Entrevista con los padres

Several characteristics of the paradigm case have to do with the manner of an apologia itself. Ideally, an ethical apologia is:

• Truthful.

• Sincere.

• Timely.

• Voluntary.

• Addresses all stakeholders.

• Is performed in an appropriate context.

Truthful

Truthfulness suggests that an apologia should be characterized by a disclo-sure of useful information and not omit key facts that, when revealed, would fundamentally change how others view the apologist’s actions. (Note: The topic of disclosure is addressed more fully later in this chapter.) A major component of truthfulness is that an individual or an organization caught in a crisis should not engage in deception. If an apologist chooses to lie, such a choice should only be made as a last resort and then only for reasons that would survive public scrutiny—of which there are very few. It should be noted here that the criterion is truthfulness, rather than Truth, which avoids a whole host of philosophical problems (Bok, 1989).

The criterion of truthfulness does acknowledge the propensity of individu-als and organizations to “strategically name” their wrongdoing (Hearit, 1994).

Yet, truthfulness requires that the names submitted by apologists must bear some resemblance to the reality of the “facts of the case,” while acknowledg-ing that “Even if a given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality, and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (Burke, 1966, p. 45). The definitions

proffered by apologists are anything but neutral—they are strategic (Cox, 1981; Schiappa, 2003) and contain an argument inherent in them (Crable &

Vibbert, 1985). To affix a name to something is to engage in a largely persua-sive act that contains an attitude toward the object—and gets at the difficulty in coming up with a neutral determination of what an act means.

The case of the Audi 5000 in the late 1980s is instructive. Critics charged that the automobile was prone to “sudden acceleration”; that is, it would ac-celerate when the car was idling, with a driver’s foot on the brake. This tech-nological problem, it was alleged, resulted in injuries and deaths across North America. Audi countered this definition with the claim that, accord-ing to their independent testaccord-ing, the incidents under question were the re-sult of “pedal error,” in which drivers put their foot on the accelerator instead of the brake—a contention that was later supported by the federal government (Hearit & Courtright, 2003a). In this case, Audi’s communica-tion met the criterion of truthfulness.

A negative example of truthfulness was the 1992 case in which Sears Auto Repair Centers were alleged by the California Attorney General’s office to have defrauded customers by charging them for repairs that they did not need.

Sears responded to the allegations that it was engaging in “preventative main-tenance” (Hearit & Courtright, 2003b). It was a clear case of a company try-ing to put a positive spin on a situation with a language choice that bore no representation to the actual facts of the case. Hence, this criterion acknowl-edges the reality-creating nature of definitions while requiring that organiza-tions and individuals choose a definition with which informed auditors are likely to agree, rather than claim that an apologist has overreached.

Sincere

A second characteristic of the ideal apologia is that it be performed with sin-cerity. An apologia typically is understood as an attempt to express regret for wrongdoing, to communicate an understanding of the offense’s impact and antecedents, and to generally make things right (Hearit, 1994). Whenever an apologist lacks any real regret, understanding, or a true intention of mak-ing thmak-ings right, the recipients of the communication are misled and de-prived of their due. Their right to autonomy—to make informed, free choices about their own lives, including any action they might want to take against the apologist or to restore the relationship—is compromised. Fur-thermore, such deficient motivation potentially causes harm by leading the recipients to make future decisions based on false premises such as decep-tion. Perhaps the recipients, trusting erroneously in the apologist’s sincerity, postpone or cancel actions that would guard them against a financial loss or provide them with legal relief. There also is a sense in which victims are en-titled to an offender’s regret for wronging them.

Three components are involved in the performance of a sincere apologia.

First, an individual or an organization must demonstrate a good-faith effort to achieve reconciliation. The point is that there must be an actual motive (as opposed to unknowable motivations), knowable through the apologist’s discourse and actions (Burke, 1969), to express genuine regret and achieve a reconciliation. This often is demonstrated in the corrective action that an organization has taken to resolve a problem, as well as the availability for third-party verification. A second component of this idea is the recognition that the demonstration of sincerity is indeed rooted not just in operational performance but also in communicative performance. A good example of this is the case of American Airlines in 2003, which, shortly after requesting and receiving wage concessions from its mechanics’ and flight attendants’

unions, turned around and gave bonuses to key executives to induce them to stay with the company during a difficult time. When the incongruence of these actions came to the fore, instead of simply issuing a news release or placing an advertisement in media outlets, CEO Donald Carty immediately went before microphones and cameras and apologized with demonstrable remorse for the insensitivity and wrong-headedness of the company’s actions (Reed, 2003).

A final component of performing sincerity is that the apologist shows evidence of a true desire to reconcile with offended stakeholders, rather than acting in such a way that it is evident that the apologist’s only desire is to escape from the media glare. Again, the case of Intel, with its flawed Pentium II chip, is a useful example. When the company finally relented to demands from disgruntled consumers that the company replace the chip that caused inaccurate calculations, the company stated that it still thought that the problem was overblown but would nevertheless replace the chips. In effect, Intel missed an opportunity to restore positive rela-tions with reconciliation and instead followed a path that would simply put the issue to rest and get the company off the front page of the newspa-per’s business section (Hearit, 1999).

