Planning For Ethics

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Planning For Ethics

• Dr Elspeth Tilley
• Massey University

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Most strategic comms plans have a similar format.

• RACE
• ROPE
• ROSTE
• Where are we now?
• Where do we need to get to?
• How will we get there?
• How will we know when weve arrived?

(Freitag, 1998)
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Whats ethics???

• Doing the right thing.
• BUT (and its a big BUT).
• Whose right thing?

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Ethics schools of thought
Virtue Ethics Deontology Consequentialism
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The key questions each approach asks.
Virtue Ethics what kind of person ought I to
be? Deontology what are my duties?
Consequentialism how ought the world to be?
See Temkin, 2004, p. 354, and Tilley, 2005.
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The problems.

• All three (values, rules, and outcomes) are
  important for comprehensive ethical consideration
• No two people have the same ideas about what
  values, rules, or outcomes are most ethical or
  important
• Where/how do they fit in practice????

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The ethics pyramid aims to

• Include all three major ethics approaches plus
  any others that you could choose
• Take a consultative/consensus approach to ethics
  (the process itself is an ethics of inclusion)
• Transform principles into practical campaign
  components by matching to strategy steps
• Make ethics measurable
• Allow flexibility for variable or multiple values
  sets

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Why is this helpful?

• Cuts through welter of conflicting ethics ideas
• Enables cultural and personal customisation
• Four sequential steps
• Integrates with existing campaign strategy
  process
• Encourages ethics measurement and reporting as a
  value-added proposition

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Putting ethics on the agenda

• Have a personal ethical reflection time each
  morning/afternoon
• Have regular, informal ethical reflection
  sessions with colleagues
• Formally write ethics checks into program
  planning using a tool such as pyramid
• Invite speakers to workplace to talk about ethics
• Make it a lively, not onerous, topic
• Read ethics cartoons!!!

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Acknowledgements
Thank you to Journal of Mass Media Ethics for
valuable feedback, the Arthur W. Page Center for
Integrity in Public Communication for seed
funding to commence workplace testing, Doug
Savage (www.savagechickens.com) for the great
chickens, and colleagues for valuable
insights. Please contact me any time with your
feedback or questions about the ethics
pyramid. E.Tilley_at_massey.ac.nz Phone 64 4 801
5799 ext. 6598
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References Resources

• Center, A. H., Jackson, P. (2003) Public
  relations practices Managerial case studies
  problems. N.J. Pearson Education.
• Freitag, A. R. (1998, Spring) PR planning primer
  Bite-sized morsels make it simple. Public
  Relations Quarterly, 14-17.
• Hendrix, J.A. (2001). Public relations cases. 5th
  ed. Stamford Wadsworth.
• Macnamara, J. (2002). PR metrics Research for
  planning and evaluation of PR and corporate
  communication. Chippendale, NSW MASS
  Communication Group. Retrieved August 31, 2004,
  from http//www.masscom.com.au/Downloads/PR20Met
  rics20(A4).pdf
• McElreath, M. (1997) Managing systematic and
  ethical public relations campaigns. Madison
  Brown Benchmark
• Patterson, J. (1999). Ethics still count. Vital
  Speeches, 65, p. 731.
• Seib, P., Fitzpatrick, K. (1995) Public
  relations ethics. Fort Worth Harcourt Brace.
• Temkin, L. S. (2004). Thinking about the needy,
  justice, and international organizations. The
  Journal of Ethics, 8, 349-395.
• Tilley, E. (2005). The ethics pyramid Making
  ethics unavoidable in the public relations
  process. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 20 (4),
  305-320.