Problems Ignored by Whistleblowers

Problems Ignored by Whistleblowers

U.S. unemployment peaked at 10.0% in October 2009.  Silicon Valley, where Second Harvest of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties is located, suffered even more.  There the rate reached 11.3%.  That year Second Harvest, one of the country’s largest food banks, distributed 45.5 million pounds of food and served 231,000 persons a month – roughly the number of those earning less than the federal poverty level in the region.  It was a valued asset in the community.

By the time Second harvest closed its books on 2017, Silicon Valley unemployment had dropped to near 3%.  The number of people earning less than the federal poverty level dropped 3% below the 2010 level and 12% below the 2012 peak.  Still, Second Harvest’s CEO found poverty persistent in the midst of a soaring economy.  The hunger paradox, she called it.  In response, in 2017 the company served 11% more people than in 2010.

Second Harvest’s fundraising went into overdrive during the recession.  Rather than decreasing by 3% (with poverty) or growing by 11% (with persons served), fundraising rocketed up by 65% (adjusted for inflation) between 2010 and 2017.  With those extra funds, two things happened.  First, cash and investments increased by $27 million to $44 million – four times as much as Houston Food Bank, the country’s largest.  Second, it pushed more food through its distribution channels.

This is how that plays out: Tiny St. Vincent de Paul in East Palo Alto is one of Second Harvest’s 320 distribution partners.  When I began delivering food for SVdP 19 years ago, we carried a several pounds of packaged goods in two paper bags per family.  As the group acquired space and refrigerators, we gave more and healthier food.  We now lug boxes of food weighing 75 pounds and more to families.

Another place where I volunteer is the Palo Alto Food Closet, which is now a program of Downtown Streets Team.  DST is also a Second Harvest partner.  Second Harvest asked the Food Closet to boost its distribution of food.  Increasing the number of hours the Food Closet is open didn’t change the number of visits.  Then, we increased the number of times clients can receive food from 2 to 3 times a week, hoping to move more food.

Second Harvest and its partners are far from unique in the hunger business.  Feeding America coordinates a nationwide network of some 200 food banks, including Second Harvest.  The network distributed 4.9 billion pounds of food in 2017, up 63% from 2010.  One consequence of that growth was a $50 million increase in Feeding America’s cash and investments over the period.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Feeding America and local food banks have a key food source in the Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).  Prior to the recession, TEFAP distributed about 340 million pounds a year to states and nonprofits.  By 2010 distributions had more than doubled to 905 million pounds[1].  But in contrast to Feeding America and Second Harvest, its shipments then dropped 20% by 2017[2].

If Second Harvest takes in more private contributions than it really needs, a whistleblower might call that out.  But none has.  If St. Vincent de Paul gives out wasteful amounts of food, a whistleblower might call that out, too.  Same thing for the Palo Alto Food Closet.  We generally ignore these problems.  Like the Department of Justice and other enforcement agencies, we don’t want to hurt organizations that do good.

Certainly all of these organizations believe they are acting appropriately, just as Enron and any number of corporate miscreants did.  Feeding America, Second Harvest, SVdP, and Food Closet all claim the need is great despite a strong economy – 30% more people live in poverty than before the recession, they note.  They claim morality demands generous action in support of the poor.  That could be true.

Or maybe their claims are based on a different reasoning.  After all, most people think they are more moral, more honest, and more deserving than others[3]. 

Researchers have found many alternative explanations for behavior than reason and moral considerations[4].  People tend to be biased in favor of actions that benefit themselves.  For example, the salary of Second Harvest’s CEO rose at the same excessive rate as its revenue, and Feeding America’s CEOs received bonuses based in part on revenue and pounds of food distributed.

Wrongdoers and whistleblowers are both affected by the slippery slope phenomenon.  If behavior is only slightly offensive in one period, and the next is a bit more offensive, and so on, the actor never feels regret.  And the insider has trouble deciding when the wrong justifies the consequences of blowing the whistle. 

HomeFirst’s defense against some of my complaints moved along this slippery slope: the alleged wrongs had been going on for years, so what’s the problem now?  And the State of California bought that argument when it decided against me.

So as Second Harvest got more and more money than it really needed, when did their greed become egregious?  When should a whistleblower have said, enough?

Much has been made of cognitive dissonance in explaining why presumably good people misbehave.  Researchers argue that people rationalize their misdeeds or they find mental tricks that help them ignore misbehavior. 

In this age of Donald Trump, we can posit another explanation: they lie and just don’t care about our response.  Perhaps they calculate they have the power and see no reason to fear being called out.  The result is, corporate offenders seldom admit to their crimes and they are rarely punished severely[5].  Or perhaps they are not good people, after all.

We can try to change organizations from within.  We can leave when they fail to respond.  We can blow a whistle.  We can refuse to support them.  We have choices, but we must object to what seems wrong.

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[1] TEFAP and SNAP data are found in reports on this USDA web site.

[2] The poor were not abandoned by the federal government, though.  Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – food stamps) participants increased from 26.5 million in 2007 to a high of 47.7 million in 2013 before dropping to 42.2 million in 2017.

[3] Chugh, Dolly, Max H. Bazerman and Mahzarin R. Banaji. “Bounded Ethicality as a Psychological Barrier to Recognizing Conflicts of Interest.” In Conflicts of Interest: Challenges and Solutions in Business, Law, Medicine and Public Policy. Don A. Moore, Daylian M. Cain, George Loewenstein and Max H. Bazerman (eds.) Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005: 74-95;

[4] For example, Bazerman, Max H. and Ann E. Tenbrunsel. Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do about It. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 2011; Bazerman, Max H. and Ann E. Tenbrunsel. “Ethical Breakdowns: Good People often let bad things happen.  Why?”  Harvard Business Review (April 2011): 58-65; Gino, Francesca and Max H. Bazerman. “When misconduct goes unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical behavior.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009): 708–719; Gino, Francesca, Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman. “See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People’s Unethical Behavior.” In Social Decision Making: Social Dilemmas, Social Values and Ethical Judgments. Roderick M. Kramer, Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Max H. Bazerman (eds.).  New York: Routledge (2010); Messick, David M. and Max H. Bazerman.  “Ethical Leadership and the Psychology of Decision Making.”  Sloan Management Review, 37.2 (1996): 9–22; Soyer, Emre and Robin M. Hogarth. “Fooled by Experience.” Harvard Business Review.  (May 2015): 73-77; and Tenbrunsel, Ann E., Kristina A. Diekmann, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni and Max H. Bazerman.  “The Ethical Mirage: A Temporal Explanation as to Why We Aren’t as Ethical as We Think We Are.”  Harvard Business School Working Paper 08-012.  2009

[5] Garrett, Brandon L.  Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations.  Cambridge, Mass.:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.  2014