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=== F-500 Ethics, Dept. ===
With Baker's boolean logic Track A (Zduriencik was ignorant) vs Track B (Zduriencik was lying), in either case, Geoff believes that he has a scandal* here. I respect that, but I disagree, and I'll explain exactly why.
Now in some contexts, telling the truth is an absolute. If you're a minister n certain churches, for example, if you lie deliberately, even a time or two, and are caught, you're going to be out as a preacher or elder.
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But! Nintendo is not a church. Absolutes seldom apply. American situational ethics maintain that it can sometimes be right to deceive.
Now, personally, I (and many others) disagree as to what the ideal should be. I maintain that Jesus would not have lied even to protect the refugees under the stairs. If He did, the dominoes that fall in the universe go far beyond the life or death of one generation's worth of people. The universe collapses if Jesus tells even one lie.
That's what I personally believe. But Nintendo is not a church, and they're not looking for ministers. I'm not being snide. Nintendo's ethics are (slightly) different from those that are found in other contexts.
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In Fortune 500, there is a whale of a lot at stake, and they don't always view one "little white lie" as worth the risk of blowing off a $2 billion sale of airplanes. I'm sorry. That's the way it's done.
And the ethic is: when one executive embarrasses another executive, he is to "repair the relationship." THAT is the ethic. If you harm somebody, then --- > un-harm them. Otherwise, you're going to have an enemy for a long time.
Zduriencik attempted to un-harm Chuck Armstrong, and un-harm the Mariners' relationship with PC watchdogs. Zduriencik did this by spinning the story, and by not very much, we might add, with a spin that emphasized the Mariners' respect for the PC watchdogs.
Geoff construed this to be a betrayal of Armstrong by Zduriencik. In my view, it was exactly the opposite. It was Zduriencik attempting to manage his boss's capital in his boss's favor.
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It would have worked, except that an outside party got into the middle of the relationship and prevented the spin from salving over the wounds -- not the wounds between the Mariners and us, not the wounds between the Mariners and the newspapers, but the wounds between two Mariner executives and the watchdog groups.
At this point, I still fail to see the constructive purpose in preventing two executives from repairing the breach between them.
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Am definitely not implying that non-Christians (or pick your term) are liars by default. I realize that such is not true. I've spent more time outside the church than in, and shot around the corners with plenty of great men and women who differed from me on worldview.
Am saying that by the corporate F-500 standards under which I've worked ---> lying is not the absolute sin that Baker has argued it to be.
Execs I've worked for? They don't chop heads off for spinning a foulup into a positive light that protects your boss. They chop heads off if you damage them and don't repair it.
Geoff's arguing that Zduriencik's "misleading his boss" is a capital offense within upper management. It ain't.
No doubt at the Seattle Times, a newspaper editor would fire a reporter for lying to her. Fortune 500 simply doesn't work that way. Corporate America has one set of priorities; the mainstream media has another set. Millions, sometimes billions, are at stake at Nintendo, and what makes money takes priority.
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