Powerful sociology going on here. Watch as society regulates itself. Social resources are being marshalled here to test and reinforce what the people believe are the norms. In reality norms don’t exist. Our beliefs that norms do exist create them one conversation at a time. These behaviours, in the language of sociology, are what the inimitable Harold Garfinkel called ethnomethods (the methods of the people0 for creating social (and moral) order).
Wow! Listen to the values and beliefs at work. This most powerful of men, Chairman Rupert Murdoch, an octogenarian with wealth beyond imagination, states to the whole of humanity in one sentence “This is the most humble day of my life”. His face mirrored his stated belief. Why is humility important for such an elite leader? Is he submitting to the ultimate social sanction for a proud, private man. Is the price that society demands, a public humbling? To strip away his dignity, his reputation, his pride, his honour? Libya’s notorious Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi doesn’t care about such sanctions. His pressure points lie in other values nonetheless.
That’s how society regulates behaviour. It uses its courts and parliaments ... and interestingly in this case, the media ... to reinforce the norms at one end of the range of tolerable behaviours (we call that ‘crime’) and a different type of jail for those we call mad, at the other end of the range of tolerable behaviours. Behaviours at both ends threaten the believed norms. What passes as crime in one era/generation gets another name in another era/generation. Now the way to cut down tall poppies is to accuse them of a crime against the society’s lawbooks or to declare them mad. We’re taught to fear both extremes. Look for no better example than to the fate of Galileo Galilei, the Father of Modern Science no less. The Christian Church in Rome condemned his support for heliocentrism, the belief that the sun was the centre of the universe as “false and contrary to Scripture”. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest (http://bit.ly/oEOPAT). In another era, on 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. In March 2008 the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Nicola Cabibbo, announced a plan to honour Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls. In December of the same year, during events to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict XVI praised his contributions to astronomy. The same church saw its ‘Godhead’ Jesus Christ crucified for the crime of being mad - the double whammy.
What lessons are there for the corporate world in this New Limited scenario apart from the requirement for boards and their chairpersons and other directors to govern with noses in and hands out? Well plenty of lessons. Most importantly, this is a story of a culture that has grown to betray its shiny brass plaque - its stated values. That’s what this grand old man is humbled by. His people, those whom he trusted have betrayed his core values so that in turn he knows that he has betrayed the trust of his public. You can guess that Rupert Murdoch is driven by values such as honour, trust, integrity. So the corporate culture that has unfolded especially within The News of the World division is not the culture that the chairman and CEO want or believed existed.
So, do you have a healthy corporate culture? How do you know? There’s a fair chance that it’s not the one written on your shiny brass plaque on the front of your building. You need to pay attention to your corporate culture and ‘slice and sample’ it regularly. The Murdochs wish they had.
