Blame Culture

[RandomMusings]

Ok, so I've noticed over the past 12 months there seem to be more and more stories appearing in the news where someone has cocked up and automatically everyone is calling for them to *resign*. Now in some cases, this is probably the only honourable thing to do - and resigning will mean that the inevitable decision to give the individual the chop is avoided. A number of cases do indeed spring to mind where the people responsible did deserve what they got.

In many other cases though, the person at the top resigns/gets fired. Some may see that as acceptable, but how can they seriously be expected to manage someone minute by minute who is effectively five or six levels below them? This decision to resign or to sack someone may also create more problems than it solves. This person may still be the best at the job, but with the media clamouring for their head, they have no option other than to resign. Therefore, someone new, who may never be as good, has to come in and be trained, learn the job etc. What happens in this scenario?

The common addage is that people learn from their mistakes - in the current culture of arbitrarily apportioning blame upon to often undeserving individuals, there appears to no longer be this option for the majority. I'm interested to hear other people's opinions on this blame culture and the media impact upon people's interpretations of such scenarios.

[Frank]

I essentially agree. The other adage 'make punishment fit the crime' is all nice and pithy, and sounds like being lenient (well, appropriate), but that's because an instinctive justice surely isn't entirely measured.

The trouble with 'resign' or 'fired' as a response is that it's completely unrelated to what has happened and has more to do with some bizarre sense of 'honour'. Hell, I said it before: it's scapegoating pure and simple. It's a quick solution so that the viewer/reader can get a swift resolution to the their angst at the story.

It strikes me that there are better solutions, indeed ones likely to actually solve problems other than having someone publicly branded as incompetent in a position of seniority. With regards to actual mistakes made, in the cases of Baby P and now this G20 officer, simply sacking someone seems utterly irrelevent to the problems being raised.

That 'the media' is listened to or promoting these calls sounds far more like the Debates thing where everyone shouts "resign!", except that for some reason folks are taking is...seriously.

[ChrisH]

No, it's more that back in the day people used to actually resign over things. Lord Carrington resigned when the Falklands War broke out because as Foreign Secretary he (or those under his purview) hadn't predicted it.

The shocking thing about the Bob Quick resignation is that he went, no doubt helped by his total lack of supporters after the other various high profile things he's been involved in.

Politicians don't go any more, they hang on saying they haven't "technically" done anything wrong. Adam Boulton said it best in his Sky advert, if he was in charge of an economy that had gone as wrong as ours has he'd resign.

[Gubbins]

Hmm. Time for a diatribe.

There is a time and a place for blame. Where blame should be apportioned and what the relevant punishment should be seems to have become lost in modern times. Let us take three recent examples:
(a) the "Baby P" social workers' case;
(b) the recent departure of Bob Quick after his camera incident;
(c) the even-more-recent "smeargate" scandal (I use the word sarcastically, following Yahoo News).

Case (a). Of the three, I know the least about this case. According to the Times today, a further 60 children in "extreme risk" situations have been overlooked since that case. This sounds very much like a case of gross incompetence, in which case these people are unsuited for their jobs and should be made to leave. BLAME CULTURE WINS.

Case (b). An unfortunate case where a simple oversight led to an operation being fouled up. This is an single, simple slip, not a monumentally mismanaged melée. It was a silly mistake, but then again he was talking about important things with the PM: I'm sure he's got more important things on his mind than which way round he's holding his papers on the way out. BLAME CULTURE LOSES.

Case (c). Someone did a stupid thing and wrote some lewd e-mails about David Cameron. These were private but he should have known better than to do something like that in a backstabbing, nitpicky place like Parliament. The calls for his resignation are just political braying from ministers wanting to distract attention their way, not blame culture specifically. NO SCORE DRAW.

Blame culture goes on to play the terrorists in next week's semi-final in Abu Dhabi.

[RandomMusings]

No, it's more that back in the day people used to actually resign over things. Lord Carrington resigned when the Falklands War broke out because as Foreign Secretary he (or those under his purview) hadn't predicted it.

The shocking thing about the Bob Quick resignation is that he went, no doubt helped by his total lack of supporters after the other various high profile things he's been involved in.

Politicians don't go any more, they hang on saying they haven't "technically" done anything wrong. Adam Boulton said it best in his Sky advert, if he was in charge of an economy that had gone as wrong as ours has he'd resign.

ChrisH, am I correct in inferring that you advocate a fire/resign policy in so many of these situations? If so, I'd very much appreciate your reasons as to why, and whether this is a sweeping generalisation or a scenario for every case.

Personally, I believe that there are certain cases where resignations are required from the top right through a department when massive examples of neglect are occuring. However, the mistake of one individual far down a chain which ends with a high-profile error emerging at a later date is more than a tad unfair on the person at the top receiving the blame. I pretty much agree with Frank's post - honour in these cases should not be the reason to resign - they should only resign if they could realistically be expected to have stopped the situation from developing. If this is not the case, I contend that it is much more productive to keep the person in power (although maybe with more supervision?) to right the wrongs, as they will know where the weaknesses and failures came from, and be able to sure-up the gaps straight-away rather than waiting for someone new to have to learn the job/organisation.