Transparency and hypocrisy posted 29 april 2016

Transparency and Hypocrisy in Higher Education: Vision, Mission and Nonsense

Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant Apr 29, 2016 From time to time we hear about scandals in this or that company or organization resulting in huge losses in revenue and reputation. It has become a fact of life in the business world that companies and organizations cannot survive without the corporate ideals and values of transparency, integrity and honesty. The Panama Papers have clearly revealed how deep the crisis of transparency is in the world. Leaders and people of different responsibilities have been implicated by these papers as having “cheated” in avoiding taxes by off-shore accounts in a company in Panama and thus they have “cheated” their societies and the people they used to trust. Of course, the accused is innocent until proven guilty and almost all those implicated by the papers claim they are innocent and everything they have been doing is legal. Whether it is Page 1 of 3

legal or not is only one side of the coin. The other side is the moral and ethical issue involved.

In any business or organization, we should not focus only on the legality or illegality of what we are doing but, more importantly, on the moral and ethical basis of our actions and decisions. In fact, anyone who has some knowledge of the laws anywhere in the world would realize that there are always legal “loopholes” here and there. These loopholes are always made use of by lawyers to defend their clients or condemn their opponents. What is more important for any leader in the world or any organization is to be transparent with the people s/he leads or the employees s/he deals with. You cannot be cunning and deceive your people by hiding your wealth and avoiding paying the taxes as per the laws of the land by clinging to “legal arrangements” with corrupt companies. Unfortunately, this happens in higher education institution in many ugly ways.

Everything is secret and confidential and the senior management pays only lip-service to the concept of transparency. Teachers think that their job is just to go the class and teach the textbook and submit the marks the students have got by hook or by crook. Transparency is not something they are after or something they need to worry about, especially when you have a ruthless sort of senior management who, unashamedly, tell you to your face, “Keep your opinion to yourself. We do not want you to think. We will think for you!” A very disgusting attitude which I have never thought I would face in an institution supposed to deal with a sector regarded by the society as having the highest societal, moral and ethical values. You would wonder how incompetent and stupid people could creep into the senior management circles in colleges and universities. Of course, through hypocrisy and personal favors. You can easily see that if the leader does not really believe in transparency, he favors and encourages hypocrisy in the organization. This is his favorite game! He does not possess any leadership qualities and therefore cannot rule through transparency which he regards as a great danger to him. Those line managers who practice it are often “branded” as “troublemakers” who should be made to leave the organization at any cost. Passing the necessary information and guidelines to the people you lead in order for them to do their job is regarded as “revealing the secrets of the organization”, which is really stupid and unethical. I worked as a line manager in different colleges and universities in many countries in the world. I always used to be transparent with my colleagues -the colleagues I used to lead and the colleagues I worked with. Whenever there was a problem with a colleague (e.g. a complaint from students) or something related to his / her performance in my department, I used to write to them about the problem, discussed it with them and tried to find a solution. Unfortunately, many of them did not use to understand this “transparency approach” and used to think that I was against them rather than with their right to know what was going on. They were unable to understand that transparency is essential and it is the right of any employee in any organization. The reason for the misunderstanding or the inability of some colleagues to appreciate the virtue of the transparency approach is because of the absence of “transparency culture” in the whole organization. The senior managers are the first people to stab you on the back and get rid of you if you are transparent with your colleagues. One must admit, however, that some of them have made a very good use of the concept of “transparency” on their campuses by fitting cameras everywhere, even in the bathrooms!

If we come to the vision, mission and values of the organizations, we find there is a great deal of mismatch between what they say and what they do. One university wants, in its vision, to be a leading higher education institution in the region and the world! This university, though, never uses books in teaching; it uses “tiny handouts” pirated from chapters of books in violation of international copyright laws. In its mission, it “endeavors to produce graduates” who will invent, Page 2 of 3

create and innovate to advance science and technology but, in fact, most of its graduates cannot say one good sentence in English and cannot “think” for themselves! They are trained to be “parrots” from the first year to the last. Their degrees are just worthless pieces of paper. Another university wishes to occupy an internationally recognized position among institutions of higher education for its quality teaching and distinguished research. But there is nothing to match this vision in actual reality. Teaching is very traditional and all student academic assessment is based on “rote-learning” and teachers’ small notes. How could such a university achieve its “internationally recognized position”? The “sweet” and “nice” words and formulation of vision and mission in many higher education institutions do not match with what is going on in these institutions. The universal academic values and conventions have disappeared and have been replaced by the “hypocrisy” of the senior managers who have become “experts” in stifling transparency and spreading fear in colleges and universities. Transparency has been replaced by the “respect for confidentiality” and the “secrets” of the organization though these so-called “secrets” are merely information and guidelines needed by the employees (teachers and staff) to do their job. The values of honesty, justice and fairness are words which are difficult to understand, let alone to practice, by the senior management who tell you, to your face, “we are the decision-makers and will do what we like”! This is all done in the name of the university or the organization. Utter Nonsense! A very gloomy picture indeed but it is true and regrettable.

This unhealthy environment has given way to hypocrisy among teachers and academics to an unbelievable degree in order to keep their names on the payroll. But; however, there are still many teachers and academics who do respect their names, dignity and academic status and refuse to be slaves or work in a toxic environment characterized by hypocrisy and the absence of transparency.

To conclude: transparency and hypocrisy are closely related and are part of the organizational culture. If you are a line manager and you follow transparency with the people you lead, you need to be very careful indeed. You will be the first one to pay the price if the culture in the organization is built on hypocrisy encouraged by the senior management. This is very unfortunate but it is a fact of life in organization led by money-minded, incompetent and corrupt management. Hypocrisy spreads if transparency is absent. Nations live as long as they have moral values. They vanish when their moral values have gone! The same applies to businesses and organizations in our modern world.

Higher education institutions need to check out what they say and what they do in order to improve their practices and rise to the expectation of the students and the society. The game of cheating, lying and dishonesty in order to just make money at the expense of the genuine interests of the students and quality education is over! It cannot continue forever.

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