Duty--or Beyond the Call?

Of the seven habits of highly effective people, surrendering to ransom-seeking mountain guerrillas didn’t make the list. In fact, that probably wouldn’t make the 1-million habits list either.

But that’s just what a highly successful Canadian businessman did three months ago when he gave himself up to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in exchange for a kidnapped foreman he had never met. The mining executive with the decidedly unheroic name of Norbert Reinhart was recently released to his wife and two daughters after paying an undisclosed amount of money to the rebels.

In a world where the bottom line seems to always outweigh humanity, Reinhart’s sacrifice is nothing less than astonishing. His act defies today’s widespread stereotype of year-round Scrooge bosses who rarely speak to workers, who outsource jobs to avoid paying benefits and who initiate layoffs, even before Christmas.

In a random survey, workers seemed united equally in their admiration for the Canadian businessman and in their conviction that under similar circumstances their top executive would not follow Reinhart’s example.

“[Reinhart] is a very noble guy,” said Lynn Hollins, 40, a legal secretary in downtown Los Angeles. “I don’t think there are many bosses who would do what he did. Most bosses won’t even touch the coffee machine.

“I think if an employee were kidnapped like that, most bosses would say, ‘See ya!’ Then, they’d run an ad in the newspaper to fill the job.”

A senior systems analyst for a large municipal organization, who asked not to be identified, agreed. He said he hoped his employer would be as altruistic as Reinhart but felt the most that his company would do is take up a collection for his ransom.

“The survival instinct is to put yourself first and everybody else second,” the 48-year-old Long Beach resident said. “Materialism has been running rampant in past years and at the expense of human values.”

While praising Reinhart, workers nevertheless said it’s unfair to expect a person--boss or not--to risk his life for another. In fact, some questioned the ethics of the businessman’s bold decision.

“He’s incredibly brave, but, in effect, he’s condoning the kidnapping,” said Sean Monroe, a 28-year-old lawyer from West Hollywood. “By turning himself over, he’s given the kidnappers something far more valuable than they had originally. He has a responsibility to his shareholders and, heck, to himself and his family not to do that.”

But when asked whether they’d like to work for a boss like Reinhart, almost everyone, even those who had been critical, answered with a resounding yes.

“He obviously looks upon his workers as a sort of family. He sees himself as no better or no worse than anyone else in the company,” said Monroe, echoing the sentiments of many workers. “If you have the feeling that they [bosses] care about you, you basically don’t have to dread getting up in the morning.”

This “kinder and gentler” boss harks back to a managerial tradition that was more prevalent two decades ago. In this system, bosses tried to be loyal to employees, hoping their behavior would be reciprocated by employees. Usually this kind of CEO rose through the company’s ranks and felt a deep professional and personal stake in its future.

“The downside is that it tended to create an old-boy network, a lot of cronyism and generally less innovation,” said Deborah F. Crown, a professor of management at the University of Alabama.

Around the 1980s, this so-called “loyalty” model gave way to a performance-based one, Crown said. Top executives would be brought in from outside the company and were not expected to stay at the position until they retired. While many companies thrived under these new management schemes, it sometimes came at a heavy cost to workers, who lost their jobs in cutbacks despite decades of loyal service.

“The problem here, in a worst-case scenario, was the CEO who manipulated parameters to make the company look good temporarily. That was often achieved through massive layoffs,” Crown said. “These were the CEOs who fueled the perception that they were just out for themselves.”

It’s that enduring negative perception that makes some workers misty-eyed over Reinhart’s apparent undying loyalty to his employees. But many business experts are able to remain entirely clear-eyed about his behavior, which they regard as ill-advised. Even his “heroic” act--if it was, indeed, motivated by altruism--could backfire and destroy employee morale, they argue.

“Is there a diagnostic category for [completely] nuts?” asked Samuel Culbert, a professor of human resources at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. “Does this mean now that everybody from this company who gets abducted can count on this guy to stand in for him?

“We don’t have all the information, but this guy is probably some kind of guilty martyr or something,” Culbert said. “This is a terrible system. There must be other ways to stand by your employees.”

Yes, but what are they? And how can an employer stand by his employees in everyday situations?

At the minimum, employers must abide by local, state and federal laws designed to protect the health and safety of their workers and ensure equal opportunity, experts point out. For instance, a boss at a U.S. company would probably face criminal charges and civil suits if he knowingly sent a worker into a dangerous area without properly warning him.

Beyond those basics, however, lies an enormous gray area, experts say. Even without breaking the law, bosses can harm workers by putting profits over people.

For instance, if a boss knows layoffs have to be made, when should the decision be announced? From a worker’s perspective, the sooner, the better, because it allows him or her more time to search for a job while still getting a paycheck.

But from the company’s perspective, it usually is advantageous to wait as long as possible because workers who find other jobs earlier than management desires can disrupt productivity.

Waiting as long as possible “isn’t illegal,” Crown said, “but it’s really an implicit lie.”

Another hot-button ethical issue involving loyalty is the increasingly frequent employer practice of getting rid of experienced, higher-paid workers in favor of younger, cheaper ones.

In the coming years, experts say, loyalty between employer and employee may be further strained over issues of privacy. Should a worker’s phone calls or e-mails be private? Should workers be drug-tested or kept under surveillance?

“Employers are going to differ on how they treat their people,” Crown said. “The best thing to do to protect yourself is to work for a business that matches your own value system.”