Summer Reading: Beyond Culture

Edward T. Hall's classic book, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=reByw3FWVWsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=be…; target="”_blank”"><i>Beyond
Culture</i></a> (Anchor Books, 1976), is not a government ethics book.
But a lot of the wisdom in this brilliant book can be applied to our
field.<br>
<br>
It's hard to describe this book. It is an examination of certain
aspects of culture and of how difficult it is to go from one to
another. Americans are lost in Japanese culture, for example. Most
people are also lost in the culture of a local government
organization.<br>
<br>
Hall notes that  "we live fragmented, compartmentalized lives
in which contradictions are carefully sealed off from each other. We
have been taught to think linearly rather than comprehensively." This makes it harder for government officials to deal with the conflicts that occur among the various roles they play. It is also difficult for them to see their
organization's ethics environment as a whole. Instead, they
tend to deal with each event separately, as they come along.
Similarly, ethics reform tends to occur piecemeal rather than
comprehensively.<br>
<br>

<b>A -Chronic Problem</b><br>
Hall divides cultures into two basic kinds: polychronic and
monochronic. The U.S. is a monochronic culture. This means that it
emphasizes schedules, segmentation, and promptness. In a
polychronic culture everything happens at once, and there is a stress on
the involvement of people and the completion of transactions, rather
than following preset schedules. In a polychronic culture, such as
Japan, one has to be an insider or else have a "friend" who can make
things happen.<br>
<br>
Hall doesn't apply this distinction to governments, but I think that
local governments, especially those with an unhealthy ethics
environment, tend to be more polychronic than the rest of the
culture.<br>
<br>
<b>Difficulty Externalizing</b><br>
Hall speaks of our using the environment as a tool, altering it by
externalizing and internalizing. Thus, "actions that are under the
control of what we call the conscience in one part of the world may
be handled by externalized controls elsewhere." Example: the British
internalize status, while Americans tend to externalize it.<br>
<br>
"Once something is externalized," Hall wrote, "it is possible to
look at it, study it, change it, perfect it, and at the same time
learn important things about oneself." So much discussion of
government ethics, within governments, involves internal things,
such as integrity. Nothing can be done about government ethics as
long as officials speak in terms of integrity. And nothing can be
done about unwritten rules unless they are brought out into the
open.<br>
<br>
Hall wrote, "One cannot normally transcend one's culture without
first exposing its major hidden axioms and unstated assumptions … Because cultures are wholes, are
systematic … and are highly contextual as well, it is hard to
describe them from the outside."<br>
<br>
It is important that government ethics never be separated from the
democratic values that underlie it. But it is equally important to
separate a government ethics program from the officials it oversees, who are
focused on control and internalizing. Since it is high-level
officials who usually make decisions regarding ethics programs
(usually not to have one or to have it under their control), this is very difficult.<br>
<br>
<b>Context</b><br>
Hall wrote a lot about the context or environment in which we live
and think. He said that it is "impossible to separate the individual
from the environment in which he functions. ... There is no such
thing as a patient independent and separate from his hospital
situation." And there is no such thing as a government official or
employee who is independent and separate from her ethics
environment.<br>
<br>
Hall distinguishes between high-context and low-context systems. A
typical low-context system is the American court system, where the
focus is on rules and limitations. Low-context systems tend to be
impersonal and open to manipulation by those with the greatest
skills.<br>
<br>
There are high-context legal systems in other societies, where "the
accused, the court, the public, and those who are the injured
parties are on the same side, where, ideally, they can work together
to settle things. The purpose of the trial is to provide a setting
where the powers of government can act as a backdrop for a
performance, where the consequences and the impact of the crime are
played out before the accused. It also provides an opportunity for
the accused to be properly and publicly repentant for disrupting the
orderly processes of life, for releasing the evil of disorder by
failing to observe the regulative norms expected of decent human
beings. In a word, the function of the trial is to place the crime
in context and present it in such a way that the criminal must see
and understand the consequences of his act."<br>
<br>
A high-context hearing would seem to be perfect for an ethics
proceeding. Where an ethics program is not criminalized, ethics
proceedings are more high-context, because they are administrative
in nature. But still, the high-context process usually occurs less in the hearing room than in the
news media and on blogs.<br>
<br>
High-context cultures, such as Japan, although full of a sort of
corruption that is unacceptable in the U.S., deal with
responsibility in a different manner. People in places of authority
are truly responsible for the actions of subordinates. In
low-context cultures such as ours, responsibility is more difficult
to pin down: "when something happens to a low-context system,
everyone runs for cover and 'the system' is supposed to protect its
members. If a scapegoat is needed, the most plausible low-ranking
scapegoat is chosen."<br>
<br>
Hall also asserts that low-context cultures tend to resist
self-examination. This failure to practice self-examination is
responsible not only for much ethical misconduct, but also for the
handling of instances of misconduct that are brought to light.<br>
<br>
<b>Dissociation</b><br>
Hall identifies another process that might be responsible for
ethical misconduct. He calls it "dissociation." It consists of
behavior patterns that people significant to us disapproved of in
our childhood. The underlying need or desire remains intact and is,
therefore, "dissociated from the self, so that self respect can also
be maintained. ... dissociated acts have a 'not me' quality to them.
… When one is acting under the rule of dissociated impulses,
everybody except the individual himself knows and perceives what is
happening." The results of dissociation are very familiar to those involved in government ethics.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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