Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter headlined “In which other organization could an employee be allowed to publicly rail against his employer with impunity” (07.01.17) by E B John. We must thank Mr John for his interest in the work of the municipality. This is as it ought to be. The council exists at the pleasure of and to provide efficient municipal services and facilities for its citizens. Therefore, citizens have a right to comment on the affairs of the city.
Still, it remains the responsibility of the Public Relations Division in particular and the council in general, to ensure that public communication and interactions on the operations of the municipality are fair and accurate. Further, citizens, who engage in this quality of public interaction, with the municipality, implicitly raise, and at the same time become accountable for certain values including, truth, fairness, correctness, trust, objectivity and sincerity. Whenever one or more of these values are breached the interaction may be characterized as distorted. This could mislead unsuspecting citizens and encourage inappropriate attitudes and actions towards the entity. Mr John’s letter has breached all of these values. However, we should like to flag up two of these principles: trust and correctness.
First, we were very disappointed that Mr John used your letter column to highlight certain aspects of a study that was done by a Consultancy Team of which he was a part. In paragraph 4, the writer said: “As a member of the Consultancy Team who completed a very comprehensive study of the organization and management of the M&CC in 2002, it is difficult to be impressed by the PRO’s fulminations about integrity, credibility and professionalism.” This leads to two fundamental points:
(i) Within recent times, the Management Consultancy Profession has attracted the attention of corporations and entities, which are anxious to implement change programmes to improve their performance in the market place. Consultants are hired to assist such organizations. However, the interventions of consultants must be helpful requiring accurate observations and the appropriate emotional response of the consultant himself. But these interventions could only be helpful if they are based on trust. This is essential for understanding interpersonal relationships, managerial effectiveness and organizational behaviour. In fact, there is no single variable which so thoroughly shapes interpersonal and group behaviour as does trust. This is the reason why one principle of the code of conduct for Professional Manage-ment Consultants is that they should hold all information concerning the affairs of their clients in the strictest confidence. This is important because such utterances could be counterproductive. Yet Mr John found it easy to talk publicly on certain aspects of the findings of the study. One can argue that some details of the report are already in the public sphere. However, that was done by the client not the consultant. Therefore, he has betrayed our trust. This is a most unfortunate situation for the Council.
(ii) This public engagement by the Consultant goes against the grain of organizational ethics. How could someone, who was involved in such a sensitive study, talk about aspects of its findings in the press before its implementation in the organization? All consultants should know that there is a global call for businesses to behave in an ethical manner. This allows organizational programmes to have a greater chance of success. Further, exactly what is Mr John implying when he said: “