Timely

A third characteristic of the paradigm case is that the apologetic response be timely—that is, it is performed as soon as the offender recognizes the of-fense. On first glance, this would appear to be a relatively straightforward condition—as soon as an offense is made known to or recognized by the of-fender, then a response should follow. If an apology comes too late, after key stakeholders have had to continually call for it, such an individual or an or-ganization would be (rightly) perceived to not want or to resist reconcilia-tion, and thus to have a tin ear. This, if true, would violate the victims’ right to have their offense acknowledged, and it communicates implicitly a lack

of concern about the victims’ injury. It also devalues the relationship be-tween the apologist and the victims by implying that reconciliation is not worthwhile and by corrupting the experience of “knowing each other” that exists to varying degrees in any relationship.

Finally, there is a consequential aspect to this paradigm characteristic. If the apologist fails to deliver a response in a timely manner, the victims are deprived of certain options to deal with any damage caused by the offense, potentially at the cost of significant financial, emotional, and other types of harm. The efforts by President Clinton to apologize for the Tuskegee experi-ments came quite late and, as a result, most of the victims had already passed away (Harter et al., 2000).

Although slowness of response is a key problem, the converse can present its own set of issues. An individual or an organization that responds too quickly can be perceived as trying to “put out a fire” or “get it over with quickly,” rather than as seeking to achieve reconciliation in an offended re-lationship. It also may be imprudent to respond if vital information is un-available. In this way, in apologetic crises time is structural rather than linear; that is, it is less about the clock and more about when moral guilt is able to coalesce in the minds of stakeholders and when the information is needed. Thus, what is required is a communicated response in an appropriate point in time.

Voluntary

A fourth criterion for an ethically ideal apologetic response is that the com-munication proffered by the apologist be voluntary; that is, it must be per-formed without actual or anticipated coercion. By this, the idea is that the apologist has decided to offer an apology on the basis of moral reflection.

A voluntary apologia communicates a sincere desire to reconcile, rather than an opportunistic attempt at damage control. Without this criterion, the victims have little reason to trust the apologist’s words or actions, whether they constitute the expressed desire to reconcile or actual promises of compensation. And, if the response is involuntary, the victims have rea-son to feel insulted as parties to a relationship in which their needs are not valued and the mutual commitment that is supposed to characterize relationships is, and maybe never was, present.

A final aspect by which to assess the voluntary nature of the apologetic discourse is that of tone. Part of the process of remorse is a certain degree of humility—as opposed to anger. In President Clinton’s first apologia for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, on August 17, 1998, the presence of anger di-rected at Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was reflective of an involun-tarily delivered apologia—one proffered for political, not moral, reasons.

Addresses All Stakeholders

A truly ethical apologetic response must speak to the concerns and interests of all parties who have been offended. This is simply a matter of being mor-ally accountable to those who have a legitimate moral claim. Yet, when speaking of contexts of wrongdoing, the problem typically is rooted in the fact that individuals and corporations have natural constituencies. It is the propensity of apologists, when caught in a crisis, to speak only or at least pri-marily to their natural or most immediate constituencies, rather than to all those stakeholders whom the apologist has wronged—those who have a moral problem with the apologist’s acts.

Such was the case with the settlement by Merrill Lynch in May 2002. The company engaged in negotiations with New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer for the practice of falsely talking up the value of telecommunications stocks to individual investors—and thus ultimately defrauding them when the boom went bust—in order to gain lucrative investment banking fees from those same companies. Merrill Lynch agreed to pay a $100 million fine without acknowledging that it had done anything wrong. The beneficiaries of the $100 million, however, were not the retirees who lost significant por-tions of their life savings; instead, the monies went into the treasury of the State of New York (Hearit & Brown, 2004). An ideal apologia would have found a way to address issues of compensation to those who were actually wronged by the company’s actions. In this particular case, individual investors have had to turn to the courts to sue Merrill Lynch for fraud.

Appropriate Context

A final paradigm characteristic that addresses the manner of apologetic speech concerns the site, location, or medium chosen. There are a couple of factors that are worth noting. First, the forum as such must be accessible to all stakeholders. That is, it must be conducted in such a way that all who were wronged have genuine entrée to the apology. With major offenses, such as President Clinton’s admission of an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a televised apologia is necessary. In many instances, an advertisement in regional or national newspapers is appropriate. Second, when the victims are smaller in number and can be constituted as a group, a more private occasion may be desirable. Such was the case with the Chris-tian & Missionary Alliance, which apologized in the late 1990s for abuses that occurred in the schools in which children of missionaries in Africa were educated. In addition to a public apology in denominational publications, the church invited the victims to a conference center in suburban Atlanta and provided a personal, private apology in the context of a religious service (Courtright & Hearit, 2002).

In sum, for apologetic discourse to be considered ethically ideal, it must be truthful, and sincerely and voluntarily delivered in an appropriate time. It must also address all stakeholders and be performed in an appropriate context. Al-though these characteristics are critical, on their own they are incomplete. Just as important is the content of what is said in an apologetic statement.