Maybe Shakespeare was wrong
By Steve | May 29, 2008
This week I was lucky enough to see Macbeth on Broadway, with Patrick (Jean-Luc Picard) Stewart in the starring role. I loved Macbeth when I first saw it performed traditionally in Stratford upon Avon 25 years ago—and I loved it again despite, or because of, its Stalinistic setting at the Lyceum Theater.
But these days I can’t help looking at everything through the eyes of business ethics, and here I think Shakespeare’s insight is fundamentally flawed.
Analogizing medieval Scotland to modern day corporate life is not too difficult. King Duncan is the benevolent CEO. Macbeth is the striving corporate officer who has just received a promotion and is now one rung from the top. Except the CEO has named a new potential successor. And Macbeth’s wife is nudging (ok, manipulating—this is a sexist tale with not so subtle allusions to Adam and Eve) Macbeth to displace the CEO. She taunts him
“Do I fear thy nature; it is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness (evil) should attend it. . . . [thou] wouldst not play false.”
Lady Macbeth believes that the way to the top is achieved through ambition fueled by evil and stoked by falseness. And she urges her husband to be a man and murder Duncan in order to become King/CEO.
In one of his many self reflective moments, Macbeth reinforces this theme by accusing himself of having “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself.”
The theme of corporate evil as a result of unfettered ambition has persisted through the ages. Television commentators and congressional inquisitors use this story line to explain most acts of wrong doing, real and perceived.
Perhaps some of the more egregious acts in corporate history vindicate Lady Macbeth’s cynical world view. But more are far less evil; far more banal. Most acts are rationalized as “not too bad,” “what everybody is doing,” “just a little.” Are these bad actors ambitious? Yes. But these are not the acts of individuals devoid of virtue—just devoid of the discipline or courage necessary to do the right thing. And then the “toil and trouble” the three witches of Macbeth portend fall on the individual and the company alike.
Comments
I like the blog and the ideas contained in it, though I'm not sure I fully agree with the conclusion. I think that most acts of corporate malfeasance (or political malfeasance) are -- as you suggest -- simply banal acts of misplaced ambition. I think many people do things to achieve what they perceive to be legitimate targets or goals set by well-meaning managers who didn't recognize the unintended consequences of the incentives created to achieve those goals. But I am a bit more cynical and jaded than you appear to be. This cynicism is based on both personal experience and personal observation from inside the walls of the castle of Cawdor. There are without question people out there for whom personal ambition causes everything else to be placed second, or forgotten. In the political arena at present, we're seeing Macbeth played out but the roles reversed, as Lady Clinton is spurred on by her ruthlessly and equally ambitious husband to strive for the crown whatever the cost and whomever may be run over along the path (Hillary's outrageous comment last week about RFK underscoring this point). Similar behaviors are, alas, played out daily in the C-Suites of business.
All of this is to suggest that the blog is pretty close to right on, except to the extent that it suggests, at the end, that lack of virtue doesn't explain the behaviors of some of the bad actors we encounter. Stated perhaps otherwise, your conclusion is probably universally and timelessly true -- most examples of badness throughout history are probably better explained less as a consequence of evil (religious dogma to the contrary notwithstanding) than as a consequence of reasonably well-meaning people behaving somewhat badly for reasons that can be well understood, if not justified. But if Shakespeare had written about the more mundane examples of ethical lapses, he probably wouldn't have sold many plays...
Posted by: Horatio | May 29, 2008 12:36 PM