Tuesday, October 20, 2009

SHRM Board

From: RDShatt
To: board@shrm.org
CC: ceo@shrm.org, cgorman@shrm.org, wmaroni@shrm.org, hhart@shrm.org, grubin@shrm.org
Sent: 10/19/2009 8:26:25 A.M. Central Daylight Time

Subj: SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel and ECOA ...

Dear SHRM Board,

For your information, below is a form of email I sent yesterday to members of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel.

I appreciate that ethics is only one of numerous HR disciplines that SHRM is occupied with, and that there are other organizations, such as the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association, for which ethics is a more central and primary concern. The ECOA, however, has been nonresponsive to me. I am sure there are reasons for this, but I am also sure that the issues I have presented are substantively significant and are meritorious of consideration by ethicists. I am open to argumentation to the contrary, but thus far the ECOA and other ethics organizations and professionals I have contacted have not undertaken any effort to make such contrary argumentation.

As a result of the foregoing, I have taken the liberty of contacting SHRM about the matter. I hope you can accept this explanation of why I am doing this.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck

From: RDShatt
To: __________________
Sent: 10/18/2009 ____A.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel and ECOA

Dear ________,

I am contacting you in your capacity as a member of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel.

The Ethics & Compliance Officer Association ("ECOA") recently had its 17th Annual Business Ethics and Compliance Conference in Chicago.

Prior to the conference, and based on the program brochure, I sent emails to a number of the ECOA speakers about their presentations. These emails had a commonality of being derived from my contentions that the United States civil law liability system (i) undermines business ethics, (ii) results in a waste of limited corporate resources that could be better deployed in other ways to promote ethical corporate behavior, and (iii) improperly distorts risk assessment and results in the adoption of costly and uneconomic "defensive" corporate practices (like the practice of "defensive" medicine which is currently in the national spotlight as a driver of escalating health care costs). I have a blog and you may read my emails here in the blog.

The issues I presented to the ECOA speakers (and conference attendees) relate to employee psychology, motivation, decisions and actions that affect whether corporate conduct is ethical or not. I believe this comes very much within the purview of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel.

I hope you as a member of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel will take the time to review the issues I presented to the ECOA conference. Further, I hope that you call the matter to the attention of corporate ethics and compliance officers whom you know, particularly at your own company.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck

SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel

From: RDShatt
To: __________________
Sent: 10/18/2009 ____A.M. Central Daylight Time

Subj: SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel and ECOA

Dear ________,

I am contacting you in your capacity as a member of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel.

The Ethics & Compliance Officer Association ("ECOA") recently had its 17th Annual Business Ethics and Compliance Conference in Chicago.

Prior to the conference, and based on the program brochure, I sent emails to a number of the ECOA speakers about their presentations. These emails had a commonality of being derived from my contentions that the United States civil law liability system (i) undermines business ethics, (ii) results in a waste of limited corporate resources that could be better deployed in other ways to promote ethical corporate behavior, and (iii) improperly distorts risk assessment and results in the adoption of costly and uneconomic "defensive" corporate practices (like the practice of "defensive" medicine which is currently in the national spotlight as a driver of escalating health care costs). I have a blog and you may read my emails here in the blog.

The issues I presented to the ECOA speakers (and conference attendees) relate to employee psychology, motivation, decisions and actions that affect whether corporate conduct is ethical or not. I believe this comes very much within the purview of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel.

I hope you as a member of the SHRM Ethics Special Expertise Panel will take the time to review the issues I presented to the ECOA conference. Further, I hope that you call the matter to the attention of corporate ethics and compliance officers whom you know, particularly at your own company.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck

Monday, October 12, 2009

Back to HR

From: RDShatt
To: __________________________
Sent: 10/12/2009 _______A.M. Central Daylight Time

Subj: Ethics, ECOA and HR


Dear HR professional,

Ethics is an HR discipline (see SHRM webpage), so this email is in range to you, and more.

The Ethics & Compliance Officer Association recently had its 17th Annual Business Ethics and Compliance Conference. I tried to inject myself into the proceedings, which you can read about here.

The issues I tried to raise with the ECOA involve ethics and employee psychology, motivation, decisions and actions, which HR professionals should be very attuned to.

I hope you have an interest in these issues that I presented to the ECOA. Further, I hope that you call them to the attention of your company's ethics and compliance officers, in case they have not previously thought about the matter.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Follow up report on ECOA conference

From: RDShatt
To: ___________
Sent: 10/1/2009 5:38:37 P.M. Central Daylight Time

Subj: Follow up report on ECOA conference

Dear ECOA conference attendee or other member,

Prior to the ECOA's 17th Annual Business Ethics and Compliance Conference last week, I sent a number of conference speakers emails asking questions and making comments in reference to their respective presentations (based on the descriptions of the presentations in the program brochure).

All the emails I sent had a commonality of being derived from my contention that the United States civil law liability system (i) undermines business ethics, (ii) results in a waste of limited corporate resources that could be better deployed in other ways to promote ethical corporate behavior, and (iii) improperly distorts risk assessment and results in the adoption of costly and uneconomic "defensive" corporate practices (like the practice of "defensive" medicine which is currently in the national spotlight as a driver of escalating health care costs that the United States is trying to control).

My emails to those conference speakers are reproduced here (reproduced in the order the presentation descriptions appear in the program brochure).

After I sent those emails, I sent emails to my address list of ECOA members (or possible members) including you, in the form of this, and I sent other conference speakers an email in the form of this.

Following the end of the conference last Friday I did further follow up emails to the conference speakers in the forms of this and this.

Thus far, I have had a response from only one conference speaker, saying he would read my article.

I find the lack of response lamentable, but it is not for my lack of trying. If I hereafter get any responses of material substance from conference speakers, I will post them in my blog.

I did not attend the ECOA conference so I do not know whether any conference speaker said anything about my subject in his or her presentation.

If you have any comments about my contentions, I would very much like to hear from you and, with your permission, publish them in my blog for the edification of other ethics officers and professionals.

If it should interest you, I am trying to get a "scholarly" manuscript on my subject published in an ethics journal. You may read about my efforts here.

I hope I hear from you.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck