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