 Welcome to the U.S. Naval War College, the Navy's home of thought. NWC Talks features our world-class experts examining national security matters. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Well, hi everyone. My name is Dr. Hank Breitman. I am a professor and EMC Informationist Chair here at the Naval War College. And today we'll have an opportunity to talk a little bit together about the challenge of corruption and leadership. This is an area that of course is near and dear to all of our hearts, something we hear a lot about, particularly in the media today. And spoiler alert, for better or worse, this is a challenge that's existed across time. In fact, it was the great St. Thomas Aquinas who said that nothing is incorruptible except for the virtue of the human heart. And that's the challenge that we have, the challenge of understanding corruption in today's world. And what's important to understand about corruption is it is an immortal challenge. It is a challenge that we faced across time, across space. So what does that mean for us? Well, in the words of Carl Jung, what we're referring to are archetypes or patterns. And as a pattern analyst, as an archetypal pattern analyst, my job today is to work with you to share images and patterns so we can better understand how corruption impacts us and how we can actually work together to make sure that we can combat corruption in an effective way. So what's important to understand about the concept of archetypes is that each of us has things about us that make us uniquely us. For example, if we were to consider ourselves a king in terms of our own temperament or personality, there would be strong elements of our personality. And those strong elements of our personality could be dominant. Yet each of us has a shadow or lesser developed part of self. And that shadow is often the part of our self that leads to the challenge of corruption. These images, these patterns take many forms, many shapes and stay with us throughout our life. Indeed, these patterns, these shapes that each of us possess, that each of us face exists not just in ourselves, but across communities, across history. And those patterns over time form the basis for what we refer to in the language of psychology as a complex. So what's important to understand is that we have always sought throughout our lives to deal with the challenge of this complex, this challenge of corruption. In America, we've had distinct patterns or periods where we've worked very, very hard to try and deal with corruption. One such pattern came at the end of the Civil War. And that pattern really is what we refer to as the anti-patronage period. In America at that period of time, we had just finished fighting slavery. We had the abolitionist movement. And out of that movement came a righteous indignation to really focus more on how do we reduce the challenge of corruption? Because we had many people at that time, whether we're talking about the famous Tammany Hall or we're talking even in Rhode Island who were dealing with issues of corruption, issues where we had people fighting for jobs that could not get those jobs because of a patronage system. And what that led to, in many cases, were teachers that could not teach, teachers that didn't know how to read and write, and of course, students that didn't learn either. Or even issues that we had in health and safety, such as in the meatpacking industry where we had challenges with workers who would basically be working in unsafe conditions. All of this anti-patronage movement, this corruption, if you will, led to the concept of the progressive era. And the great progressive fighter for many of us was Teddy Roosevelt. And Teddy Roosevelt really sought to create what we refer to as the meritocracy, a system based on merit, where those of us who were the best qualified for any position would receive that position. So the challenge that we have is even during this progressive era, there were those that would seek to corrupt that era. The famous example of that is Teepat Dome. For those not familiar with Teepat Dome, this was the confluence of personal and organizational corruption, where you had members of the Harding administration involved personally and organizationally in challenges of corruption. Along come a number of theorists, as a criminologist, several near and dear to my heart, including Emile Durkheim, who looked specifically at the challenges of corruption across organizations. And of course, Robert Merton, who looked at society and the challenges we have in society with going from being at the place we're at to a broader societal view. Kind of the cap of all of their work, all of their research was a theorist named Edwin Sutherland. And Edwin Sutherland looked at people and groups of people. And he said that individuals in groups, especially small intimate groups, tend to engage in corrupt behavior because this is learned behavior for each of these groups. And this is the challenge that we have continue to have in society today, when we look specifically at corruption individually and organizationally. So that is a challenge for us. And that challenge becomes something that we really focus on aggressively by trying to develop systems to combat that corruption. The famous example of someone who fought that corruption is a gentleman by the name of Max Weber. And Weber's model of bureaucratization really focused on trying to develop systems, engineering patterns and systems that would allow us then to actually ferret out corruption. If each person had a specific job, a specific function that was unique to them, that was unique to their ability, that allowed us to combat corruption because no one had any one area that they were too dominant. This approach led to what we refer to as the scientific administration period in corruption control. A belief that when we were doing things like building roads, doing things like building bridges during the great period of time that we refer to as the New Deal, we could use these engineering principles to combat corruption. And we use the same scientific approach, even when we talked about things like the Vanguard program to bring people to the moon, that if we had specific functions, specific activities in which people were engaged, that those people could then use that to combat corruption. And this worked to some extent because when we talk about things like the moon landing or we talk about things like the challenges we had in infrastructure, you can measure and assess and mitigate corruption. Yet, this challenge doesn't work when we're talking about social behavioral issues. Corruption is a challenge for us when we talk about society, when we talk about programs that impact people. And the great society period of the Johnson administration is a great example of that. One need look only at systems and processes around people to see the complexity they present and why using that scientific model just doesn't work for us. So along comes a theorist, many of us are aware of him, great philosopher by the name of Jeremy Bentham. And Jeremy Bentham's work manifests through a concept called the Panopticon was that if we did not monitor people, if we did not look at people as individuals and really understand that individuals may engage in corrupt practices, we weren't really doing the right thing to look at that human behavior element. The famous example of Bentham's work is the Panopticon, this concept that if everyone were monitored all the time in the example he provides in a correctional setting, this allows for us to really understand and monitor human behavior. This approach, believe it or not, was very much liked by Richard Nixon, who believed that federal employees, government employees left to their own devices would engage in corrupt practices. Nixon was a huge proponent of this model of trust but verify, monitor, assess, continually check and recheck. And his approach actually was further promulgated in the work of President Carter, who in 1978 created the Inspector General Act, promulgating that waste, fraud and abuse in federal programs needed to be a focus for the United States. What's interesting to understand and a harkening back to our earlier point is that corruption exists organizationally and individually. And in many cases we see, regardless of administration, the challenge of corruption control. So what does that mean for us? What are the challenges that we have when we deal with organizational corruption and personal corruption? The challenge is really understanding our mission. What is our organizational mission? What is our focus as an organization? And if we can understand our focus as an organization, we can then delve more deeply into its structure and is our structure aligned with that organization? Lastly, we can focus on the people, on the individuals that work in that organization and their archetype, their dominant areas and their shadow. Once we understand that, once we've moved to their archetype and their shadow, we can align organizations in a way that will help mitigate corruption. As I said when I started, there's no one common way to eradicate corruption. But there are methods and approaches that we can use. And the great St. John, the Golden Mouth actually talked about this, that what we need to have is the will, the will to fight corruption, the will to look at corruption at a unit level, at an individual level, at an organizational level, in a way to make the world a better place. But, harkening back to our endpoint with St. Thomas Aquinas, the challenge for us is really making sure that it's not just will, but action. And that ability to act is what ultimately allows us to create a society which is better, more holistic and leads towards action. My name is Dr. Hank Breitman. Thank you for your time today with NWC Talks.