Political Correctness(PC) in the sense that it is regarded as too prescriptive is often seen as stymieing frank debate. Too many rules on how, or what you can or can not say. And it makes it only too easy to harp on a point of language (saying ‘person’ instead of ‘man’ to indicate generic ‘human’), rather than a point of content (i.e. about what the person is, or should be doing).

This is not to say that language is not important, it is. Language is the first way we express our perceptions, and as the saying goes: “perception is reality”. So if the colour of a person is pertaining to race, why not call the race instead of the colour, so ‘Aboriginal’, rather than ‘Black’? This is not being ‘PC’, this is being clear and unambiguous as well as respectful with language.

So Political Correctness fulfils its function much better than it has been given credit for. Language reflects attitudes in culture, be it an organisational culture or in society at large. The use of terms can embed attitudes, thus perpetuating fixed ideas and prevent them from being re-assessed. In this argument ‘fixed embedded terms’ lead to ‘fixed unmovable minds’.

To keep this argument to a corporate environment, a management system that does not contain policies that identify wanted (PC) behaviour, will lead to unwanted (unPC) behaviour.

This then is an argument for PC Corporate Policies, policies that will not only prescribe wanted behaviour, but then model that behaviour by making sure that all relevant processes and procedures are aligned and measured against those policies, with all processes and procedure to be audited against them annually. And from the very tip of the corporate pyramid, to the very bottom. Good examples make for good following.

Contributed by Marjolein Towler

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am and is filed under Using Intelligent Disobedience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.