gain a sense of self-worth, personal satisfaction and meaning in the
process. Once the potential leader discovers the ability make a difference, the
leadership impulse - which may start out as a very personal and solitary drive -
is likely to be transformed into a larger commitment to making the concern for
others, to making some form of civic engagement on behalf of others, a part of
the human journey.
In the midst of all the reasons for pessimism about some of the leaders we see
and some of the leaders we know, I think I hear what Albert Camus described as
the flutter of wings. I think I see what Robert Kennedy called a million points of
daring, and I think I see it in what Robert Geenleaf called the servant leader who
sets out to serve and leadership is what follows. I hope, therefore, that in all of
our study of how leaders are developed, how they behave and what should be the
relationship with followers, we will not forget that in its essence ethical
leadership is about service, "making the condition of others our own."
Ethics in management
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ethics and ethical behavior are the essential parts of healthy management. From a management
perspective, behaving ethically is an integral part of long - term career success. Wide access to
information and more business opportunities than in the past makes ethics a need in modern business
world.
Reasons to behave ethically
From the point of view of internal customer:
improves the atmosphere at work and helps motivating the employees