Nihilism at work

For all those philosophical purists out there, this blog is pretty short on philosophy and really short on purity. That aside, it is interesting to take a peek at work, namely human resources, from some different points of view.

Moral nihilism is (roughly) argues that there is no objective authority governing decision making. For example, a nihilist might argue that stealing is not inherently good nor bad. In fact, nihilism is a strong argument for the presence of laws and other social structures to attach penalties and/or benefits to different behaviors. The idea being that most of us would go around making decisions that generally benefit only us and probably only now at the expense of everyone else (or possibly at the expense of our future selves as well). Within the perspective of employment law or human resouces, there is no shortage of these rules and structures. But what happens when a situation exists outside of these rules?

For example, a company may offer an incentive program for salaried employees. As part of this incentive program, there is a summary plan description for this incentive plan that governs things like eligibility, calculation of the payout, how incentive will be paid in the event of terminating during the year, etc. Many of these bonus programs are founded in gain-sharing fundamentals and many outline the bonus parameters for all levels of the organization. This said, companies across the world have chosen to pay out some sort of bonus payment even when the gainsharing metrics do not support such payout. Why? Is it that these companies are applying some grander sense of morality to their decision or is it simply that senior executives are able to lobby their Board in their own self-interest?

My point is not as simple as arguing that morality is, at best, nuanced in the global workplace. Instead, I argue that a context of nihilism is a mandate that HR professionals must do a better job of using facts, organizational constructs, past precedent and statutory regulations to tell our story. It is not good enough to argue "it's the right thing to do".

From a nihilist perspective, there may not be a "right" thing to do at all...